The Bounce Rate of your website is the traffic statistic that can be very upsetting. Basically, it’s the measurement of how many people have arrived to your site, only to leave immediately, within seconds. In essence, they arrive and bounce off to another site or close the window. This is one of the statistics that you want to be low. In Google Analytics, for example, it shows you a percentage figure overall, but you can dig down and see the Bounce Rate of more detailed statistics that are explained in more details below.

One thing you can count on is that if you have a very high bounce rate, something is wrong with your site that needs attention. This could be one major thing or a series of small things combined that turn off the visitor at first glance quick enough that they do not even want to give your content a chance. It could be the content, the advertising, poor navigation, or several other things.

One thing to keep in mind is that not every Bounce means the same thing, and it’s important to dig deeper into your site analytics to help find the root of the problem.

The following are a couple of tips in how to get to the bottom of your Bounce Rate problem.

Explore single page bounce rates
Starting with your home page of your site, you can begin to dig down and check out the bounce rate for each page. Since not every visitor will be landing on your home page, you might have a few   ad things happening on single pages that are increasing your overall bounce rate. You also will want to check which keyword phrases visitors are searching to land on the pages. You might be ranking for keywords that are completely irrelevant to your site and therefor they realize quickly they hit the wrong place and Bounce.

Bounce rate for specific keywords
Since you’ll be checking out keywords anyway when you’re monitoring the pages, you might as well use your data to take a peek at what keywords have the highest bounce rate. You can view that separately in Google Analytics and can be very powerful information.

]]> http://trafficbuildingmachine.com/featured-articles/what-is-your-bounce-rate/feed/ http://trafficbuildingmachine.com/featured-articles/what-is-keyword-density/ http://trafficbuildingmachine.com/featured-articles/what-is-keyword-density/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:14:53 +0000 admin http://trafficbuildingmachine.com/?p=24

Keyword density is a measurement of the number of times a particular keyword appears on one of your website pages. However, it’s just as important that you do not overuse the keywords by “stuffing” your page with that keyword. Google is smarter than you, so don’t bother. If you repeat a specific keyword phrase every second or third line, then you will likely be rejected by Google (and other search engines) and sent to the back of the line with the spammers.

The idea is to use keyword density strategically, but make it look natural.

For example, let’s say you have 100 words on your website page and your keyword phrase appears 5 times throughout those 100 words. To calculate the keyword density, you simply divide the number of times the keyword appears (5) by the number of words that appear on the page (100). When you divide 5 by 100, you get 0.05. because we want a percentage, we multiply 0.05 x 100 and that gives us 5% in this example.

The general accepted keyword density is between 3% and 5% for your keyword phrase. Below 3% you may not be getting the search engine juice you could be, and above 5% might raise a red flag.

Remember to apply the keyword density rule to every page on your website.

If you want to check the keyword density in one of your articles, you can do so with a word processing application such as Microsoft Word.  Simply use the word count tool to determine the total word count of th article. Now that you have the total word count, use the find+replace tool to search your keyword. When you enter the replace field, enter the same keyword so when you click replace, you won’t actually edit your article. But, what you will do determine how many times the keyword appears in the article because the tool will tell you how many times it replaced your keyword.

Alternatively if you article is already online, you can use this free online keyword density tool.

When you’re building traffic to your website, there really is never and ending point. Even if you’re ranked number one in search results for several of your most relevant keywords, there are always things you can monitor and continue to do to ensure your rankings increase and/or remain high.

Here is a traffic building list of basic principles to follow:

• Filling your site with valuable content is always a winner, and should be a top priority.
• Research keywords that are relevant to your niche, products, and/or services. Use the ones that are actively being searched based on your findings. Don’t guess!
• Use keywords efficiently by placing them within the page title, the first 25 words of your article, and about 3-5% throughout the article.
• Keep the site design and navigation simple so that visitors can easily find their way around, have a pleasant experience and feel confident in buying from you. This also helps in word of mouth referrals and getting reviews, etc.
• Submit your articles to social bookingmarkng sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. on a regular basis. Remember, it’s not just your main home page that gets ranked, it’s every page. Use a free tool like Social Marker to speed up the process of submitting to several at once.
• Keep an eye on the competition. Are your competitors out-ranking you? Monitor their site, articles, and seo tactics and find out what they are doing that you’re not.
• Use Analytics to your advantage. Google Analytics is a poerful tool that shows you an enormous amount of information about your website traffic like where they came from, how long they stayed, what page they were on when they left, and tons more.
• Give your visitors a reason to remember you. Have them sign up to a free newsletter, give away a free report, run contests, etc.
• Long gone are the days when your online presence was a static brochure. You need a dynamic presence and interaction with your customers through video, twitter, and other means.

Traffic building requires kewyord research so that you know which keywords are being searched the most in your niche and which ones you should target based on your site and your competition. Once you have those keywords, one of the most important places to use them than in the title of your pages and articles.

Not only will search engines use the titles of your site and pages as a major factor in ranking your site, but it is also what they use as a title for your listing in the search results.

If you have a multi-page site and not just a single one-page static website, then it’s important to remember that every page of your site needs to be optimized for search engines using the keyword phrases you’d like to rank for. Single pages show up in search results and not just your home page.

The most common mistake that businesses make when starting out online is placing their business name at the top of every page in their website and nothing else. You want to add the keyword phrase that you want to rank for in the title tag, the title of the article and at least one heading tag (<h1></h1>). This is how you visitors will find you through search engines. In fact, most won’t even care about your business name until after they read about your services anyway.

While it may seem natural to want your business name in the title of your site pages, it’s important to realize that in order to get organic search traffic (visitors who find you through searching a keyword relevant to your business), you need to take advantage of the title space by putting in keywords.

