Fig 1.0 Click on the ADD button to Submit Your URL (Website Address) to the Google search engine
Fig 1.1 Page 1 - Position 8 after submitting my URL to the Google search engine
| BUILD AND MAINTAIN WEBSITE TRAFFIC |
After ordering your web hosting package, setting up your email addresses, creating your web pages (with appropriate meta tags and keywords/keyphrases
inside them) and uploading them to your public_html folder; the next thing to do is Submit Your URL (website address) to all the major search engines
(Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask) in order to get your website highly indexed (highly listed). The hope is to get your website listed on Page 1 of those
major search engines so that plenty of visitors, also known as Traffic, come flooding to your website asking to buy your product(s) and/or service(s).
Hope and Reality are two different things though.
The reality is not just getting your index web page (i.e. www.whatever.com) listed on page 1, it is also about getting your other web pages listed on
page 1. And more importantly keeping your web pages on page 1. This said. It is not a disgrace to be listed on pages 2, 3 or 4 these days because your
potential customers may not like what they see listed on page 1 and therefore keep browsing through the search engine listings (results) for a few more
pages before giving up their search or before changing their keywords/keyphrases. Hence why keywords, meta tags, page titles and so on are important.
You have to think like the person looking for your product(s)/service(s).
Begin by submitting your website URL to google. Take your web browser to http://www.google.co.uk/addurl/ (or your country's equivalent) and then
fill in the URL Submission form. It is straight forward. Although the submission form states that the description/keywords you enter inside the COMMENTS
edit box are for their usage/information only I would put meaningful keywords in that edit box if I were you. They might not have anything to do with
ranking (positioning) your website (index web page) but they might be used to describe your website in search results (Fig 1.1).
It is not coincidence that after submitting my url to google it was highly ranked. And please do not take that statement as smug, it is just fact! If you
have read the practical advice given in the Domain Name Research / Advice section
you will know I chose a domain name that consists of three highly searched for keywords - Website, Creation and Help. And when put together as a
keyphrase, especially Website Creation, they are searched for even higher. And this is one of the key factors in getting listed highly - Your domain name
has to have meaning, credibility and worth.
Being on Page 1 of one or more search engines is not all it is cracked up to be. There are problems with this fame! Too many curious visitors using up
your bandwidth, not enough paying visitors, pressures of being number 1 (of thee Authority), time spent reinventing your newsletters/services and so on.
However. If you can do this time and energy hogging work then read the traffic creation/maintenance tips below. They will teach what you should be doing
to keep yourself noticed on the internet. Remember. It is about Time, Energy and being a Doer.
Web Page Title / File Name / Meta Tags
The Title you give to a web page is so important. As are the Meta Tags and File Name. If you have a cookery website for example; Do not just title a web
page PAGE1.HTML or name it after a couple of keywords such as BAKEDCAKES.HTML. These meaning nothing to the search engines and are too common for
searching. Not many people will type baked cakes into a search engine. And this is a big clue. Ask yourself What would I type into a search engine if
I was looking to bake a cake?. Your main thoughts should be:
how do I bake a cake? HOW DO I is a popular starting (prefix) keyphrase but not as popular as HOW TO. I is personal to you whereas
HOW TO is more general. So think generally. With this kind of general thinking you should then being thinking how to bake a cake? And
from there ask yourself "What kind of cake I am going to bake?". For example. how to bake a sponge cake? Also ask yourself about the
utensils/equipment used to bake that cake. how to bake a sponge cake with a microwave?. It is exactly this pattern of thinking that leads to
great titles and file names.
Question. What happens if you want to promote more than one title, meta tag (keyword/keyphrase) and/or file name for the same web page? Answer. Upload
the same web page to your website once a month with a different title, file name and so on. That way you keep Google happy (because it prefers
updated/ongoing material) and you also become famous for your sponge cake, christmas cake and so on for example. Do not think small though. In other
words. Above I asked HOW TO, but if your cookery website is more of a Cookbook than a HOW TO Recipe web page consider absolute beginners guide to
cookery - how to bake a cake as the title for web page 1 and absolute beginners guide to cookery - sponge cake recipes as the title for web
page 2. By doing this you are creating a sub-title for each web page but at the same time keeping your website famous for Absolute Beginners Guide to
Cookery.
