Almost everybody wants to increase traffic to their website. If you look around the Internet, you’ll find hundreds of different ways to do so. Some of these ways work and some do not. Some of these ways are very time-consuming. For some methods, such as major design changes and written content overhauls, you may want to hire someone to do the work for you in order to save time and frustration.

However, there are a few simple things that you can do yourself in order to increase website traffic.

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Every website wants more traffic. From personal blogs to corporate websites, you always want people to visit your site. But there are millions of pages on the Internet and it’s often difficult to draw attention to your website. However, with a little hard work and some clever thinking, it is possible.

Here are a few good ways to draw traffic to your website.

• Give visitors what they are looking for.
• Take some time to think of the types of traffic you would ideally like to receive. For example, if you’re selling t-shirts online, think of the market you’d like to sell to. If that market is teenagers in your city, then you’ll want to come up with a way to draw teenagers from your city who like t-shirts to your website. There’s not much point in promoting your site to older women from across the globe who hate t-shirts. That won’t help your sales.
• Be honest.
• This goes with the point above. You want to bring in relevant traffic. Yes, it might be easy to bring in traffic by writing a blog post titled “10 ways to get free money” but unless your site actually lists 10 ways to get free money, your visitors will not be very happy. Those visitors will leave your site very quickly and you won’t get any sales from them.
• Use page titles correctly.
• Your page title is a big deal. Rather than calling your sales page “Sales” you should consider titling it something more specific like “Retro T-Shirt Sales in Toronto” (if retro t-shirt sales are actually what you are selling in Toronto.) Not only will this help for search engine purposes, but it will also give visitors information on what to expect when they click the link.
• Promote yourself.
• Use message boards, social media, email, social news site, directories and anything else you can think of to promote your website. NOTE: This does not mean spam. Don’t flood every website you can find with your link. Build relationships, follow the rules of whatever site you’re on and participate in the discussion. You’ll definitely find sucess that way.
• Don’t give up.
• Very few websites are instantly successful overnight. Keep writing, keep giving visitors what they are looking for and keep promoting yourself and you will get there.

Good luck!

A website developer recently asked me “What is ‘SEO Web Content,’ and how does it differ from the web content that typically is created for the end user?”

The answer is that SEO web content is written for the end user as well. As you know, regardless of what product or service you offer on your website, a real human being is responsible for the final purchasing decision. No matter how optimized your website is or how highly ranked you are on Google, you can never forget your true audience: the client.

Writing strictly for search engines will not get you there. You need to be able to create interesting, informative and persuasive content if you hope to gain new customers. The best way to do that is through quality copywriting.

The difference between website copywriting and standard copywriting is that SEO copywriters take search engines into account when they are writing.

If you are writing a brochure or magazine article, you do not have to worry about things like keyword usage but you still need to create quality writing.  Having informative, easy-to-understand content is important for every type of copywriting.

Like it or not, most visitors find websites through search engines and thus creating content that is easily accessed and understood is important. But you should never forget that the end user plays the most important role. That hasn’t changed.

Search engine optimization is one of the most difficult aspects of managing a website.  If you search for “search engine optimization” or “SEO” on Google, you’ll come up with thousands of results.  The problem with having such a huge volume of search engine optimization information is that it’s difficult to determine the good from the bad.  In fact, you’ll find that a lot of the tips contradict one another.

Search engine optimization is not an exact science.  However, there are several resources that are incredibly helpful. Here are a few tools that I use on a regular basis to help with SEO.  Unless otherwise noted, these are all free SEO tools and resources.

• SEO Browser

When you enter a URL into this tool it gives you a text-only view of the site.  This is useful because search engines can only read text, so you’re seeing the site just like Google or Bing would see it.  This is a good way to scan your site for content that may not be accessible by search engines.

• Google Keyword Tool

Keyword research is incredibly important.  If you market your site towards the wrong keywords, you could see yourself getting a lot of irrelevant traffic or no traffic at all.  Type in a keyword, a key phrase or a URL and this tool gives you a list of related keywords, the global and local search volume and the competition for those words.  This is a great place to start your SEO efforts.

• Yahoo! Site Explorer

Typing a URL into this site gives you a list of all the pages on the site and a list of all of the other sites that link to that site.  This is a great way to determine who is linking to other sites in your niche.  Once you know who’s linking to your competition, you can try to get those same sites to link to you.

• Google Webmaster Tools

Once you verify your website with this tool, you can find out a great deal of information about it.  You can check for website crawl errors so you can see if Google is having any issues with your site.  It also gives you a list of the most frequently-occurring keywords, which allows you to make sure you’re targeting the words you hope to target.  It also gives you a list of websites that link to your site and the top search queries that have returned pages on your site.

• Google Analytics

Another excellent Google tool.  Google Analytics gives you a lot of information about your web traffic.  You can find out how many visitors you get, where those visitors are coming from, what web browser they are using, how long they stay on your site, what keywords they are using to reach your site and much, much more.

• Smart PageRank

A good tool for getting information on who is linking to a website.  You can find out the page rank of sites that link to you (or someone else), their PageRank and the anchor text the site uses.  It runs a little slow, but it’s an incredibly useful tool.

• SEOMoz

This site has several useful tools as well as a very informative blog.  Some of the tools require a page membership, but you can find a lot of information for free as well.  Their free SEO toolbox gives you lots of information about your site and their Firefox toolbar goes even one step further.  You’ll also find several SEO guides that will keep you informed.

Check out their blog for the latest updates and search engine optimization information.

• SEO Book

This is another site filled with several great SEO tools.  They have a free Firefox toolbar as well that you can use to get a great deal of information about any site you visit.  You’ll also find a great keyword tool and a search engine ranking checker.  They also have several other tools and guides on their website that will make your SEO work much more efficient.

Using these SEO tools and resources will make you a better search engine optimization professional.  Whether you do SEO for a living or if you just want your own website to rank higher, the links above will certainly help you out.

There are many things to think about when you are starting a new website.  You will need to consider the design, you will have to think about the site’s structure, and you’ll need someone to write the written content.  And that’s not it!  If you want to draw new visitors to your website, you will need to do proper keyword research, come up with a website marketing plan and optimize your website for search engines (SEO.)

That’s a lot to to focus on all at once!

And all of those things are important.  If your website looks bad, people won’t stick around.  If your content is poorly written, you won’t be able to convince anyone to use your services or buy your products.  And if your site is not optimized for Google and other search engines, no one will ever find it.

Most people consider hiring a web designer to create a website for them but, unfortunately, they don’t do the same for their website copywriting and search engine optimization.  If you’re a skilled writer or have SEO knowledge then, by all means, do the writing and SEO yourself.  However, keep in mind that doing so takes a long time.  Writing your website’s content will take a lot longer than you think it will and SEO is a long, detailed process.

If you’re running your own business, you may not have time to do both of those things and still manage a company.

Just like you would consider hiring a web developer to design your website, you should consider hiring a freelance website copywriter and an SEO professional to handle those respective aspects of your site.  It will pay off in the long run.  Not only will you have more time to run your own business, but an experienced professional will likely have the knowledge needed to create great content and promote it well.