A website can be a powerful tool in helping you grow your business. However, if your site doesn’t get noticed, or doesn’t help your customers do business with you, you’re missing out on an inexpensive way to grow your business. These 5 tips can help you increase the effectiveness of your website.

Use descriptors, meta tags and title headers
The pages on your site have special fields that help describe your site. The title field is visible to a browser, the other two are invisible under normal conditions. Yet, these three fields are often used by automated search engines to catalog your site and decide how relevant the information is to a particular search. By adding the appropriate type and amount of information to these fields, your site can inch up on search engine searches, driving more traffic to your site.

Find the right key words
When customers are searching for your site, what words or phrases do you think they use? How can you be sure? Try using overture.com to verify your hunches. Visit this advertising site and click on Advertiser Center. The Search Term Suggestion Tool will allow you to see the popularity of key word terms for your industry, and suggest other terms you may not have thought of. Match your keywords to your site layout, and your site will show up more often when these terms are searched.

Partner up
Recent information shows that only 50% of web site traffic is driven by search engines (quite a lot, but only half), down from almost 80% a few years ago. Where does the rest come from? Repeat customers and related links. Search for sites that may be complementary to yours and develop a simple letter and hyperlink to ask them to link your site to theirs, and vice versa. This type of reciprocal arrangement not only increases targeted traffic, but also helps you get better exposure on some search engines.

Remember your customers
A lot of traffic comes from current customers? How easy is your site to navigate to returning customers? Do you know who they are, or do you make them enter their information each time they visit? Is there specific information available just for them, or do you treat your customers and prospects the same? Inexpensive options include a login feature, a way for customers to review their billings, order status, communicate with you or receive special offers and information. This type of functionality is relatively easy to add to your site and can be a powerful way to increase sales with current customers and retain good customers longer.

Other media can help
Of course advertising can help drive visitors to your site, too. Advances in online advertising have made Web ads more cost-effective, including paying only when someone clicks on your ad, versus by impression. But yet another way to increase traffic is to use free (or low-cost) alternatives to advertising. Press releases to key editors and publications can get you free exposure if your site is a value to their readers. A PR campaign is inexpensive to develop and manage, and can yield huge results. Direct mail is also an excellent way to drive traffic to a site. More than just listing your site on all of your marketing materials, make sure you give prospects and customers a compelling reason to visit your site.

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360 Business consulting can help with all of your online goals, from Web development to marketing and sales. Click here to receive more information on online marketing or to contact us for a no-risk, no-cost consultation.