Although the above applies to a web page's Title, Meta Tags and File Name you would not keep changing the file name around and upload it to your website
each month simply because the old web page links (file names) would become obsolete and you would need to update them from within Forums, Classified Ads
and anywhere else you have them linked. So the keywords/keyphrases for each file name has to be precisely what someone is looking for in a search engine.
Keyword and Keyphrase Research
Sticking with the above Title example. At the time of writing; Typing how do I bake a cake into Google's main page reveals its popularity (search
volume) as 37+ Million whereas typing how to bake a cake into Google's main page reveals its popularity as 46+ Million. absolute
beginners guide is slightly higher in popularity than just absolute beginner whereas absolute novice does not even rate.
Doing keyword and keyphrase research, as explained in the Domain Name Research
section, together with Google Insights and Google Analytics
means you do not need a Keywords Analytic Tool. Manually searching the internet will get you more reliable results. With a keywords analytic Tool you tend
to spend hours looking for a FREE one and then come to the conclusion that they are useless and time wasters. And even if you sign up for a 30-day trial,
software or online based, professional keywords analytic tool it normally never gives you all the information you require until you buy it. On top of this
Google has its own keywords tools called Keyword Tool and
Search Keyword Tool, both a part of Google Adwords, which you can use for free. The beauty
of these keywords tools is that they can search a website (i.e. your website) and tell you about highly competitive keywords for that website. So all you
would need to do is incorporate some of those keywords into your website, if they are not already in your web pages, meta tags and file names.
Best Selling.....EBAY and Amazon
If you want to know what is selling well at the moment/recently on EBAY and to get an idea for keywords/keyphrases nip over to EBAY Pulse and click on a category. Another place to visit is Amazon Best Sellers (not just books). It showcases the best selling Books, Movies, Music, Toys and Electronics. Basically. Do a search on Google for the "best selling....?" to get an idea of What's HOT! because if you are selling products this is another way to keep your traffic flowing.
Investigate Your Competition
One aspect of creating a good domain name and website in general is to investigate your, potential, competition. By doing so you should find/inherit good resources for your own website and therefore improve it and gain more traffic. In the example below I first typed STEP BY STEP COOKING into google and then went to listing number 7, mainly because the other 6 listings were either commercial websites that could easily be listed on page 1 of google or because they were not what I was looking for (they either posed no competition and/or were too bland - First impressions count). Although I typed STEP BY STEP COOKING in google its link was titled ITALIAN FOOD TRADITIONAL ITALIAN COOKING AND ITALIAN RECIPES with STEP BY STEP and COOKING in its description (google highlighted in the listing). So how did it get placed so highly with these keywords/keyphrases?
The first step is to look at its Source (HTML) Code using your web browser's Page SOURCE menu. With internet explorer click on the VIEW menu and then select the SOURCE menu-item - Firefox: View >> Page Source. Doing so will reveal a web page's Meta Tags (Keywords and Keyphrases). As you can see with this web page (below) the keyphrase STEP BY STEP is in its Description meta tag and the keyword COOKING is mentioned a few times in its Keywords meta tag. But this alone would not be enough to list it on page one of google. Further investigation is needed!
The next step is to type LINKS: into google followed by the domain name (website address) you are investigating. In this example LINKS: "www.annamariavolpi.com". The quotes around the domain name are very important. Without quotes you get search results for ANNA, MARIA, VOLPI and a mixture of ANNA MARIA VOLPI but with quotes you only get search results for WWW.ANNAMARIAVOLPI.COM. This tells you which websites have a true link to www.annamariavolpi.com. From this evidence you can then click on a website link (search result) to see what is going on with this cooking website. For example. You can see where Anna Maria has marketed her website - In which directory listings, classified ads, websites and so on.
In the case of Anna Maria. Investigations show that she has written Articles, placed herself on numerous Social Networking Websites and Directory Listings and has been around since 2003; and more importantly advanced her domain name registration to 2013. The number of years a domain name has been registered for counts towards your history/ranking because websites and search engines in general acknowledge your dedication. The registration details for a domain name (website) can be found at Domain Tools (WHOIS) which you can read about in the Domain Name Research section. Although anna maria's WHOIS record states registration of www.annamariavolpi.com from 2006, investigating with Wayback Machine (a website that records/archives a website's index web page every month, usually) reveals that her website was created in 2003 (Fig 1.6). Alexa SiteInfo also confirms this.
