Archive for October, 2008
« Previous EntriesEstablish Your Own Online Community to Increase Website Traffic
Thursday, October 30th, 2008Research shows that many people love to use the web to communicate with other people around the world. Some people will use the web primarily to talk with family and friends, but most people enjoy talking to the complete strangers they meet via chat rooms or message forums. It was once unrealistic to think social bonds could be created this way, but today these communications are completely accepted. With more people using the web for this type of communication, website operators are beginning to utilize the “chat” trend.
The way website operators do this is by establishing their own online communities. They can do this in several ways. One way website operators can create online communities is by offering chat functions on their website. By creating chat rooms for visitors to utilize, website operators are subtly inviting visitors to return as frequently as they wish. Many visitors might come with the intention of making a short visit, but then may try the chat room out. If they enjoy their conversations with others there, it is likely they will return frequently to chat again. To make this work however, there will need to be someone in the room available to chat at most hours. You may have to assign people to take on this task at first, while the room’s participants grow. After the room takes off however, the members will likely maintain it themselves.
Another way to build an online community on your site is by creating message boards for visitors to post on. Message boards are another popular way to get visitors to become part of your website’s community. You can offer boards for general chat or for specific topics. You can incorporate your website’s subject into the message boards as well. For instance, if your site was mostly about computers, you could offer a message board where visitors could post questions and get answers from experts and other visitors as well. This is a great way to get people to keep coming back to your site. Not only will people who post begin to rely on your site for information but they will likely also develop “relationships” with other posters and use your board as a place to communicate with them.
When setting your online community up, think about exactly what you want to do. If you are relying on the community to bring most of your traffic, you probably want to make it easy to access from your homepage. You might make it the largest link or the top link on the page. Use different colors and fonts to get the attention of those who visit your site. Making your site easy to navigate is a great way to get people to participate. The goal is to get the attention of your visitors. If you are placing a lot of emphasis on the online community function on your website, then they will be more likely to use it.
You can always offer a small chat area right on your homepage. This can be a great idea for those website operators who want to place the largest emphasis as possible on their online community function. It can however distract viewers from seeing other areas of your website, so be careful when setting your homepage up in this manner. The best thing to do is to create an easy link right to the chat or message area from the top half of your homepage. This allows the user to get right to the intended area.
With thousands of online users spending large amounts of time participating in online communities like chat rooms and message boards, it is logical to believe these functions would help increase traffic on any website. This is an easy and inexpensive way to draw traffic to your site and can be a lot of fun for everyone involved. If you think this may work for you, simply sit down and decide which method to use. Then choose the best plan for adding the online community to your actual site, whether it is on the homepage or a secondary page. Once everything gets rolling, you will be shocked at how effective establishing an online community can be for increasing your website traffic.
Usability Testing Report: 2.5 and Crazyhorse
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008A question I hear pretty frequently is, “Why a redesign of the admin panel so soon after 2.5?” Those who have attended WordCamps in the past few months have already heard the answer, but for the people who haven’t had that opportunity, this post is for you.
When the community response to the 2.5 admin [...]
Don’t Be Dense – Writing Keyword Rich Text to Effectively Promote your Website
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008When you are looking for a way to effectively promote your website, you will find both expensive and inexpensive options. One of the most popular inexpensive options today is to use keyword rich text. When someone is looking for something on the web, they are most likely to use search engines such as “Google” to find what they need.
The goal as a website operator is to get most of this traffic right to your website. With thousands of people conducting searches each day, there are thousands of potential consumers and web users to direct to your site. With keyword rich text, there is a better chance that these searchers will indeed be directed to your site through search engines.
Keyword rich text is basically articles of text that contain high numbers of a keyword or keywords that pertain to the subject chosen. To be clearer, if you have a website about fishing, then for search engines to direct web users to your site, you might include articles with words such as “fishing”, “fish”, “tackle”, “lure”, or “boat”. If someone were to type one of these particular words into a search engine, your site would likely come up near the top if you include these words in large amounts on your site. The more you repeat the word the user types in the search engine, the more likely they will see your site as an option for them to click on. Your articles may seem a bit redundant, but it really pays off to use as many keywords as you possibly can, without compromising content.
Another way you can use keyword rich text to effectively promote your website is by submitting articles to databases. This is great for the website operator that would rather not bulk up their website with lengthy articles. The basis of this task is to write keyword articles and submit them to various free article databases. Throughout the articles, or at the bottom of the text, include information about and a link to your website. When someone searches for the keyword within your text, the article will be brought up. As they read the article, they will have the opportunity to visit your page through the link for more useful information. This is a great idea, especially when you have a retail business online that would look ridiculous with a large amount of text included. It gives you the space to store the text somewhere else (the database), but still allows you to reap rewards from your articles.