For example, let’s say you had a design firm in Seattle and the name of it was Eye Candy Design. After doing some research, you might find that there are a lot of local people searching with the phrase “Seattle web design”. So, in order to try and show up in rankings for that phrase, put “Seattle Web Design” in your titles. Get the idea? Go get ‘em!

]]> http://trafficbuildingmachine.com/traffic-building-101/using-keywords-in-your-page-titles/feed/ http://trafficbuildingmachine.com/traffic-building-101/what-is-seo-search-engine-optimization/ http://trafficbuildingmachine.com/traffic-building-101/what-is-seo-search-engine-optimization/#comments Tue, 02 Jun 2009 23:43:24 +0000 admin http://trafficbuildingmachine.com/?p=16

Search Engine Optimization is basically the process of making your website search-engine-friendly in order to increase it’s ranking for it’s most relevant keywords. This way, when your visitors searches the keywords you want to rank for, they are more likely to end up on your site and buy your product or click your ads and affiliate links.

There are several things involved from very basic things that take a couple minutes to advanced seo tactics that can be ongoing over a period of months or even years.

The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN. These “big three” (as well as others) all keep their search and ranking algorithms a secret so that they can deter spammers from clogging up their results. So, we basically go by experience over years of what’s worked best for seo expertes and successful Internet marketers.

The two very basic seo tactics that are well known and definitely are needed in order to rank are:

1. Keyword research/content
Using content that is keyword-rich is a very important part of seo and your website’s success. After using a tool like Google’s Free Keyword Tool to research relevant keywords associated with your niche’s products, services, it is important to use the heavily searched keywords in your titles, articles, etc. For instance, if you had a fishing site and found that “bass fishing advice” was a highly searched term with low competition, you would write an article using that phrase in the title, and about 3-5% of the time throughout the article.

2. Backlinks
A backlink is basically a link from another site back to your site. You want to get as many backlinks as possible from popular sites that are also relevant to your niche. using the example above, you might want to get backlinks from other fishing sites. Using the keyword research again, you’ll want to link back using your keyword. So, in that case, you’d ask to have a link back to your site as “bass fishing advice”, instead of the url, or some other phrase.

If you don’t have the time and/or knowledg to research keywords for your niche, then it might be a good idea to hire someone to do that for you, or at least to help you out. there are also many free resources on the subject available via blogs and ebooks if you search “keyword research”.

You also have the option of hiring an SEO company to do ongoing work for you, but beware of scammers and overpricing. Be sure to compare prices and speak to several people before going that route.

Whichever you decide, know that SEO is a very important part of your website’s success.

The search engines are what brings your product or service together with the hungry buyer that’s looking for exactly what you have to offer. We take it for granted at this point, but think about how powerful a search engine like Google is for your business. When someone types in a search phrase with a problem they have, a search engine will sift through literally millions of results and give provide the top results that (may) contain a solution for that problem. On top of that, it’s virtually instant.

It’s important to realize that on average, a visitor will only scan the first two or three results before clicking one so it crucial to rank well for relevant keywords in your niche.

Search engines send more visitors to sites than any other methods, so you simply have to spend time and effort ranking well on them. Keyword phrases are the most important part of your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts, and outweigh any advertising methods if you can gain heavy exposure, because it’s free and highly targeted traffic.

Research finds that most people find what they’re looking for, especially a product or service, by typing a phrase into a search engine first, far ahead of referral links and/or word of mouth. One survey estimated that search engines make up almost 90% of traffic online.

Every search engine uses a ranking algorithm that is kept secret to avoid spammers ruining genuine results. So, it’s good practice to use your keywords efficiently, but naturally throughout your articles, titles, and other SEO efforts. Trying to game the search engines may work for a short term, but you will always lose out in the end. With the importance of search engines and traffic building, it’s important to do it the right way in order to be successful long term.

To boost web traffic means to get qualified  visitors to your site that will purchase what you are selling. Implementing six specific methods will do just that for you.

Community: Create your own group that will follow what you are doing by having great links and content on your website. When you interesting content on your website, you will form a following of other websites that want to associate their site with yours.

Referrals: Have your site visitors refer your site by having comments on the site such as “Refer our website to a friend” or “link to our website” to increase the traffic to your site. There are free scripts available that allow webmasters to easily link your site to theirs. Offer your site visitors free items including eBooks, software, and additional information on your products.

Blogs: Once thought of as a fad, blogs have now become a huge method that boosts traffic to websites. Writing regularly on a relevant blog will help increase both referrals and organic search traffic. Include the link to your site, which then is recognized by Google, MSN, and Yahoo! when internet users input keywords into the search engine.

Podcasting: The next upcoming method of advertising and generating traffic includes podcasting your website. This new craze is really catching on fast with the electronic whirlwind of the world. Make money with your site by using MP3 messages that can easily be downloaded to the podcasts. It is a new channel of distribution that you can take advantage of easily.

Sitemap: Use a XML sitemap for your website and submit it to Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. The sitemap will increase the traffic by allowing the search engines to spider your content on the website. The sitemap allows internet users to load your website faster and more efficiently so use the free tools on the internet to boost your traffic.

Domain name: Have a domain name that is easy to remember and enter into the address bar as well as a spefici keyword phrase that you are targeting.  When the domain name is easy, including the spelling, it makes reaching the website easier, which is one thing every internet user demands. They do not like the odd names and/or long domains. Think about how you want to be able to quickly access a site by using a simple and short domain name. Use this for your domain and you will boost the traffic to your site by making your website user-friendly. On the other hand, you can target organic search engine traffic by having a specific keyword as your domain name (i.e; spaldingtennisrackets.com)

Using these six steps to increase your website traffic will make your business prosperous. You will see the improvement when you utilize the changes to your site with the simple steps that are being used by many businesses on the internet.