Clicking on a linked date from a website's history (above) displays a preview of what that index web page looked like wayback when. One of the most
important parts of the wayback website is not that it shows the look of an index web page but that it reveals how successful a website has been generally.
For example. Has that web page added any Membership Scheme(s), introduced any new Products and/or Services, used any Affiliates and/or Advertising Scheme(s)
between its startup date and its present/last recorded date? If it has stayed the same, Why? Send a bogus email to the owner to see if they still give
Support. Ask them directly if they sell an E-Book for example. Even bull**** them and say "I like your website. I am thinking of creating a similar
website.....do you have any guidance/tips?". I, for example, use a bogus email address with a female name (gets the results I am after!) to quiz people
about prices for their services, which they never usually reveal on the internet. They are so dinosaur (old book) that they think if they state £25
for their service someone with a similar website and service will state £24.99. OLD BOOKS: Remember. Long gone the saying "If I tell you my secrets I
will be out of a job". In todays information society, if you do not pass on your secrets/knowledge some other website with the same secrets/knowledge
as you will. And they will not be out of a job, quite the opposite!.....They will be selling E-Books!
With all that evidence, and by taking the opportunity to copy ideas from your competition's website, you can build up the same kind of traffic as them.
Just follow their lead. Indirectly they may have given you directories to advertise in, affiliation products to invest in, valuable resources and so on.
Photographs and Prices
If you own a decorators website for example create a WORK DONE Photo Album of BEFORE and AFTER photos. And be specific with those photos. Visitors do not
want to see a distant photo of a painted Hallway.....They want to see a closeup of how neatly you painted around the edges of the skirting board and
whether or not you let any drips dry. They want reassurances such as References Available but not by you telling them "I painted Mrs X's lounge and she
was well pleased". They want to hear it directly from your client's mouth either via a screenshot of their "References Email" or via a phone call to your
client when you email them your client's phone number, with your client's blessing of course. In other words. Tell the client you are doing a website and
would they mind if you took photos of your handy work and if possible can they give references. Another example of photo use is with a Restaurant. If
people can see what your restaurant looks like via your website it saves them an initial "Inspection" trip, especially if it is 10 miles away and they
are only browsing the internet for regional restaurants.
Give prices. I rang around some adverts in the Yellow Pages for a painter friend of mine, about a 16 months ago, for his advertising door-to-door leaflet
so that I could guage the going prices for a newly plastered 4m by 4m room (4 walls, one door and one window). Only to be met by "How many coats do you
want?", "Do you want the door and window primed and glossed or just glossed?", "Has the plaster dried out completely?". I eventually, after some
frustration, told them "Dry plaster, prime and gloss, 2 coats of emulsion for the walls with undercoat". Prices ranged from £100 to £150, so I told my
painter friend to advertise £120 even though the average price was £140. This was to cut out the competition of course. And this is what I am saying here.
Cut out your competition, and frustration for your visitors, by advertising your prices and giving them photos. They have come to your website for
something. Information and Prices normally. And if you do not give them what they want your competition will. Remember. Your competition is only a click
away. It is not like your local high street where there may be only one specialist clothes shop and the next specialist clothes shop is 2 miles aways.
The internet is flooded with people like you and businesses/projects like yours.
DO NOT rob photos off the internet. Besides being Illegal they tend to be downgraded .jpg (jpeg/compressed) files of poor quality and sometimes with a
copyright notice or watermark on them. Use Royalty FREE Photo CDs instead. They will make your website look much more professional. You can buy them on
The Internet, from PCWorld UK (search for: photo), from Focus
(search for: photos) and from Avanquest (search for: photo art) amongst
other places, usually for £9.99 or less. Look for 500,000 Images (4 CDs), 30,000 Photos (2 CDs), 15,000 Business Images (2 CDs) and 15,000 Educational
Images (2 CDs). GSP also do one called 50,000 PhotoArt (3 CDs). These CDs combined will give you enough Royalty Free Images (Photographs and ClipArt)
to create many categorized (themed) websites. Example Categories: Education, Food & Drink, Health & Safety, Nature & Wildlife, People,
Religion, Signs & Symbols.
