| By Daria
Goetsch (c) 2003 Search Innovation
What drives visitors to your website
and keeps them there? Good content.
Content is Key Good
content is key to website promotion success. All the bells and whistles in the
world will not hold an audience like compelling information. Ask yourself: Why
would a visitor stay at my website? What are they looking for? What do I have
that they need? What holds them there once I've got them visiting? You have to
tell your story in a way that will keep your visitors interested and coming back
for more. Click Here To Submit Your
Site Get Those Visitors The
first part of the process is getting visitors to your site through search engine
promotion and other traditional marketing methods. As you increase your visibility,
more visitors will come to see what the commotion is all about. Keep
Those Visitors The second part of the
process is keeping them there. If you provide quality information that is easy
to access, you are giving the visitor what they are looking for. Don't give your
visitors a reason to click away. Quality content means happy visitors, and with
enough happy visitors, you become an "authority" on your topic. Having
a site recognized as an authority means good ranking in the search engines. Know
Your Audience So how do you get your
visitors to stay on your site, and to return to it? First, you need to understand
your audience. Who are you trying to reach? Create your pages with them in mind.
Do you want to reach a narrow audience, or will you try to reach all levels of
readers? Buzz words may make sense to you in your business, but will they reach
your target audience? If you are a high-powered underwater basketweaving consultant,
focused only on serious underwater basketweavers, you can keep the discussion
on your site fairly technical. If, however, you really want to spread the joy
of underwater basketweaving to a wider audience, you may want to keep the tone
more general, giving newcomers to underwater basketweaving the information they
need to become as enthralled by basketweaving as you are. Get
Your Visitors Involved So what kind
of content do you need to provide for your visitors? If you have a site selling
gardening books, you will have lists of the titles you have for sale, an order
form, and contact information. Everybody else selling gardening books will have
these pages too. How do you rise above the crowd? How do you stand out as the
definitive gardening book website? Write
Articles One technique that you can
use to good effect is that of writing articles pertaining to your site's topic.
After all, who knows more about gardening and gardening books than you? Not only
does this give your visitors yet another reason to keep coming back to your site,
but it also allows you to reach out beyond your site. There are many other websites
out there looking for authoritative information on your topic. Find those sites
and submit your articles to them. This creates a "win-win" situation:
the other web site gains the benefit of your knowledge, while you are further
recognized as an authority in the field. Getting a link from that site back to
yours brings more visitors to your site, and increases your site's link popularity.
Keeping an archive of articles on your
website builds your knowledge base. You can refer visitors to your articles when
answering their questions. People searching for information on the topics you
have written about will find your articles listed in their search results. Once
they arrive at your site, maybe they will buy something from you: if you know
so much about planting bulbs, maybe your site is the place I should buy my bulb-planting
books. Other Offerings What
else can you add to this mix? Think about adding professional gardening book reviews,
a gardening book club, FAQ's about gardening, gardening articles, a rating system
for books, audience book reviews, and other gardening-related topics. Adding this
type of information gives your visitors more reasons to keep coming back to your
site. Offer free tools, create a forum. Set up a newsletter for your audience
with your topic, adding in a discount for your product for newsletter readers.
Give your audience a reason to come back to your website. What
Results Can I Expect: Google PageRank A
primary example of how this works is Google's PageRank. One of the most important
aspects of ranking for Google and other search engines is good content. Google
wants their search engine users to find what they are looking for, a successful
search experience for their users. The keywords included in your site are important;
after all, those are the terms your potential visitors are searching for. Now
not only do you have your catalog pages and ordering information, but you also
have a more in-depth treatment of the topics you have addressed in your articles,
book reviews, and other materials. More keywords in more places means you have
a better chance of matching a potential visitor's search. So
how can you "rise above" the other online gardening bookstores out there
in the search engine listings? Link popularity can be the next important piece
that allows you to differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack. All other
things being equal, search engines that pay attention to link popularity will
list your site higher in their results if you have more links coming back from
other sites which have a focus related to yours. In other words, if your gardening
bookstore has a number of backlinks pointing to it from the websites of gardening
clubs, nurseries, and so forth, your site will be seen as more authoritative.
The more authoritative a website looks to Google through link popularity, the
higher that site will rank. After all, if all these other gardening-related sites
point to your site, they are demonstrating that you have something important to
say. That is another reason why it is important to have your material published
on other websites. Conclusion Maintaining
good content is a stepping-stone for your visitors to delve in deeper to your
website. Taking the time to build your content and provide for your audience will
pay off in good search engine ranking and returning visitors.
Daria
Goetsch is a Search Engine Marketing Consultant for Search Innovation, a Search
Engine Marketing company serving small businesses. Her background involves many
years as a Search Engine Marketing Consultant, including three years as the Search
Engine Specialist for O'Reilly & Associates. info@searchinnovation.com
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