How To Get More Exposure For Your Web Site
Getting customers to your Web site can be a tricky business and we're all aware of the need to get the best possible rankings on the major search engines to gain exposure to new potential customers. The key to getting the best rankings for relevant search terms is by using an ongoing programme of search engine optimisation (SEO) and link building techniques.
The Internet is information driven – search engines constantly crawl the Web, looking for and indexing new content. Websites that are constantly updated with fresh, interesting information are given higher importance than sites that never change.
So, if you don't keep adding relevant, quality content to your Web site on a regular basis you risk losing traffic as other sites gain exposure and your rankings fall.
This article presents two techniques that are often overlooked, but which if done well can add value to your Web site and help improve your exposure to your target audience.
Article Marketing
Article marketing is an effective way to regularly add new content to your Web site. The key is to write keyword-optimised content on topics relevant to your audience and add each article to a separate page on your Web site. Don't forget to add a link to each article from your site map and cross-link related pages to help the search engines quickly index your new content.
Stuck for ideas? Explore the issues that your audience face and provide solutions to their problems. Alternatively, offer advice and tips about your products or unique insight into your industry. Make sure you present information that is unique or compelling to your audience.
Submit your articles to some of the top article directories to generate free organic traffic while boosting your site's popularity (and thus rankings) with the major search engines. If you get this right, you could be regarded as a specialist in your field or an authority on a particular topic, and this should deliver interested visitors to your Web site.
Good sites you can submit articles to include NZS.com Articles, EzineArticles, GoArticles and Squidoo.
Social Bookmarking
You may believe that 'social networking' sites such as Facebook and Twitter aren't relevant to your business, but you can still use them to your advantage. There are lots of free 'bookmark buttons' available which enable visitors to 'share' or link articles and Web pages to their social networks or blogs which will increase the number of incoming links to your site and help boost your rankings.
Try adding the free 'AddThis' bookmark code to relevant pages or articles on your Web site. Visit addthis.com to find out more, or search for 'share this' or 'add this' in your favourite search engine for a list of similar tools and widgets.
As with article marketing, if you also submit your articles to some of the more popular or relevant social networking sites this will give your site further coverage and exposure to organic links. Popular social networks include Bebo, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, Twitter and Yahoo! Buzz.
If you can incorporate these techniques into your online marketing strategy, you will keep your Web site fresh and interesting, and have a much better chance of improving your online exposure and maintaining a steady flow of interested visitors to your site.
Check out more excellent ideas from Mark Rocket on how to improve your Website's performance.
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