Web Tech

Increase Web Site Traffic with Content

by
Designing Online, Inc.

I've seen it a thousand times...websites with very little or no content. There may be a wonderful shopping cart system that displays beautiful products and there may be a nice Flash presentation that is so beautiful you just want to cry....but none of this matters to a search engine because they don't see these things.

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"Whether you are selling products or services, you must include content within your web site that is not part of a shopping cart system or other dynamically generated script if you want search engines to find something to index within your website."

Whether you are selling products or services, you must include content within your website that is not part of a shopping cart system or other dynamically generated script if you want the search engines to find something to index within your website.

Let's say you have a shopping cart system with 1000 great products. To ensure you get search engine attention, create html or php pages that represent each category and copy some of the best product information to these pages and then link them to the item within your shopping cart system. The bottom line is that you want a solid written piece of text for your prime products and services to exist so the world can find this item when looking for it.

Another great way to increase the content of your website is to break up very long pages into several smaller pages. This will help you focus on more specific keywords within each page and will help that page rank higher in the search engines for those specific keywords as compared to those keywords competing with 10,000 other words on a very long page. Besides, if a page gets too long and also includes too many images where the overall file size of the page exceeds 120,000 bytes, the search engine spiders might just pass it up altogether if it takes too long to load.

Perhaps the greatest method of attracting traffic with content is for you to create and distribute articles relating to your websites products and services. When other websites place your article and web site link on their website, you will gain direct traffic that already exists on that website and you will eventually gain additional search engine related traffic by individuals who found that article on that other site, but still followed the link to your website.

A few tips to follow prior to submitting your article:

• Be sure to include a short but relevant third person bio with your article.
• Include a picture of yourself that can accompany the bio
• Include a picture or graphic that can help the reader visualize your article content better
• Use a Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat PDF Document to distribute your article instead of just pasting the info in an e-mail, more so if and when the formatting of the article is important, such as with poetry.

Distributing your articles can take a little work, but there are many websites pro-actively looking for content to place on their websites, so perform a simple Google search such as "article submission guidelines" or be more specific and search for "home and garden article submission guidelines". You will quickly find hundreds of locations to distribute your article.

Be sure to review the Submission Guidelines that are provided. This will go a long way towards your article being easily accepted or just deleted. In addition, it often helps, and may be necessary, to provide a reciprocal link to the website you wish to use your article, so you just might want to have that link already in place and make mention of it with your submission. This isn't buttering up...it's acknowledging that you wish to help them as much as you wish them to help you.

An often missed opportunity with content is that you might not have published your articles on your own website. If you have articles, they should all be located somewhere on your website and each article should conclude with some reference to them being pre-approved for placement on other websites or provide contact information where the individual can make the request. The bottom line is that you want things to be as automatic and easy as possible for people to use the articles you have created. On the other hand, if you have articles you do not wish to share, make it clear as well that the article cannot be reproduced under any circumstance. Just spending a few moments to make these things clear will go a long way towards avoiding unnecessary problems and wasted time.

Another great source of content is a "Press Release". Likewise there are many places to submit a Press Release by performing a simple Google search for "submit press release" or be more specific and search for "submit home and garden press release".

As with any content, provide as much information, images, bios, etc. so that the editors have any and all information necessary for them to work with. Case in point, I often zoom right past press releases that do not include an image. The bottom line is that I always include an image with press releases we publish and if one is not provided, it's more work for me to find one or create one, so I am more likely to pick a press release with a full array of information as compared to one that does not.

As a final note on press releases, have a valid point. If your press release isn't interesting or is just a "Look At My New Website" kind of press release, don't waste your time, effort and money submitting it. Nobody will see that kind of press release since it's not an item that will interest most editors. So yes, press releases can bring in traffic, but there has to be a valid and interesting point.

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