Impact Web Results

Many clients have been concerned that their website ranking in Alexa.com is dropping.  They want to know why?

As the economy stabilizes and the business climate begins to improve, many business owners are turning to their website to provide new customers.  People are spending more time, money, and effort on their websites and this is increasing the competition for traffic and ranking.

However, the basics are still in place…good “long tail keyword phrases” tailored to your website will continue to drive traffic to your website.  Content rich new pages will expand your website and “feed” the google robot.  Coupons for discounts or free stuff are always very popular.  They also provide a solid way to track the effectiveness of your website in delivering new visitors.  And people are very cost conscious so coupons offer a real benefit to visitors interested in your product.

Blogs continue to be the number one way a website can attract visitors and deliver new traffic.  The ease of this communication method is unprecedented.  Of coarse some folks have moved on to twitter, or “micro blogging”  Twitter is not just for getting up with your pals.  It can be a powerful force in your marketing if used correctly.  You can “tweet” that you are offering a seminar, or getting ready to release a new product or service.  The topics are endless but the technique is to use “tweets” to give a “quick heads up” note on something happening in your business that visitors would find relevant and useful.

There is that all encompassing word “relevant”.  It is the driving theme behind all of google’s strategy for search results and ranking…relevance.  If you can add content to your blog, develop new web pages and publish new content that is fresh and relevant, you have a winning strategy.

We can help you with these and more techniques and concepts.  “Is your website working as hard as you are?  Do you know your traffic stats?  We can deliver the results you need to improve the effectiveness of your website.  Contact us to see how…why wait…call or email us today.

Bill Miller, webmaster

website hosting, development, and online marketing

When the Internet was opened to everyone, it became an important part of our every day lives.   Many business owners wanted to get a  presence right away.  In the late 1990s and beyond the year 2000, most small to medium-sized businesses wanted to get their own site to boost profits quickly.

Although this was a smart move for virtually every business, it frequently did not bring the desired results.  So what’s the problem?  Why do most business websites fail?

Simple.

Most business websites are created by web artists who create a beautiful visual presence that inspires their business owner clients and promises an impressive image online.  The thinking goes that this beautiful website is certain to bring in many visitors and rack up enormous sales.

Image is helpful, but unfortunately it is not everything.  Now that the Internet and the World Wide Web are playing an even greater role in the lives of the everyday customer, having a business website is incredibly important.

Your business site should look great.  Image does help.  Customers are more likely to enter a real-world store if the building looks nice and the entrance is inviting.  But what if that nice looking restaurant was very difficult to navigate once the customer is inside?  What if no one is ready and waiting to greet the customer and lead the customer to a table?  What if the menus are unavailable or poorly organized?  I suspect that business would suffer and customers may look to dine elsewhere.

As you might imagine, the same rules apply to the business web site.  An effective business site must look nice AND channel  your customers with effective and proven marketing built into the design.  And perhaps more importantly an effective business site must include lots of behind the scenes elements that encourage major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN to redirect customers to your business website.

While graphics are important they are not essential.  There are many examples of websites that are commercially successful but not so visually appealing.  How can this be?

The secret lies in understanding how the search engines really work…they can only read text!  Yep, the search engines skip right over your beautiful blue box with the shading and perfectly placed text because the artist designer created a “graphic element” that a human can read and appreciate, but not a search engine.

The internet is littered with tens of thousands of websites that artists have designed for hefty fees that receive little or no traffic.  And another secret is that the owners of these websites don’t even know that the search engines are “blind” to these beautiful websites.

So what is the answer?  The best approach is to design your website for humans AND search engines.  This means that beautiful graphics may not be the best approach for your business website.  After all your goal is to attract and convert visitors to customers, right?  Well then imbedded search engine friendly text with high keyword density is the food of the search engine.

I have reviewed many business websites and I find the most basic mistakes all too frequently.  The meta command for the website description is totally blank.  And the keyword meta tag is blank too.  The keywords are buried in a graphic and there is no alt tag loaded with a description of the graphic or photo.

The designer has not provided any food for the search engine bot.  No way for google, yahoo or msn to index the website since all of the content is graphical.  Consequently, the website receives a traffic rank of “no data”, and no traffic is redirected by the powerful search engines.

I can provide a free evaluation of your website and show you the basic design elements that have been overlooked or omitted.  We can develop a plan to convert the graphical elements into text that both humans and search engines can feast on.  Text that is keyword rich with long tail keyword phrases that surfers have frequently typed into search engines.  This approach will entice the search engines to index your website and turn on the flow of free traffic.

Ready to Get More Results from your Business website?

Bill Miller
Web designer and Internet Marketer
www.ImpactWebResults.com

A lot of the work I am doing for clients (and myself) is revealing interesting differences between the top search engines. Google, Yahoo, and MSN are the top three engines in the search business so working to gain their favor will ensure that you have addressed most of the internet’s traffic.

Google is the master search engine. Google receives the majority of search hits daily. These guys dominate the search marketing world and most of what you read in terms of strategy and keyword targeting is based on making the Google algorithm happy.

Google offers many tools on its website. This implies that Google is looking for results consistent with the tools it is providing. So using the Google tools, which are free, is a good starting point.

Google rewards websites with high Page Rank that adhere to their desired standard which includes such factors as quality links, quality content, and long-term presence. Google places high value on new content so the days of the static web site pages is history,

MSN has a network of tools available on its website, which I highly recommend. These are a nice complement to the Google tools we all recognize and use so often already. Like Google, there is very likely a strong connection between the tools MSN offers and its expectations for high ranking values.

On the Yahoo search engine, the rules seem to behave much differently. This is due in large part to the very nature of Yahoo. Yahoo is a manual placement directory so that the human element weighs in heavily in the selection and listing of websites. This can lead to surprisingly different results for the same approach. Here the best strategy is to test, tweak, and test again,

The conversation of how to get top search rankings for your website is nothing new and will likely go on for a long time to come. It depends on your marketing objective. Many businesses want to serve a local market and so they need to use the World Wide Web to attract Local Traffic.

I have developed numerous time tested techniques for attracting local traffic on the web. Local traffic will usually have a higher conversion rate since the customer is nearby and many local businesses can not provide their service at a distance. Obtaining local traffic using the internet is cost effective and can quickly jump start a local businesses marketing effort.

Local traffic techniques together with on page optimizations can provide a healthy flow of local internet traffic. Of course building a customer list and marketing to that list is also a great way to expand your local reach. Tell a friend is another great way to reach local customers.

Learn more about Targeted Local Traffic by contacting me for a free website review. I am a firm believer that the best investment of time for the best ROI in website development is always going to be in creating more on-site content. Focused content that attracts local internet visitors.

Ready to Get More Results from Your Business Website?