Internet Marketing and Promotion: Website Optimization.

This lesson looks at ways of increasing the popularity of your website by looking at theinternal optimization of the website itself. It considers many important ways of building your traffic, including Search Engine Optimization (SEO) approaches.

Build your traffic.

Content is king. Write good quality content that visitors value and that keeps them coming back. This is a golden rule. Try to make sure that you have substantial content before putting your site online. No site is better than one that is poorly prepared. Make the content easy to read and digest. Keep it focused upon keywords, and keep content up-to-date. Remember, your site is not an online brochure or gimmicky sales promotion. On the other hand, in order to save the trouble, many companies simply employ the services of an SEO Consultant.

Your domain name should be innovative and does not necessarily have to say what your site does. For example British Airways has an online ticket websites called Opodo.com.

When building the site, keep the design simple. Flash, Java and Javascript look great but have been known to confuse spiders. Keep It Short and Simple (KISS). Remember that not all visitors will have fast Internet connections - much of The World still uses 56k modems.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is important. This will help search engines to read your pages. There are many ways to do this - try to include keywords in your title, in your description tag, in your heading tag, in your URL (if possible), and some would also say try to represent your keyword in content - in bold, in italics, and high in the page.

Word density - your keyword should not represent more than 20% of your total wordage.

Try to link between your pages. This is call 'cross linking.' So if one of your pages attracts high numbers of visitors through search engine, then link to less exposed pages around your site. Then add links to the top pages of your site a.k.a. 'root' pages. Try not to be more than two clicks away from root pages. This makes it easier for visitors to stick around.

Submit to search engines where you can. However this is becoming more difficult. Today it is more likely that the search engines will find you - when you obtain in links, spiders and bots will come through your site as they follow outbound links form other sites. You could also try to get listed in directories such as DMOZ.

Once your site is online monitor its progress. This is how you control your online presence. You need a stats package that monitors every detail of your site's logs including inbound links, keyword searches, page views, visitor number (rather than hits), and page popularity - data needs to be available for every day of the year.

Links To your site - especially form higher-ranking sites - are very important. Links need to be from sites that have similar keywords to those of your pages. This is time consuming and you need to build slowly. Contact sites and offer to exchange links. Links in text are better that stand alone URL's, so put links from your site in paragraphs of text that allow visitors to click on them as they read you content. However, try not to offer too many outbound links because visitors need to be kept on your site as long as possible.

Alternative strategies could include:

• Encourage other sites to reprint your content (with credit given to you, and links back to your main site).
• Post information about your site in communities, forums and chat groups.
• Set up your own affiliate programme, and pay commission.
• Encourage visitors to bookmark your site.
• Create a mailing list, and send newsletters. Betters still, create a dynamic site that encompasses a CRM strategy.
• Hire professionals to code your site, and to manage Search Engine Optimization (SEO).