how can I drive traffic to my website www.atptechnology.net

Tapiwa Mavhunga 30 Nov 2010 12:15:22 PM Report Abuse

In 1998, promoting your business web site was a very easy process. You placed 3 lines of code called "meta tags" on the top of your home page and submitted the page to free search engines or directories. Fast forward to the present.

Web site promotion has become a time consuming project and a new position in the web design industry, Search Engine Consultants, has been created. Use the list below to find ways that your business web site will be found by your ideal client, is user friendly and is visited often.

1. Build a strong, solid business foundation. Design a business plan, marketing plan, ideal client profile and 30-second elevator speech.

2. Be consistent and “brand” your company. Use the same colors, logo, motto, etc. everywhere on your business web site!

3. Make your business web site trustable.

4. Create policies that build trust: customer service, code of ethics and newsletter privacy policy.

5. Ask your web master to name each of your pages using a keyword you have supplied them with.

6. Offer added values on your business web site that make sense to your business and ideal client. This can include affiliate programs, books, and recommended links to web sites.

7. Add a “favorites or bookmark this site” script to some of your business web site pages.

8. Add a "Recommend This Site" on your site. If someone visits your business Web site and knows someone else who may appreciate it, this feature will e-mail the page's link to a recipient.

9. If you have pages on your business web site that you update monthly (like an articles page or recommended links page) say so on the page.

10. Join a few Web rings. For additional information, visit WebRing and Bravenet.

11. Provide a subscription box, to your e-zine or business announcement list, on your most viewed business web site pages.

12. On large business web sites, create a "What's New Page" or even better, ask your web designer to design a "Site Map" for your visitors.

13. Search engines look for certain things - titles, headings, meta tags - so it is crucial to make sure your site is "search engine friendly". Visit the Search Engine Optimization and Submission page on this site for additional resources on search engines and search engine submission tips.

a. TITLE tags: Title tags should be 60 or so characters and include some keywords.

b. Header tags are numbered from 1 to 7: some search engines recognize Header tags. So make sure you use these tags for each of the titles on your page.

c. Keyword Meta tags: Add no more than 15 to 20 keywords to keep the search engines from flagging your site for keyword spamming. Prioritize your words. The best way to submit to search engines is to submit to each search engine individually.

d. Use keywords in the text area of each page. They are especially important at the beginning of sentences and higher up on the page.

e. To learn more about meta tags and choosing keywords, read "Effective Search Engine Optimization" (from About Small Business: Canada).

14. Search engines do not find your site unless you submit your site's information to them. Below are four ways to submit your Web site to search engines:

a. It is recommended that you submit to search engines individually (this is also the way I do it and it works great, but is time consuming)!

b. Since some people prefer to use a free service to submit their sites to search engines, I recommend that they open a free e-mail address to use when you do "anything" for free on the World Wide Web. Two good search engine submission services are Submit It!, and Scrub The Web. You can pay for a program that will assist you to submit and critique your site such as WebPosition Gold.

c. Hire a Search Engine Optimization Expert to handle your search engine submissions.

15. Visit these search engine information sites: Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Guide.

Making sure your business web site is search engine friendly is only one aspect of Web site promotion. Here are some other web site promotion tips:

16. Find easy and secure ways for your clients to pay you. A shopping cart and a secure way to accept checks and/or credit cards work very well.

17. Check your business web site's links regularly to make sure they all work. Use a free link checker such as Xenu's Link Sleuth.

18. Provide monthly chats or bulletin boards (forums) to build relationships and community.

19. Conduct periodic contests and announce the winners on your site.

20. Offer a free e-book or e-report on your site. Its size doesn’t matter if you’re providing it for free and it’s specifically for your ideal client. Provide permission for the e-book to be forwarded to others for their personal use.

21. Write articles, post them to your business Web site, and submit them to article banks.

22. Design some quizzes or surveys. Statistics show that visitors love quizzes and assessment tools.

23. Participate in online forums as an expert. You get to "quietly" promote your business in your three or four line signature.

24. Place your business web site address on all your printed literature -- business cards, brochures, newsletters, letterhead, e-mail signature, ads - everything!!

25. Promote your web address in your signature for e-mails (change it regularly to highlight something new you're promoting).

26. Teach classes or speak to groups about subjects relating to your products.

27. Network locally to bring people to your site.

28. “Permission Market” by gathering, in writing, the e-mail addresses of students, or an audience as part of your evaluation forms. Create index cards so that you can invite your friends, networking partners or associates to join your list. Keep any papers involved in this process for at least a year or two.

29. When your business web site is launched, updated, or you write a free e-book, send a Press Release to the media, your clients, and friends and associates, too.

30. Want to know more about Internet Marketing? Visit this Internet Marketing Index at Internet.com's Interactive Marketing Channel.