Once you’ve decided writing keyword rich text is the best way for you to effectively promote your website, you will need to come up with appropriate articles to use for your task. If you feel qualified enough to write the articles yourself, then you can certainly do so. If this is your plan, you will first need to create a list of keywords that you feel are most relevant to your website. When doing this, be sure to think from a web user’s point of view. Think about the words you would type into a search engine if you were looking for a site like your own. Once you come up with a list of 10 or 20, you can begin working. Develop specific subjects for each of your keywords and create original titles. Then, simply write articles between 300-800 words that contain the keyword many times. Again, the more you use the keyword and variations of the keyword, the better results you will see. Lastly, make sure you include your name, business information, and website link at the bottom of the keyword. This is probably the most important information, so don’t forget it!
If you are unsure about your writing skills, it is also possible to hire professionals to write articles for you. You can come up with your list of keywords or allow the professionals to do it for you. This is a great way to benefit with keyword rich text without the trouble of writing the articles. After purchasing the articles from a professional writer, you can then use them as you see fit. Unless you are a strong and skilled writer, you may want to consider this option. It will allow you great results and cost you very little effort. No matter how you plan to use keyword rich text, it is certain you will be glad you did!
Don’t Be a Bump on a Blog! How to Effectively Use a Blog to Increase Website Traffic
Sunday, October 26th, 2008Almost anyone can create a website these days, but only a select few will be able to maintain enough traffic for their site to be considered successful. Maintaining and increasing traffic to your website may not be a priority if you only have your website for personal purposes. If you run your business through your website however, increasing traffic can mean a world of difference. Chances are if you are on a tight budget, advertising is not a great option for you. There are ways to advertise your website without paying any fees. One great way to get your website address out there is through a blog. There are several ways to use a blog to increase website traffic. Take a look below to get a few ideas that will help you get started.
Before you begin, you will need to decide whether you want to create your own blog, or utilize the blogs of others for your task. There are advantages to both methods. Creating your own blog can be a lot of fun, but it also takes a little time. There are several great websites that offer free blogs to those who choose to create their own. The free websites often have extremely simple steps to use that will help you get your blog rolling right away, allowing even those with limited computer skills to create a blog in less than an hour. You may want to read on to see which methods of blog use you want to try before determining whether you want your own blog or not.
One of the best ways to increase traffic to your website using a blog is by using search terms. This can be done in several ways; however you probably will want to create your own blog for these. To utilize search terms, you need to post them on your blog or throughout articles on your blog. For example, if your website is about fishing and you want to target fishermen, then you can post articles containing fishing terms on your blog. You can even simply post lists of fishing terms on your blog as well. When fishermen get online and do searches for these terms, chances are they will be led to a link to your blog. At that point, you will need to also post many links to your fishing website. This will possibly draw the fishermen in and get them to click on the link to your website.
When using the search engine approach, you will need to find software that allows you to see exactly which search engines are most popular. Then you can cater your search engine lists and articles to fit the most popular words. Blogs are perfect for search engine terms and articles because you can literally post anything you want on a blog without it being inappropriate. Even professional websites use this approach and it has been found to be one of the most effective out there. Not to mention, it is free for you to utilize.
Another way to use a blog to increase traffic to your website is simply by posting. This can be done on other blogs that you read as well. In the comments area, you can post a response to blogs you read that includes your website link. This should only be done when you are writing a legitimate comment however. Otherwise, if you simply use the comment line for your personal ad space, you will deter many people from clicking on your link due to it being considered rude. Just read as many blogs a day as you can, make legitimate comments, and include your website link in your signature. This is a fast way to get an increase in traffic.
No matter if you want to use your own blog or someone else’s blog to help you increase traffic to your website, blogs are effective in doing so. You can use blogs at no cost and create pathways for new traffic that you otherwise would never be able to reach and attract. As you probably know, the success of your website depends largely on the amount of traffic it receives. Therefore, focusing on the amount of traffic you should attract is an important aspect of running your website. Use these tips to help you easily use blogs to increase your website traffic.
Calling All WordPress-loving Icon Designers
Friday, October 24th, 2008Have you seen the getting-prettier-all-the-time menus in 2.7-almost-beta? They really are. Getting prettier all the time, I mean. Once we drop in the fonts and do a little brushing up of edges and colors, the menu system is going to be smooth. The last thing we’ll need to do to is replace the icons we’ve [...]
Do Pay Per Click Advertising Campaigns Really Work?
