One in a Million: Optimizing Your Website
to Increase Traffic

Contributed by Jay Schroyer

It always makes me smile when I see a television commercial that features a lengthy URL at the bottom of the screen in tiny print for about five seconds. The odds of anyone being able to read it let alone having the time to write it down are pretty dismal. If their interest was piqued enough, the next time they’re online they’ll just type in the name of the company or product into a search engine and generally find the site in one or two tries.

This is a perfect example of why it is so vitally important to optimize your web site (or the template you’re using for multiple sites) for search traffic and usability. If your URL isn’t something simple and catchy, the majority of visitors are going to reach your website via a search engine.

There are three important and easy to learn computer skills that you can follow to optimize your site and increase your web traffic: precise, relevant, and consistent keywords; informative and appropriate links; and an appealing, easy-to-navigate page layout.

Precise, Relevant, and Consistent
When choosing keywords for your site, you want words that are relevant to what your site offers. At the same time, you also want words that aren’t so common that they show up lost as only one in a million other sites that have the same search terms.

The higher you can appear in the hierarchy of search results, the greater your odds are of receiving heavier traffic and if you aren’t on the first page of results, you might as well not even be searchable.

You can start by making your website search friendly by the programs that Google™ and Yahoo!® use to sort through the myriad of available sites. This could include reevaluating your HTML code and making sure that your declarations are friendly towards the “spider” programs and algorithms that these programs use.

Some of your search words may be too broad. If you offer intensive training courses in specific software then using the search term “basic computer learning” might bring up you and about three million other websites that contain these search terms. However, if you use a more specific term like “beginner Excel® tutorial,” you’ll find that the number of hits that show up in search engines will drastically decrease and improve your odds of being in that top two dozen.

Of course as an exception to the rule, just recently a major car company kicked off an Internet campaign to market their latest SUV by completely bucking the search term system. Instead of using search terms like “SUV” they used terms that involved their marketing campaign. Their competition wasn’t even thinking of using such ordinary terms as “chocolate” and “coffee” to market their own vehicles, which allowed this company to funnel traffic directly to their site.

Sometimes thinking outside of the box can drive more traffic to your site when it comes to keywords, but always keep relevance in the back of your mind no matter how far outside you think.

Informative and Appropriate
Nothing is worse than finding a site that contains the information that you’re looking for, but not enough of it. Then, when you consult the links for further searching that the site provides, they take you to sites that have absolutely nothing to do with your search.

Your site can avoid this nasty pitfall by not only providing informative content, but also providing appropriate links to other websites that may delve a little deeper into the subject material or provide an alternate viewpoint.

When suggesting links for visitors to go to, think of it the same way that you would provide a referral for a doctor or dentist. You wouldn’t refer your best friend to a bad doctor would you? I can guarantee if you did, you’re friend wouldn’t ask for your advice anymore and this same thing can happen to your website if you aren’t providing appropriate recommended links. Those visitors aren’t going to come back.

Check these links often. A lot can happen in only a month. Make sure the links are still active and haven’t been hijacked by spammers redirecting traffic to their own sites that have nothing to do with your content.

Appealing and Easy to Navigate
Finally, if your site is confusing or boring, visitors aren’t going to spend a lot of time on it. Think of all the qualities that make you stay on a site for extended periods of time: easy on the eyes, intuitively laid out, no annoying animated banners or sidebars, perhaps a site map for easier navigation, hot links that allow you to instantly jump to the information you’re looking for, good content, fast loading. All of these things can quickly add up to make your site a joy to visit or a destination to avoid.

Choose soft, complimentary colors when laying out your page. Don’t make the mistake of putting black type on a red background. No one can read that easily. Choose a simple font and appropriate sizing. Use graphics sparingly, but appropriately. If it increases the value of your content, then by all means add it, but if you’re just adding a graphic to fill space, don’t bother.

White space is also an important factor in leading the eye through the page. Put items where you think they will be the most accessible and helpful for visitors. If you have the time, enlist your friends or coworkers to beta test your site and tell you what they think is working and what isn’t.

By optimizing your web page template, you can quickly build pages that will not only attract attention through search engines, but provide users with an enjoyable visit. And if the first visit is enjoyable and helpful, you can bet that they’ll bookmark your site and continue to use you as a regular resource.

Google is a trademark of Google, Inc., registered in the U.S. and/or other countries. Yahoo! is a trademark of Yahoo! Inc., registered in the U.S. and/or other countries. Excel is a trademark of Microsoft, Inc., registered in the U.S. and/or other countries.

This article is intended for general informational purposes and does not provide legal or other professional advice. All trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners. Please read our disclaimer for additional terms and conditions governing access to and use of this article.