Buy Old Domain Names
Another way to bring potential clients (traffic) to your website is to scout around for old domain names that are related to your website's subject matter. You could use Domain Tools (WHOIS) for this or a domain name broker such as Sedo or Buy Domains. Either way, when you have found a potential domain name for sale/registration look up its history as described above to see what kind of traffic was heading its way. One of the things to be aware of here is that you could inherit bad traffic, and even bad clients, so you would need to put up a banner on your website for this domain name stating "New Owner" or something. One way to check traffic history for an old domain name, and more precisely its good/bad links, is to go to the McAfee Site Advisor website and use its Analytic Search. In this example I will check www.annamariavolpi.com.
www.annamariavolpi.com was classified as a good website by McAfee Site Advisor. If it was classified as bad, because it was linking to bad affiliate websites for example, its green affiliate links (Fig 1.7 above) would of been colour coded Yellow (minor risk) or Red (serious risk). Yellow for example could mean a linked website (affiliate or not) is sending out junk mail whereas Red for example could mean a linked website (affiliate or not) contains virus infected downloads. Clicking on one of the affiliate website links, regardless of colour, shows you site advisory information about that website. So clicking on the linksynergy.com link for example will show you the site advisory information and links associated with linksynergy.com.
Advertise Your Authority / Offer FREE Products
In todays internet society people can easily get "stuff" for FREE. Software Tools, Information, Services and so on. Mainly distributed by the big
companies who can afford to give for free. On top of this you have websites like EBAY and Amazon who sell top quality goods at affordable prices. So
how do you go about selling your latest Cookery E-Book, Cookery Paperback, Self-Composed Soundtrack/Album or Sandwich Delivery Service for example?
Well. First of all you have to advertise your authority. And the only way this is going to happen is to either be the authority or to become the
authority.
Becoming the authority (the knowledge, the best, the guru) of your subject matter means buying good quality articles from websites such as
Daily Article, Constant Content and
Article Sale. Two things to keep in mind when going down this line are 1) The articles you buy might of
been splashed around other websites already and therefore been read by your visitors already and 2) Keep your article writers similar in writing style.
It is very easy to spot a well written article because it is too polished (newspaper editor like) and the reverse is true as well. Having a mixture of
good and not-so-good articles on your website or blog tells everyone you are Faking It! What you should be after are articles that are written by the
same author if possible or articles that you have Full Rights to. That way you can modify the articles to sound more like the way you speak/write. In
other words. If an article is too polished for example it reaks of "I am selling something" whereas if it blends in more with your website wordings it is
a little more subtle.
Knowing your subject matter inside out does not make you the authority. There are many gurus like yourself out there on the world wide web. What actually
makes someone the authority is someone with the knowledge who can help others with it. In other words. What you are willing to share with others?, How
are you going to help them?. Are you ready to commit your time and energy for the sake of a £9.99 E-Book? that may or may not sell. Can you offer them
something unique? For example. If your website is information based, full of your written knowledge, is that going to cut it in todays age of video. Are
you going to invest your money on video software and equipment? The authority is someone who answers their email and gives good customer support. The
authority is someone who has a passion to help their visitors even when they are going to lose money helping them. The authority is sincere, honest and
trustworthy. And above all, the authority is a DOER. Besides advertising your authority via website promotion you can also write authoritative articles
yourself and submit them to article submission websites such as EZineArticles and
ArticleAddict. That way you can link back to your website, if the article submission website allows it
of course. And if you are doing video tutorials you can also submit them to websites such as Blip TV,
Brightcove, Revver,
Get Drop Box and YouTube of course.
As well as advertising your authority on article and video websites it is also important that you give content away 100% FREE. This could be in the
form of a Free E-Book, Free Tutorials (the written information on your website), Free Membership for a limited time, Free Music Samples, Free Sandwich
and so on. The key here is to keep a broad mind. For example. If you are selling sandwiches online do not just create a Sandwich Bar Online website
that only sells sandwiches. Why not build up a directory of sandwich bars or give healthy advice on sandwich fillings. Tell everyone for FREE the
benefits of a salad sandwich. Another idea would be to organise a members only competition to win a day trip to their local health farm, paid for by
your directory advertisers, followed up by an interview with your local supermarket for their take on healthy sandwiches. You would be surprised how big
the health industry is online. In other words. Make your website more attractive by filling it up with information, competitions, interviews and so on.