Friday, October 24th, 2008Pay per click advertising works through search engines that have an agreement with a business. This business will place a small ad on the results page for certain key terms. The listing on the search engine page usually has a title, a short heading, and a short promotional wording blurb. Depending on the search engine, the advertiser may or may not get to control the text. The advertiser pays nothing to appear on the results page itself. He or she only pays a previously agreed upon amount to the search engine when a visitor clicks on the ad itself.
Despite its popularity and its once record profit returns, pay per click advertising has lost something in returns. It is still, however, one of the best, fastest, and most effective methods of advertising on the web. According to Google's record profit posting recently, lots of people see these ads and click on them. While it is true that pay per click advertising is only worth it if the sale gets from click to close, those businesses that do manage to close the sale have an excellent deal in their hands with pay per click. This means that customers are usually directed to their site for about five cents each, depending on the price of the key word.
Pay per click advertising is even better than high search engine rankings because the ads can go up in just a few minutes while changing your web page content to improve your rankings, even with the help of a search engine oriented text company, can take weeks.
There are many different current companies that offer pay per click advertising. Google's pay per click program is called AdWords. Google estimates that over eighty percent of internet users visit Google as a search engine. That results more customers seeing the ads than most businesses ever thought possible. Google allows you to create your own ads. They do, however, have a service that will design your ad for you if you choose. Yahoo is the other most popular pay per click program. Yahoo's Overture works through partner sites like MSN and Alta Vista. Through these many sites, they claim to allow you to reach over ninety percent of internet users.
Choosing a company to sign up with can be difficult, but the most difficult part of pay per click advertising will be the planning and writing stages. To make the best pay per click ad campaign, you have to bid on key word phrases that work best for you, write the most effective ads, and have a strong, quality page when they click on your ad. The price of some key word phrases is extraordinarily high, so picking the right phrases immediately is your best bet. If you know how to catch the customer's attention and offer them a perfect presentation, you will get the sale almost every time. If you don't, you will lose some serious money with pay per click advertising.
Some people recommend using a search engine oriented professional to design your pay per click advertising campaign. However, the right campaign can be self-managed, with the right skills. You need some understanding of consumer psychology, excellent writing skills, and plenty of time to research what will work for you. Before you get ready to start your pay per click campaign, be sure to do some research into what is out there with regard to your product or services. When you get ready to write, you'll want to notice that the best campaigns are legitimize by what their pages declare about them. Without that legitimacy, your ad will not only fail, it may be removed by your pay per click service.
The search engine company you choose to work with may be able to help you find the right key words, but their suggestions can sometimes be ineffective. You can find the best key words by using several services and performing web research on a regular basis.
Pay per click advertising campaigns can be very effective if your ad is well written and if your target site helps to complete the sale with the customer. Without these elements, pay per click advertising is simply a waste of your valuable time and money. You would be better off with a traditional ad campaign.
WordPress 2.6.3
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008A vulnerability in the Snoopy library was announced today. WordPress uses Snoopy to fetch the feeds shown in the Dashboard. Although this seems to be a low risk vulnerability for WordPress users, we wanted to get an update out immediately. 2.6.3 is available for download right now. If you don’t want to download the whole [...]
Debate on Message Boards and See Traffic on your Own Website Get Moving
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008With the web attracting millions of users each day, there is not a lack of audience when you are trying to advertise. In fact, there is probably not a better avenue when trying to increase website traffic as well.
Website managers often sit and ponder upon the perfect way to increase website traffic. Everyone wants to maximize their website traffic for several reasons. First, the more traffic you have, the more money you will likely make from other advertisers and sponsors. Secondly, the more traffic you have the more products you can sell and the more popular and widely known your website name will become. With these thoughts in mind, what could be better than more website traffic at no advertising cost?
If you are maintaining a small website or simply don’t want to pay to get your website name out there, then you might want to consider using message boards to help your traffic move along. Message boards can be found all around the web and are almost always free to participate in. You can post as often as you like on these boards and can chat about almost anything that is on your mind.
Many boards are topic specific, which is even better for website managers because it allows them to target the most appropriate audience for their advertising. For example, if your website is about gardening, you would most likely want to hit message boards that related to gardening or plants and flowers. This would allow you to get the attention of the most appropriate audience for your site. By posting and using a signature, you will be automatically inviting others to view your site. Although this seems subtle, it really works well.
