Web Design & SEO For Small Businesses

Traffic is a very important aspect of online marketing and success of any website. So how does you make that traffic stick around more time around your website. Online traffic has little patience and getting their attentions and making them engage with your site is key to any success of your website.

Several factors are involved in making your site compelling and make that traffic to stick around more. On an average the average visitor time spend on a site is 8 sec. And you all know with 8 sec you achieve any action from the visitor’s side. So what makes the visitor stay around for a while?

I have put up few point to which will make your visitor to stay longer on your site.

1) Informative Content – One of the compelling reasons for a visitor to spend more time on your site is because of the magnetic quality of the content. Providing content which can’t be found anywhere else.  So they have a reason to stay longer on your site.

2) Update your content – Adding content on a regular basis can keep your website fresh with good new content. Visitors don’t like to read content which is old update your articles, add more new pages will lead your visitors to stay long on the site.

3) Fast loading page - If you web pages loads faster visitors are comfortable with sticking with your site. Sites with heavy graphics and flash intros scare away the visitors and finally they stay less time on the site.

4) Don’t distract your visitors – Some website owners think adding flashy kind of stuffs to a website will attract visitors to stay for a longer period of time. If you think that is the answer Study shows that using popup and other kind of flash stuffs are not comfortable with web visitors, so stay away from that.

5) Information architecture – is the structure, organization, navigation, labeling and indexing of a website. Information architect is the backbone of any website. Information architecture is a vital component of defining the user experience which make the visitors to stay longer.

6) Engage your visitor to contribute – In today world website are interactive where a visitors can put their thoughts about your products and services like adding components on your website where you can make the visitors engage like putting comments, rating, forums where discussion can be help etc.

You have got just 8 second to grab the attention of your visitors so when you build you site is comfortable to the user so that they will stick longer and your website will be a success.

Search Engine Optimization is a long and challenging process, since it takes quite lot of time to achieve results through SEO; you can take advantage of this and make money through affiliate marketing. As an affiliate marketer all you are concerned is to make money so why not try this way optimize your web pages for your promoting offers which big companies and brands are not doing it. Today I did a search for Red Nike Shoes in Google I found not a single popular online shoes websites where not coming up in the top ten results. Below is the screen shot of that result?rednikeshoes1.jpg

Why do you think these top Shoe websites are not interested in ranking under natural search engine ranking, because they are lazy as well as some of their individual product page URLs are not search engine friendly and these big companies don’t want to change that. But why do we need to optimize that affiliate product which big players are not in the top ten. Because these bigger companies want to be visible as well as traffic for that products which is very important. So why exploit these opportunity to your advantage to make money through Search Engine Optimization.

If you have been to Affiliate Summit 2008 in Las Vegas you might have heard about the Controversial keynote speech by Jason Calacanis. I didn’t get a chance to attend the summit but maybe next year. Jason Calacanis co-founder of Weblogs which made headlines last years after selling to AOL, quoted like this

“Affiliate marketing is bullshit. Thank you.” and “Anyone here from PayPerPost? You need to kill yourself. I’m kidding. Well, I wouldn’t mind it if you did.”

This is his stunt to gain popularity which I think is not ethical blaming affiliate marketers as spammers.

We affiliate marketers toil hard to be successful making money online through affiliate marketing need determination and handwork and we are proud in doing that. Jason if you think affiliate marketing is all about spamming then why big companies like Amazon, Yahoo and Microsoft all offer these affiliate programs.

Attacking Super affiliate like Shoemoney & Zac Johnson about posting their high earned checks on their website is just jealousness on part of Jason or just trying to get cheap attention. For an average affiliate marketer it is inspiration and hopes to make money online.

Read other bloggers who wrote about his remarks are affiliate summit 08

Jason Calacanis Doesn’t Understand Affiliate Marketers

My Thoughts on Jason Calacanis…

Jason Calacanis Keynote at Affiliate Summit

Jason Calacanis Keynote Recap (Affiliate Summit)

Jason Calacanis keynote at Affiliate Summit West 08

Jason Calacanis Insults Affiliate Summit Attendees, Says They Pollute the Internet

Hear the Controversial Jason Calacanis Summit Keynote

The bottom-line is what ever Jason Calacanis intention is affiliate marketing is the only opportunity out there for anyone who can make a living online rather than dreaming of becoming next Bill Gates or a dream job at Silicon Valley.

Most people when they think of website promotion, they think about search engine marketing. But actually there are different ways to promote a website without depending on just search engines to get targeted traffic. All you need to do is thinking in a creative way, try innovative ideas and different way how to promote it. Online Marketing is not just all about SEO it is all about Creative Marketing. If you can do it right, there is more waiting for your website to come out of sandbox, link popularity and dependency on Search Engines.

I have put together 25 different ways on how to promote your website online absolutely free.

1) Web Content optimization – Content is key to any website. If you website is optimized for search engine it will definitely going to be noticed and started getting traffic and links.

2) Link Building – Links are so crucial for online visibility not only to the search engine eyes but link from good relevant sites can bring you targeted traffic and get noticed.

3) Article Distribution – Article syndication is one of the best and cheapest way to promote your website. There are hundreds of article directories out there to promote.

4) Online Press Releases -Online Press Release or press statement is a perfect way to attract media attention or publicity for products and services of your business.