It is the same for a music website. Do not just sell your own samples. Interview your local record shop, local band, etc in return for advertising them
for free on your music website. Pay for concert tickets and enter them into a competition, with the concert managers permission of course.
The above tactics should boost your traffic but only if you have a passion to do these things. If your attitude is "I cannot be bothered to interview
so and so", "Research is a waste of time" or "That's going to cost time and money" then I would not create a sandwich website for example if I were you.
Sometimes you may have to spend 100% of your time, energy and money giving out "freebies" just to get a little traffic, but at least you will have
traffic.
Website And Content
One of the golden rules of a website is to make its content Clear/Uncluttered. If you look at SEO (Search Engine Optimization) websites they tend
to be one web page long (i.e. 10 web pages within 1 web page) instead of a website, with the idea being that it is full of content and therefore the
search engines will love it. This may have some truth but to many humans these kind of seo websites are an eyesore. In my opinion, from a human point of
view, it would be much better to break the seo website down into web pages. Bite size. To have to scroll down 10 web pages just to get your message
and/or product across does not make sense to me. Visitors could lose interest very quickly. And it is not just seo websites doing it. Commercial websites
do it as well on a much bigger scale. Yahoo for example used to cram many of its main topics onto one web page, but if you look at Yahoo today it is only
a two page scroll and much tidier than it used to be. This is partly because they have bite sized their website and therefore given each main topic
(i.e. dating, games, movies, etc) its own category link. One thing to remember here is that commercial websites can afford to fit 10 web pages in 1, full
of content, because they usually have their own powerful/speedy servers and can afford the bandwidth of thousands, if not millions, of visitors. Meaning.
Their web pages will download quickly into your web browser's display area, whereas your own web pages full of the same content will not because your
website will be hosted on a slower server with less bandwidth. So your visitors are more likely to get turned off by your slow downloading web pages.
Your web pages should be easy to Navigate. Within each web page you must make sure that your links are highly visible and obvious. It is no good
having a text link whose title states 50% Discount if a visitor is having trouble finding that text link. It is also no good having a text link title
stating Click Here, because it means nothing. A much better idea is to use a keyword in that title, such as 50% Discount On All Sandwiches. One thing to
remember here is that search engines look at the relevance of a link, so even the link itself should mean something. For example. Instead of the 50%
Discount On All Sandwiches text link linking to a web page called sandwiches.html for example, change the web page called sandwiches.html into
cheap_sandwiches_at_sandwich_bar_london.html and then have the 50% Discount On All Sandwiches text link linking to that
cheap_sandwiches_at_sandwich_bar_london.html web page. That way you have three relevant links for searching visitors. Cheap Sandwiches, Sandwich Bar London
and Cheap Sandwiches At Sandwich Bar London. The same applies for image links. Their imagery has to state graphically 50% Discount for example because
they have no visible text link.
Navigation is not just about easy-to-follow links and uncluttered content, it is also about finding the right content on the right page. For example. Do
not give your visitors a 50% Discount On All Sandwiches link and then on arrival of that 50% Discount offer web page you make it difficult for them to
get the 50% Discount, because you have cluttered (surrounded) the offer with An History Of The Sandwich content. Your visitors did not click on the 50%
Discount link for a history lesson they clicked on it for 50% Discount. Another thing not to do is put distracting adverts and flash animation banners
all over that offer web page. You want your visitors to see your generous offer, that makes you look good, and not have their eyes looking elsewhere.
Flash Animations and advertisements in general can also be slow to download. As a result your credibility will suffer if you are known for offers that
are surrounded by, slow, distracting advertisements. These distractions are just the same as pop-up window advertisements. In the long run visitors get
tired of your antics and prefer to go elsewhere for their 50% discount.
Visitors scan the headlines before the text so always cater for the busy, scanner, visitors. Catching their attention with a headline will give
your web page a second or more for them to start reading the text associated with that headline. A popular thing to do at the moment is to give a short
paragraph of text and then at the end of that short paragraph have a text link - Read More. The read more text link then goes to a Blog that has the full
story. Another popular thing to do is have a mini questionnaire form at the end of a web page asking How Did You Rate This Article/Page? Please Leave Your
Comments. This allows your visitors to interact with you and your website.