Once you decide where you are going to post, you should decide what you are going to say. You can choose to make subtle and unbiased posts on boards if you want to get the attention of a few people. However, if you want to get the most attention you can, you may want to consider starting a debate of some sort. When people involve themselves in debate on a message board two things can happen. First, those that care about the issue will likely read and post in response. The more sensitive the issue, the more readers and responders the posts will have. Secondly, those who really don’t care about the issue will read the debate anyway because everyone loves to see a good argument going on.
Debating on message boards can be great for your site because each time you use your website link in your signature, you will be offering it for everyone to see. With more posters interested in debated topics, you will have more people looking at your link. You should beware however of a few things when starting or participating in a debate. You should always remember to use appropriate language and smart wording. This also includes that fact that you should never make the debate personal.
Never post personal attacks or inappropriate comments on a message board when you are trying to get people to your site. Even if they agree with you, they will not likely want to look at your site because these comments will make you look ignorant. You want to appear educated and smart within the debate so people will trust that your site is worthy of their time. To do this, you cannot make the debate personal in any way and only make it about the issue. Just remember that everyone is entitled to their own opinion and likewise, everyone has an opinion.
This form of advertising is a bit less subtle than just posting randomly on message boards. It is an approach however that will likely get your posts more attention than before. This is especially true if you offer a comment section on your own website. Posters will be likely to return to your site for more debate opportunities. Using this approach is also free and can attract tons of attention to your website. Just follow the etiquette rules and be sure to keep everything clean! If you do, then you will likely see a large increase in traffic to your own website.
The New 2.7 Dashboard
Monday, October 20th, 2008First, I’d like to say that I’m glad the majority response to the screenshots we posted last week was so positive. With a community as vocal as this one, it’s always a little nerve-wracking to introduce change, but this time it seems like the change was welcomed, which has been great. I’m hopeful that as [...]
Clue In To Key Words – Ten Ways That Keywords Articles Increase Website Traffic
Monday, October 20th, 2008Keyword articles are a great way to increase your website traffic, whether you write them yourself or hire a service to produce several to post to your site. There are ten major ways that keyword articles will increase your website traffic.
The first way keyword articles increase your website traffic is it increases your page rankings. Search engines index your pages based on location and frequency of key words on your page. The more key words on your page, the more likely you are to get a higher search engine ranking. The higher your search engine ranking, the more likely people are to click on your site. Research shows that typically, people only click on the first ten links with regard to search engine results. Therefore, if you land in those then, you are more likely to get more web traffic.
The second way keyword articles increase your website traffic is that they increase relevant content on your site. When people surf the web, they are looking for content that is relevant to their purpose. They typically are not looking for marketing ploys. If internet searchers see relevant content on your site, they are more likely to read what you have to say.
The third way keyword articles increase your website traffic is that appropriate key word titles listed in your search engine results are likely to help guide customers to click on your site. Customers like titles that sound like information they want. Titles that lead to interesting, pertinent articles will, consequently, please customers and increase your website traffic.
The fourth way keyword articles increase your website traffic is that the more articles you have, the more chances you have that customers might see your site. Many different people search for many different things. Many people search for multiple things in one internet session. As a result, if you have several key word articles, you have more chances that customers might see your articles and click on your site.
The fifth way keyword articles increase your website traffic is that they may increase your reciprocal link visibility. Reciprocal links are exchanged by websites that have similar interests. The more relevant topics you are able to list, the more chances you have of someone with similar interests attempting to link to your site. This could greatly increase your website traffic.
The sixth way keyword articles increase your website traffic is that your pages will be indexed by more search engines. If you have more search engines indexing your pages, you will have more chances for customers to see and click on your site.
The seventh way keyword articles increase your website traffic is that key word articles increase the chance that people will stay at your site for a period of time. If you have several key word articles relevant to customers' interests, you have a better chance that they will stay and read several of your articles. Staying at your site longer means that there is more chance you will be able to push your product with them.
The eighth way keyword articles will increase your website traffic is that people may go back to your site. If they have visited your site once for good key word articles, they may remember your url and return to your site for more keyword content. They may even recommend your site to other internet users.
The ninth way keyword articles will increase your website traffic is that they will increase your credibility with readers. This will not only encourage them to consult you on other occasions, it will also encourage them to trust you on other matters, like the purchase of your products.
The final way keyword articles may increase your website traffic is that they may increase your sales to advertisers. Advertisers are looking for sites that encourage customers they want to do business with. More keywords will mean more customers for you which can mean more advertisers for you which can mean more profits and visibility for you.
No matter which reason you choose, keyword articles will increase your website traffic. That can only mean good things in store for you and your website. You can have your keyword articles written for you or write them yourself. Whichever way you go, though, be sure they are well-written, as poorly written articles will do nothing to increase your website traffic.