Posted by Software Outsourcing on April 22nd, 2009 | Comments
After Google, YouTube is now apparently the most-used search engine in the world. YouTube now allegedly sees more searches than either Yahoo or MSN. I think that’s amazing. And I also think it is an amazing opportunity for those of us who want to increase traffic to our websites.
But does YouTube really represent a realistic option for increasing traffic to your site? Last year I set out to test this very theory because, frankly, I was a little cynical. My own suspicions were that most of these searches were from teenage kids looking for clips of their favourite bands or stupid stunts and I doubted that YouTube could be effectively harnessed for the sake of marketers.
So I created a small number of short (2-5 minute) videos on a topic related to one of my websites and published them to see what happened.
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Posted by Software Outsourcing on April 19th, 2009 | Comments
What is it?
In a nutshell local search involves the use of specialized search engines specifically created to focus on a selected geographic region to find local businesses and websites focused on your area.
Local search is commonly utilized as a directory, where users select their location, and narrow their search by categories till they find the listing they want. In many cases local search engines also guess at the users’ location by using their IP, so when you visit the site and search, for example, “Chinese restaurants” you automatically see results specific to your location.
Google has been doing this for a while to one degree or another. When you perform a search in Google using a geographic modifier the map comes up with results specific to that location. You can also take it one step further and search Google Local specifically.
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Posted by Software Outsourcing on April 15th, 2009 | Comments
1. URL canonicalization and 301 re-dirs. One of the first things I look for on any domain I am giving a health check on is the URL canonicalization. In My Opinion it does not matter if you pick proper URL canonicalization pointing to the www’s or non-www’s, but you need to pick one and stick to it. I personally always choose the www’s because more people (from my experience) tend to link to you with the full URL. So you need to get into your .htaccess file and make a few edits. Any variation of the homepage URL needs to be done this way too - for example you need to have the /index.php also re-direct to the main URL (however you have it set up) Bottom line here, you need to make sure all variations of your URL point to the same way you set it up.
Any extension of your URL like:
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Posted by Software Outsourcing on April 13th, 2009 | Comments
Most websites conform to the traditional ‘brochure’ style where you present your services and yourself to potential new clients, as well as asking them to sign up and give you their contact details.
* Information capture as a sole purpose
If you’re serious about growing your mailing list, though, there’s a route you can take which involves turning your home page into what is known as an opt-in or squeeze page. The one and only purpose of an opt-in page is to get visitors to sign up. Its job is to squeeze contact details out of your website visitors!
Websites with an opt-in page as the home page appear to the visitor as a one-page site. There are no links to other pages, nothing to browse, and nothing for the visitor to do but sign up. Of course, you have to offer a reasonably generous reward for them to do so, and present it with a degree of compelling urgency. As a technique for growing your mailing list, though, it really works and it sure gets you focused!
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Posted by Software Outsourcing on April 9th, 2009 | Comments
Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.
Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your particular business and website. Let’s start by examining the most basic data-the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.
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Posted by Software Outsourcing on April 7th, 2009 | Comments
The biggest challenge every single website owner has (including me) is getting traffic to his/her web site. And bar none the best traffic you can obtain is Organic Search Engine traffic.
So what is Organic Search Engine traffic?
Simply put, when someone is searching for a product or service they type their query into the search engine (google, yahoo, MSN etc.) and then the results of that search are displayed. And you want your web site to come up in that search query.
You probably already know that the majority of people will not go past the first page of the search engine results and even less people will go past the top 30 results. Therefore, your challenge is getting your website listed on the first page of the search engines for the keywords relating to your site.
Now there are a ton of people that will tell you there is some mystical voodoo secret mojo to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). And if you’re not familiar with the term SEO. Simply put SEO is where you build your web site in such a way that the search engines like it and the result is getting better rankings on the search engines.
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