Interact with your visitors. Use a Guest Book, incorporated with Mailing List and Newsletter options, to interact with your visitors and more
importantly to get their email addresses. It is a good trade off. They get to advertise their website for free on your guest book in return for their
email address, where you can then offer them more incentives to join your Membership Scheme for example. The thing to remember here is that Mailing
Lists and Newsletters only work successfully when you have built up your researched content. And even then you might ask yourself "Do I need a Newsletter?".
A successful newsletter can take up the same amount of time, energy and resources as making a web page. So do not offer these kinds of services until you
have some spare time on your hands.
Offer other website owners the opportunity to link back so that you are linking to their website and vice versa. This exchange of website links
gains you both an external link - Something that can help with your search engine ranking/listing. The thing to remember here is, that although you can
bombard your own website links in forums and classified ads for example it is best to try and get a back link to high profile commercial websites
such as microsoft.com. Doing so can save you time as one of these back links is like gold; worth many normal back links. So take a good hard look at your
website's subject matter and investigate who are the top, authoritative, websites in your field and try and get a back link from them. Alternatively. Try
and get them to link to your website. It can be achieved. Here I have wikipedia linking to the ExFAT (Flash Drive) Explanation web page on my yoingco.com
website - They have recognised it as an authoritative web page.
Bombard the forums, classified ads, etc with your web pages links. When I first started as a website owner back in 2005 I was lucky enough to have
a Langauge Learner software, that I wrote years before, to promote on the internet. Lucky because it got yoingco.com known for that software, which later
helped yoingco.com become the top of the major search engines for FREE Windows XP Lessons (now Vista Lessons). Also lucky because I had many forums to
advertise in. Spanish, German, French and so on language forums. University and Education forums. Programming forums. On top of this I was bombarding
guest books on these themes as well. Many of my headlines were FREE Language Learning Software followed by a link to yoingco.com. And this is what you
need to do. Think of all the unusual places and topics relating to your website and how you can sneak a few free links/advertisements into those places.
Going back to cookery and sandwiches as an example. Bombard the health/diet forums, the sandwich forums, the food utensils and supermarket forums, the
education forums and so on. One serious word of advice here. ALWAYS LOOK AT THE WEBSITE YOU ARE BOMBARDING. On the odd occasion you might find a link,
in google for example, whereby it looks normal and states Sign My Guest Book; So you go ahead and sign it, only to find out you signed the guest book of
a bereaved family. This can be because they are using a free guest book service with a URL of http://www.freeguestbook.smith.com, so how would you know
that it is the website of a bereaved family? The best way to know is to go directly to their main web page (i.e. www.smith.com).
Know Your Audience
Advertise offline and online. When advertising offline (without the internet) you normally advertise in the Yellow Pages, in a Newsagent window,
on a Door-To-Door Leaflet, leave Business Cards in a chinese takeaway and so on. And when advertising online (with the internet) you normally advertise
in Classified Ads, Forums, Blogs, Guest Books and so on. However. Many people do not think to do both. In other words. They do not advertise their
www.???.com in a Local Magazine or Newsagent window for example even though hundreds of people standing outside a bus stop, next to a newsagent, are
their visitors/audience. Another example is a local councils (states) rag magazine, which is distributed to thousands of the borough's (area's) council
houses (government owned and privately owned government properties) each month. It normally has an advertising page inside it which for £20 a month, for
example, can have your advertisement seen by potentially thousands of people.
NEVER EVER assume that your audience comes on the internet in stupid mode. What I mean by this is, that the way some people sell on the internet
you know they have never tried to selling to the public before. They have never worked in a shop, so lack customer experience, and they have certainly
not been in the real world for a long time. If they tried to sell their goods in a Downtown Market for example they would not stand a chance. One big
thing that website owners forget is that the public are Streetwise and more importantly Thrifty. They know you are selling something even before you
start your opening statement of "Hello. My name is...." but they do not mind as long as you give them sincerity and respect. They know you have to make
a living but they also know when you are treating them like a naive child.
Show your visitors how your product(s) and/or service(s) will benefit them. Do not rant on about the technicals of a Carpet Cleaner for example.
