Increasing Traffic to your WebsiteWritten by: Jenny, Haily | This article will go over certain techniques that will give you specific results in increasing your website's traffic.

Titles and Meta Tags (Description and Keywords)

Titles and meta tags are very important things to increasing your site traffic and helping your site appear on correct, relevant searches on search engines. Titles and meta tags are tags which are inserted into the HTML of your website. Both are used heavily by most top search engines to identify and categorize sites. The better your titles and meta tags the better audience you will get.

Your site title is visible to visitors and will appear to them on the top bar of their browser , as a main title on search engines and other useful places. The site title is primarily for easily identifying your site. For visitors off search engines this is the first thing they will see, so make your title good and attractive. Titles usually consist of the site name and a short description of the website and/or what it offers. For example this site, IceCaves' site title is: “IceCaves.net Website and Design Community- Scripts, Tutorials and more” which is a perfect example of a site title. To insert a site title add this tag: into the 'head' section of your HTML.

A meta tags are not visible to visitors on your website. There are two types of meta tags used to identify your website. Both are very important.

A description meta tag is a short sentence or two that describe your website's purpose and content. This should be slightly more in depth than your title because on a search engine this will appear under your website title in smaller text as a slightly short paragraph. As an example, IceCaves's meta tag description is: “IceCaves.net is a resource and community website for website owners and web designers. Share designs, tricks, free scripts, and more!”. To place this meta tag add this: in the 'head' section of your HTML.

The second meta tag is a string of words related to your website separated by commas called 'keywords'. Keywords should list all things your website provides such as 'blogs' or 'fonts'. These keywords can be as numerous as you want, in fact if you type enough to document every things on your website that would be best. These words are not visible to your visitor anywhere (except in the source code) but they will help spiders or crawlers (robots used to find websites by search engines) find and categorize your site. Meta tag keywords are primarily what gives searches related results to their query word(s). To insert a meta tag keywords into your coding put this: into the 'head' section.

Link exchanges, Affiliations, Advertising and Plugboards

A link exchange is a code inserted in to a HTML document which randomly rotates the buttons or links of the members joined. A central organization who sets up the link exchange will receive registrations from webmasters and their sites and will then add their link button to the link exchange. The registered website will then receive a code to put up in a specified location(s). Every member will do this and so by chance your website's link/button will show up on any one of the link exchange's member's websites. When you refresh the link/button will change. When joining a link exchange try to keep in mind your target audience. So if your site is devoted to helping dog owners care for their dogs than submit your link to a link exchange based primarily of animal care sites instead of one about yachts. A link exchange's number of members is not something to be deeply considered. A small link exchange of only 5 members will mean that your link will only attract an audience from only 4 other sites (your site does not count) however, your link has a 25% chance of being shown. A large link exchange of 20 members means that 19 different sites will advertise you but your button only stands a 5% chance of being shown. In the light of all that try to pick a medium sized link exchange to balance things. You can also start your own link exchange. Many hosts of link exchanges place a credit button along with the rotated button, that means there website will always be advertised 100% since they are not on rotation. Starting your link exchange is by far the best option because you can ensure a small credit link always shows and add in your own link the exchange. However, you must make sure that your exchange becomes relatively popular.

Affiliations are very popular amongst websites. Affiliation is an agreement between two websites to link one another usually on every page of each site. Most websites have from 10-20 affiliates, all of which are usually always advertised. 'Picking' affiliates is not easy. Many sites have rules restricting the type and size of sites allowed to apply and you might have certain qualities that your affiliates must meet. In general, your affiliates must have a nice quality site, suitable amount of content, a friendly webmaster and/or staff, activeness and a unique hit rating of similar or higher than your own.

Advertising is straight forward, just spread the word as much as possible. Many sites have a service in which they will agree to put your site's button or link up for a set amount of time for a set amount of payment (for many this is zero). Choosing a good advertiser is crucial. Make sure that they receive a very good amount of unique hits per day and that their visitors are your target audience. If your advertiser requires payment for their advertising, their unique hit ratings should be at minimum around 150 hits. You can also advertise by simply posting about your site in chat boxes, in blog comments, in forums and other places. However, many sites disapprove of you promoting your own site on their site so this should be treated wearily.

A Plugboard is a script which can be found here: www.plugboard.org. What it does is that you can instantly submit your button link to a board of other button links. When you plug your button the earliest button plug will be pushed, likewise when you become the first button plugged, you will be pushed off and able to replug. Many sites have plug boards on them however, many are placed on only one page and it is not always easily seen. Plugboard's official website (above) also has a plug board which you can plug on as well as a chat box or tag box specifically placed for advertising.

Miscellaneous Tips

Comment and provide help on other sites related to your own. Visitors from their site will see your comments in the C-box or CuteNews comments and might click on your name to go to your site, interested in what you have to say. Try to keep it to sites with the same target audience as yours.

Offer help to potential visitors. People you find on other forums or ask and answer sites such as Yahoo Answer might be in need of some extra help or a personalized graphic or layout. Provide them with that and make sure to slip in your site URL.

Update your site frequently and every once in awhile do something big to attract guests such as a layout change or a contest with huge prizes. If you are willing to dish out money than Domain Contests are a very good way to attract hits.

Have attractive and out standing link back buttons. This will attract people to click instead of just viewing.

Topsites (such as the IceCaves.net Topsites) are a good way to track your unique hits as well as raise them. As your site's hits slowly go up, your hits will climb the the Topsite's list of sites. The higher up the list, the more visible it is to visitors.

Joining a directory is a good way to get your site listed somewhere on the internet. Most directories document any type of site (anime, celebrity, blog, etc.) but some document only specific types. Choose one receiving your target audience and a vast amount of unique hits.

Provide something unique. I can't give you ideas or else it's no longer unique.

Plan for the Long-Term
(This section was written by Haily)

Tracking your Site's progress

You will need to somehow one way or another be able to track your website's hits. Sometimes your web host will provide you with your own website tracker, but if you would like one then there are many out there. Here at IceCaves.net, we offer our own website tracker in the IceCaves.net Topsites. To learn more about the IC Topsites, click here.

Jump-Starting your Site - Gaining and Using Momentum

The first step to increasing your site's hits is something I will call jump-starting. To jump-start your site means to reach triple digits in your daily unique visitor count. The less hits that your site has, the harder it is for it to become more popular. Why is this? When it comes to websites (and perhaps other things, too.) popularity increases exponentially. As your website grows more popular, you will notice that your website's popularity will increase in relation to your current popularity. For example, a site that receives 50 unique visits per day is likely to get 30 to 70 unique visits in any given day. The difference of hits here is about 20. But a site that receives 500 unique visits per day is more likely to have a difference of about 50 in any given day. And for a site with 10,000 per day the difference is likely to be from 500 to 1,000 or even higher. What jump-starting will do is create momentum for your website.

Jump-starting will also complete the first major milestone for your website. If you can get your site to have a solid base of 100 unique visitors per day, then it'll be easier for you to build on this popularity to increase your popularity to 1,000 then to 10,000 and so on. But how do you jump-start your website? What can you do to break through the 100-unique-visitor milestone? Part 1 of this article has many great examples and techniques that you can use to do just that. But don't forget that your site must have potential to become popular. You must offer something on your website that will make your visitors keep coming back and get them to recommend your site.

   

| Written by: Jenny, Haily | Added: Aug 27 2009 | Last Modified: Dec 21 2009 | Views: 1,297 | (Log in to rate) |

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