How do I increase the traffic on my website?
Good question. I’ll keep it short. Traffic to your website includes your current clients and new prospects. The latter will find you through natural search or because you advertised. The basic answer is: ‘be fabulous’. If you have identified a burning customer need and you provide the best solution, Google will favour you.
Check out my search engine optimisation (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) services.
(Your existing customers would often be taken care of with an ongoing, automated email marketing system that builds your relationship and brand, discovers monetisable opportunities and .. sells.)
How do I create and design websites?
There are plenty of drag-&-drop website building services available that make it easy and cheap for you to create a website yourself. Here’s the thing. They won’t help you write the copy, and that’s really crucial. Lots of people say “I can write” but copywriting is at a higher level, it’s persuasive writing that leads to action. Without an external expert view, you’re likely to end up with a website about you.
“Err, yeah, what’s wrong with that?”
What’s wrong is that people want what they want. Your copy should be about your reader and how you can take them from where they are to where they want to be. Applying that to this conversation right now: a website that you develop will likely cost you money because it will block the spot where a professionally developed, persuasive website should be, one that’s written to be findable and to take people through the customer journey from never having heard of you to becoming a long-term repeat customer who will praise you in their professional associations, on social media and so on.
What are the ways to earn money through a website?
Gosh, that’s a big question. There are lots of ways but I’ve only got a small space here, so I’m going to go with: if you are looking to start a new business, start with what you know. Your hobbies, for instance. You need a small group of enthusiasts who spend money.
If you are already in business, then look to upsells and downsells, to repeat/ongoing business models, and listening systems.
Your website likely needs to tempt-in people who haven’t heard of you with some amazing content, get them to consume that content and ask for more, get them to make a small financial commitment, then make the main sale along with upsells, then optimise repeat business (perhaps with an automated email marketing system), testimonials and advocacy. Basically, the winner is the website that extracts the most lifetime value out of a visitor in any particular niche.
How can I generate website traffic with zero marketing budget?
If you are time-rich, then you can spend hours creating amazing content for your customers. It’s a great life and I do recommend it, but there’s a lot to learn about search engine optimisation and keyphrase analysis, persuasive copywriting, the blogosphere and so on.
If you have a product that sells (but then, you’d have a marketing budget, right?) you can set up an affiliate system. That’s where marketers sell for you and you pay them a commission. No-one will sign up unless you have proven sales, though.
See what’s working for others in your business on social media. Competitions might work.
If you’ve a Twitter following, run a Twitter Growbot report to find potential joint venture partners and just piggy back off them (that includes retail outlets and online ecommerce aggregators such as eBay, Etsy, TripAdvisor, Amazon and so on).
Why is SEO important for my website?
It’s not. Just doing search engine optimisation (SEO) isn’t it. What Google really loves is when it sends you traffic, those visitors don’t bounce back and go somewhere else for what they wanted. SEO is just part of being a market focussed business, sensitive to the needs of your customers, innovating solutions for them and talking their language; being discoverable when they have the problem you solve. If you have that, SEO is easy. The Websites That development process tackles all this and sets you up for natural SEO.
OK, if you have the basics right and there’s money to be made, then SEO gets competitive (sometimes very) and yes, then there are only 10 slots on page one and you have to deserve your place. Then SEO techniques such as optimising website speed, how you organise content, how you test pages and headlines, on page keyword optimisation, off-page link generation and so on are all factors. A Websites That website is built around SEO, and I provide an ongoing SEO service if you want it.