How the chemicals interact with the carpet and how the hoover is built with a 50 horse power engine. Instead. Tell them how clean it will get their
carpet, how it will be dry instantly after shampooing and that it will look like new. The same with the food examples above. Tell them the value of your
service. How healthy the sandwich is, how much money they are saving or how big the fillings are. Tell them you cater for vegetarians and people with
peanut allergies but do not tell them how the farmer had a 1000 horse powered tractor helping him/her harvest the crop. Display pictures of mouth watering
food on your web pages. Use headlines such as Save Time And Money. Convince them and reassure them with 100% Money Back Guarantee. Add Testimonials to your
website. And so on.
Reasons For Failure
Website Managers think websites come pre-wrapped with fame and fortune. As soon as they get a web hosting package they think they just need to
create a website, or have one made, and success is automatically granted. It does not work that way. Just like in the real world, in the internet world
everything has to be built up slowly but surely. In the real world I was a car washer, kitchen porter, shop assistant, computer programmer and general
dogs body before I moved into computer repairs. In other words. I could not afford a "proper" computer of my own for years, let alone repair one! I had
to work hard for what I wanted. And this is where many website managers go wrong. They have little knowledge of how to build up a website in the internet
world because they do not know how the internet world works. In effect, they are equivalent to new shop owners who know nothing about book keeping, shop
keeping and so on. They think "I've got the website, I've got the newsletter, content is the best, paypal account is set up, products are ready....." but
then wonder why they are not becoming famous. Why? Because they are not learning how to become a webmaster.
Website Managers do not learn how to become a web master. To become a web master does not mean being at the computer day and night, learning how to
programme.....but it helps! For many website managers there are just too many aspects to learn - Programming, Newsletter, Blog, Forums and so on. Many of
these they find daunting, especially when they find out the amount of time and energy it is going to take/cost to build up a little traffic. A lot of
them fail to put the time and energy in.
Website Managers concentrate on their own needs but not on the needs of their visitors. To have a successful website they must put visitors needs
first. The hope for the website manager is that their time and energy will be rewarded.....with membership, product sales, etc. The better they are at
customer service the better their website will become.
Website Managers believe in Get Rich Quick schemes. There are CDs on the internet that claim "fame and fortune....with this master plan" but the
old saying "If it is too good to be true...." will always prevail. Affiliation is also to blame here. For example. Some affiliates offer 100% profit and
even go as far as setting up a website template for their affiliate product. This surely begs the question Why? If the product is that successful why are
they allowing someone to sell it at 100% profit? Why? Because it is usually an old product that has gone past its Sell By date and therefore no longer a
real income earner for the product owner. So now they have someone selling it at 100% profit but only after that someone joined their $97 affiliation
program or bought their new "Internet Marketing" CD for just $97.
Website Managers just put up a website for their stationery. They pump out door-to-door leaflets with little success, because the leaflet content
is rubbish, but at the same time think the www.???.com on those leaflets is going to rescue them. They think some how the house owner is going to say
"rubbish leaflet but I'd better head over to www.???.com.....just in case I am missing something really rubbish!". Stationery content needs just as much
energy as website content.
With the above I have tried to make you aware of some of the obvious, but lesser actioned, traffic building tactics; simply because many website owners
do not carry those actions out. They think it is all about building up a Mailing (Email Address) List and a Newsletter, which to some degree is true, but
how can you have a mailing list and/or a newsletter without visitors. You must build up your natural, returning, traffic first by enticing them with good
quality website content before you even consider asking them to join your mailing list and/or newsletter. Do not rush. Take your time. I normally give a
website one year before I even consider membership, newsletter and so on. That is the normal type of time scale I am talking about here. A Blog can be
built in 5 to 10 minutes but to get traffic to it is a different story. Remember. Nobody knows about your website when you first publish it. Hence why
you have to submit its URL to the search engines first and then work on some of the promotional things mentioned above.
In later sections I will be showing you the reality, the results, of Article Writing, YouTube Video Submissions, Forum Postings and so on; so that you
have a real sense of what to expect when you do these things yourself.
All HTM, CSS, PHP and MySQL files in the websitecreationhelp.com folder and its sub-folders are (c) John White, 2009. All Rights Reserved. Email: John