31. If this list of web site promotion ideas seems overwhelming, visit your favorite search engine to conduct a search for Search Engine Optimizers and Consultants or ask others who they use and would recommend.

Computerizing Organizations

I have been consulting for the last 5 years in different areas of the economy in the country that I am living right now and have observed a number of areas that need attention but have not been granted that.

Computers are an integral part of every business for record keeping purposes and easy reference to information at a later stage. But the opposite is true in most organization because they still believe in the hard copies for their filing documents. It is like this because most of these organizations have the old way of storing information in files since the beginning and hence the management is afraid to keep the records on the computers. Some organizations are very resistant to this change such that they will not accept such change in their way of doing business. Others are not that computer literate such that they do not know the functions that these computers have hence they would rather use only what they know and would not want to invest in the new technology.

Be it a Bank, Engineering firm, a hospital they all require computers to run efficiently but these organization still have a phobia of saying that they have a filing system that is working enough for them to succeed hence they do not want to have this new technology. Imagine when you go to a hospital for them to identify you they have to have your card that they were writing last time to know your history but if there is a system that would make them just punch in your name and your medical history comes out it would help. Most of these industries say that they have a fear that the system that suite their industries have not been developed or they are very expensive to purchase.

Specialized systems are there and can be expensive but also they are systems that can be developed by using applications like Microsoft Excel or Access that are very powerful and yet costs very less. These systems developed are user friendly and usually very easy to administer but managements usually are afraid to adopt them for security purposes.

I suppose that to computerize our organization in this world we can start off by making sure we have small systems that are easy to administer as much as possible then from there we can integrate all these function into one complex one.

For example just a job call or reception staff are suppose to check into their logs and see if there is a job posted to them and assign a support person to attend to them and if its computerized it can be very y cheap but if not it involves telephone calls and faxing or other time consuming process but if computerized the client can log in to a system and describe the problem in detail and there can also be history of such jobs that were attended previously to give the client more options or the support person more ways to solve such a problem. This would half the problem.

What would you wait for to computerize your organization? You can do it now or you will be left behind with this technology and wake up one day your business not profitable any more.

Alois T Chanakira is the chairman of ATP technologies a web hosting company www.atptechnology.net. For any domains that you would like to purchase visit their web site.

Alois T Chanakira is a holder of a diploma in information technology and a webmaster to a number of websites. He started website development in 2004 and has grown from strength to strength with the years. Below is a list of some of the websites he has created

http://www.atptechnology.net

Computerizing Organizations

I have been consulting for the last 5 years in different areas of the economy in the country that I am living right now and have observed a number of areas that need attention but have not been granted that.

Computers are an integral part of every business for record keeping purposes and easy reference to information at a later stage. But the opposite is true in most organization because they still believe in the hard copies for their filing documents. It is like this because most of these organizations have the old way of storing information in files since the beginning and hence the management is afraid to keep the records on the computers. Some organizations are very resistant to this change such that they will not accept such change in their way of doing business. Others are not that computer literate such that they do not know the functions that these computers have hence they would rather use only what they know and would not want to invest in the new technology.

Be it a Bank, Engineering firm, a hospital they all require computers to run efficiently but these organization still have a phobia of saying that they have a filing system that is working enough for them to succeed hence they do not want to have this new technology. Imagine when you go to a hospital for them to identify you they have to have your card that they were writing last time to know your history but if there is a system that would make them just punch in your name and your medical history comes out it would help. Most of these industries say that they have a fear that the system that suite their industries have not been developed or they are very expensive to purchase.

Specialized systems are there and can be expensive but also they are systems that can be developed by using applications like Microsoft Excel or Access that are very powerful and yet costs very less. These systems developed are user friendly and usually very easy to administer but managements usually are afraid to adopt them for security purposes.

I suppose that to computerize our organization in this world we can start off by making sure we have small systems that are easy to administer as much as possible then from there we can integrate all these function into one complex one.

For example just a job call or reception staff are suppose to check into their logs and see if there is a job posted to them and assign a support person to attend to them and if its computerized it can be very y cheap but if not it involves telephone calls and faxing or other time consuming process but if computerized the client can log in to a system and describe the problem in detail and there can also be history of such jobs that were attended previously to give the client more options or the support person more ways to solve such a problem. This would half the problem.

What would you wait for to computerize your organization? You can do it now or you will be left behind with this technology and wake up one day your business not profitable any more.

Alois T Chanakira is the chairman of ATP technologies a web hosting company www.atptechnology.net. For any domains that you would like to purchase visit their web site.

Alois T Chanakira is a holder of a diploma in information technology and a webmaster to a number of websites. He started website development in 2004 and has grown from strength to strength with the years. Below is a list of some of the websites he has created

http://www.atptechnology.net