Build Traffic for Your Site or Weblog

psantry@santry.com — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 06:00:00 GMT

Have you just started up a website or weblog and now want to get people to visit? It used to be a matter of submitting the site to search engines and eventually some traffic would build up. That’s no longer the case, now you have to build your case with the search engines. Many search engines have built into them algorithms that check for the popularity of the site. You need to know how to build your site’s reputation in order to get search engines to notice you.

Build Credibility at the Start

When you first go and purchase your domain name, one piece of advice I can provide is to register your domain for at least 5 years, if you can go for 10 years then do that. This makes the search engines “think” your site is a valid site, and not some quickly propped up spam site. Google for instance checks the domain registration information for how many years your site has been registered. In addition, they may also check to see the information about the Internet Protocol (IP) address that your domain name resolves to. This is in order to see if any spam sites are sharing the same IP address, which many spammers will do (being that they’re ran by the same person or company).

Use Properly Formatted HTML and Structure

Now that your domain is registered you need to begin generating some web pages. I personally use a content management system (CMS) called DotNetNuke (http://www.dotnetnuke.com), since my background is on the Microsoft framework, and I can develop extensions to the framework. There are many CMSs available that run on various platforms. You should investigate which one is right for you.

By using a CMS, the developers of the CMS have most likely considered the effects of properly generated HTML on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) issues and have dealt with them. Using the CMS will make your job of editing HTML much easier and frees you up from worrying about most issues concerning HTML formatting.

There are still issues that you need to concern yourself regardless of whether you’re using a CMS of not:

Title Tags – Use keywords, try not to emphasize the company name, rather emphasize what it is you do. For example, say your company is called “Joe’s Tech Solutions”, but you sell computers in Boise, Idaho. “Joe’s Tech Solutions”, doesn’t say anything about what you do, so don’t use it in the title of your page, rather use “Computer Sales, Boise, Idaho”. This will enable your site to show higher for keyword relevancy.

Place Relevant Content at the Top – I recommend placing the most relevant content at the top of the page. If you’re using a table like structure with multiple columns, then place your main content to the left of the page. This will let the search engines “see” your content more towards the top of the document, and thereby make that content more relevant to the keywords you’re targeting.

Use Header Tags, and Alternate Text – When you want to emphasize a headline use the HTML header tag. In addition, use alternate text tags when placing images in your documents. Not only does this assist in SEO, it also makes your site friendlier for those who are visually impaired when visiting your site.

Of course there are many issues when it comes to SEO, you may want to hire an SEO professional to further optimize your site. There are also several resources available on-line. Get your Google skills out and keyword search on “SEO”.

Do Market Research

When beginning your site you should see what you’re competitors are doing. As with the launch of any product or service, you should always do some market research, and as part of your research you should check out your competitors. Try not to vary too much if you are in a vertical market, many of your site users become accustomed to a way of doing things when it comes to the web, and varying from that may cause confusion.

In addition, you want to research your competitors to see what they’re doing when it comes to SEO techniques. Open your browser and view the source HTML of their site, conduct a keyword search and see where they come up in the results.

Printed Materials

There are several things you can do in order to promote your site post-launch. Of course there are the standard things like placing your Uniform Resource Locator (URL, for example: www.yourcompany.com) on every piece of business correspondence and marketing materials. This enables your customer to know where to go if they want to learn more information about your product or service. At any time they can view your information, without having to use up precious service desk or sales calls time.

Write up a press release and send it to the media outlets. A website is news, let the world know you’re on the web. Learn the basics about writing up PR and distribute it to every relevant industry publication or local media. There are several distribution places on-line that you can submit your PR to and they will distribute it to on-line media outlets.

Start Blogging

Weblogging is the latest craze on the web. It enables people to write about some topic and post it easily on the Internet. The technology driving weblogging is Really Simple Syndication (RSS), which is an XML formatted document that enables people to subscribe to your content. When you update content the person who subscribed to that content is notified and can view the article or summary information and learn more about your site. Ensure you take advantage of RSS, as many CMSs support syndicating content via RSS. In addition, once you have an RSS feed set up, you should notify the on-line aggregators by using a blog pinging system. The pinging tool will ping the major sites like weblogs.com, Google Blogsearch, and Technorati.com.

Community, Community, Community

Community is the big buzz word today. You need to participate in on-line communities to build credibility as well as popularity. Search on the particular topic that your site pertains to and you’re sure to find an online forum devoted to it. Participate in the forums, and when you set up a profile make sure you list your URL as part of your signature. This signature will then be appended to each message you post in the forum. This helps in building a link network with other sites, and assists in building your site’s relevance in keyword searches.

Write Articles

Write authoritative articles about what it is your site is about. If you’re in business, then you’re targeting some sector and have some expertise in that sector. Write about the topic and submit it to an article site, or post in your weblog. Make sure you have a link to your site contained in the article, which will build your link network. If the article is published on an article distribution site, then you build your link network even more.

If you have an article or PR that you think has a larger audience and is timely, you may want to post the article to an online community like Digg (www.digg.com). Digg has grown over the past year to become a popular user submitted news site. Basically you submit your news and the community of users will “digg” the article. If there are enough “diggs” then it may make it to the frontpage of the site, which will generate a large amount of traffic for your site. In addition, you’re building your link network even more.

Keep It Timely

A final tip for generating traffic is to keep your content updated constantly. Spiders like to see updated content at your site; it gives them something to do. If you do not update your content on a regular basis then the spiders will reduce the frequency at which it visits your site. This can have adverse affects on your search rankings when people are searching on your targeted keywords.

Finally

This article isn’t meant to be the end all solution to getting traffic for your site; rather it is for getting you started on your way. Getting and maintaining traffic requires a constant effort and diligence. Participate in on-line communities and learn more about site promotion and SEO. Good luck in your efforts!

Vista on the Q1 UMPC

psantry@santry.com — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 06:00:00 GMT

I was able to get Vista up and running on my Q1 UMPC. The experience is very good. There were some issues getting the resolution emulation running, but after a reinstall of the Intel video drivers it worked again. This pretty much completes the upgrade of the Q1 to Vista, I'll be posting updates later.

Update: Here is the video of Vista Ultimate running on my Samsung Q1 UMPC.

Free Vista or Office 2007

psantry@santry.com — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 06:00:00 GMT

Here’s a deal for your family or friends from Microsoft.

http://www.powertogether.com/

Just sit through three hours of training on Vista or Office and get a free full license.

Technology

Build Traffic for Your Site or Weblog

Vista on the Q1 UMPC

Free Vista or Office 2007