5) Freebies – Giveaways and Freebies can attract a lot of attention as well as links from other websites. If you can create a unique tool or useful free product online it can get noticed and drive traffic to your site.

6) Unique Ad Creation – Pay Per Click Campaign is all about how you create a good ad, the more unique the better, A well written ad gets attention of the search engine visitors and will click on your ad.

7) List Building Email promotion – List building or email list building is a good way to bring visitors to your website, if you provide a newsletter subscription or free advice on your niche you have the right to ask for the visitors email address and name which can be used for future promotions.

Blogging – Blogging is a newest buzz word out there every business are getting into this new web2.0 marketing technique. Blog commonly knows as web logs where visitors can engage in a conversation.

9) Sponsored Reviewing – A review about your website is another way to promote your website or blog. There are several blogs and website that does this.

10) Commenting – Comments on review sites and blogs is a another way to do a promotion. If you comment and engage in a conversation in blogs which is relevant to your industry chances people will visit your website.

11) Social Media – This is the new craze among marketers Place like Facebook, Myspace, digg and stumbleupon can bring in tons of traffic if you promote it properly.

12) Online Contests – Facilitate and run contests on your website can get viral if people willing to participate in contest will spread the word through their website and blogs.

13) Forum Posting – This is the place where like minded people hang around, So to get noticed you need to engage in threads asking question and answers related to your topic.

14) Video Marketing – Videos are an effective way to promote your website. If you can broadcast relevant videos related to your industry visitors will folk to your website.

15) Affiliate Marketing – affiliate, reseller, and associate programs will allow your products and services to be listed on other websites which increases sales.

16) Mobile Media Marketing – can be mobile advertising, mobile search, mobile messaging, ring tones… and this is still in its early stages.

17) E-books Marketing – E-book marketing is a great way to achieve popularity of your website, If you can offer free tips and ideas via e-Books which can be downloaded for free it can create a viral effect.

18) Joint Venture - Same Target Customers and Partner Up With other online marketers who share the same niche you can sell your products to their list as well visa verse. But doing joint ventures you can get targeted traffic.

19) Banner Advertisements – One of the oldest forms of online advertisement to get noticed online still it works if you can create a eye-catching banner ad.

20) Sponsored Links – Search Engines hate this but still you can get a sponsored link weather it is do follow or no follow on high traffic relevant website it is a great way to promote a website.

21) Testimonials – A strong guarantee makes it safe for prospects to give you a try. A customer who is indecisive about your product or service may go ahead and give you a try if there’s no risk. The guarantee will push many customers “over the edge” when there’s doubt about making the purchase.

22) Podcasting – Podcasting your website content is another way to promote your website. Your digital media files which are distributed over the web would be downloaded into media players and listeners will follow your website.

23) Classified Ads – Classified ads online through Craigslist.com, usfreeads.com, Squidoo, Hubpages is another way to promote your website.

24) Local Search – If you website is local based then you can submit you Local Search databases like Google, Yahoo and MSN local as well as other local directories.

25) Interviews – Finally if you an expert in your niche you can offer interviews in different websites and blog which will give more exposure to your website.

Hope these techniques if implemented in your online marketing to-do list you can see success in your online venture and also I think this atleast motivates you to start. If you feel that there are other different ways please, feel free to comment.

Promoting affiliate website is quite expensive if you have a brand new one and also when the affiliate marketers are on a shoe string marketing budget. Promoting affiliate offers is expensive and also if not done correctly you can burn your hard earned money very soon. Getting a free advertisement for an affiliate marketing website is like a getting a jump start. This free advertisement doesn’t come for free actually I mean you need to put effort to enjoy success with these free promotion strategy.

First you need to find a good affiliate product to offer where you think you can generate unique content. After creating the website and adding affiliate link here are some of the places you can promote your website on a free.

Hubpages - At Hubpages you can create a page for yourself about what ever niche you want to have and can create a number of pages. As an affiliate marketer you can create a separate page of each offer the best things about Hubpages are you can put your affiliate link on these pages along with the offer as well as can drive traffic to your affiliate marketing site, this also helps in search engine optimization since these links from pages you created in Hubpages is relevant.

Squidoo – Squidoo pages works in similar manner like Hubpages where you can create separate pages, can have affiliate links embedded inside these pages also can sell stuffs and eBooks from click bank which is relevant to your niche. Squidoo pages are ranked very well in search engine results this will help you a lot to start of your affiliate marketing even with no money all you need is time and effort.

Craigslist.org is a high traffic site with different categories placing an ad on these pages won’t cost you. If you can create a well converting ad this will help you to get traffic to your affiliate marketing offer site. But this process is time consume because Craigslist pages update on a regular basis so you need to place ads on the site very often but it is worth the effort because of tons of traffic coming through that site.

US Free ads – works similar like Craigslist but the free advertisement has limitation you need to get a subscription to upgrade where you can have more features to your advertisements.

EzineArticles – Marketing online is all about content; EzineArticles accepts well written articles into their several categories. If you can write well informative articles about your affiliate niche in these articles you will get a very good page view but the only draw back is it won’t allow you to have affiliate link embedded into the article. But you have a resource link about the author where you can place up to three URLs you can utilize this opportunity to link to your web page where you are promoting the affiliate offer. It takes time and effort but you get a very good exposure as well as these pages rank very well in search engine results.