Ten Tips to Increase Website Traffic Without Any Expense

Several months ago, Katie Baird of Loose Ends (www.looseends.net) was my guest on the topic of Websites & Search Engine Optimization. Katie offered us a special price for her book, Web Development Guide for Entrepreneurs and Do-It-Yourselfers.

I took her up on her kind offer and found this eBook to be full of fabulous resources and ideas. Of course, it also made me realize I am NOT a Web Development DIY! However, there are several things I know to do regularly, to help increase my rankings at the major search engines.

Here are 10 simple ways to improve your search engine rankings with little to no expense (depending on whether or not you’re a do-it-yourselfer or have website support and maintenance done by a Virtual Assistant (VA), or in-house staffer/IT Support.). I hope you find them helpful.

Schedule regular updates/changes of information on your main website pages. This activity spiders out to search engines to let them know something’s happening at your site.
Add resources and links to other sites, even affiliate sites where you can make a second income stream would be helpful. It also brings attention to your site.
Update or add keywords and meta tags. Search your niche and see what pops up, ask your clients what words they might use in a search engine if they were looking for you. They may come up with words you hadn’t even thought of.
Add features such as a newsletter subscribe or survey questions. Rotating survey questions is a great way to bring visitors back again and again.
Use your website in your marketing pieces. Write articles that would be of interest to your clients and include the URL on the print or electronic marketing piece to drive more traffic to your site.
Create private areas of your website where clients can login and retrieve projects or files.
Add a blog, or connect to your site from your blog, to increase search engine rankings.
Find out what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can be done manually and set a regular schedule each week, or several times a month to increase your rankings at major search engines.
If you get an article published, post a link to it somewhere on your website, or include your website URL in the article so that people will have easy access to your site.
Include your website URL on your letterhead, business cards, online directories, and anywhere else you can reasonably post it.

If you incorporate several of these tips into your regular website maintenance, you’re sure to see your numbers grow.

Jeannine Clontz, owner of Accurate Business Services, a VA practice, is an author, writer, speaker and VA Business Coach specializing in providing professional business coaching to established and start-up virtual assistants (VA’s). .For more visit: http://www.VAbizcoach.com; or coach@VAbizcoach.com.