Huntsville Web Design & Online Marketing by NMT

If you answered by saying getting my site ranked number one, you are not alone.
I would be willing to bet that most of us would answer it the same way. Is that wrong?
No, but I think people need to look at the bigger picture.
You want traffic, the more traffic you have the better your chances are at gaining a customer. While being ranked number one will generate traffic, the main thing you should look at is follow through.

What is follow through?
Basically it is the percentage of your traffic that went to another page on your site. If you had 100 hits and only 2% went to another page then you have a problem. That means that 98 people probably went to another site. You need to find out why and correct it.

I like to make things simple, so look at it this way. You have a store and 100 people walk in and then immediately walk out.  The stats show 100 people came in, but what have you gained? Absolutely nothing.
Why do you think people ask if they can help you find something, they do not want you to leave.

SEO is not just about getting your site ranked high, it is about getting people to your site and keeping them there.

We get asked all the time for web entrepreneurial tips and resources. We hear it so often that it seems we should include a section in our newsletter called "Web Entrepreneurial Tips and Resources". Soooooo, we will, be on the look out for them!

Of course there are jillions (technical term for a bunch) of resources on the web, some free and some not so free - some accurate and some not so accurate, where one can research and understand "what's going on". Well as promised to a few folks at lunch today, here is the site I think should be at the very top of your favorites list/bookmarks (how's that for being browser agnostic) - http://www.clickz.com/.

OK, here's the boiled-down skinny on having folks link to your site:

One of the best ways (and FREE) to rise in search engine results is to have folks with high site ranks linking to you. It's like they're vouching for you saying "oh yeah, him ... he's with me."

But ... link exchanging has been around since the beginning of the internet and folks are TIRED TIRED TIRED of being nagged about "adding my link." However, if done right, personally and for pertinent reasons - exchanging links could be what helps you float to the top of Google search rankings.

Here's another video by Sage at WebMarketingWatch.com - he talks through some of these things in plain, and sometimes a tad sarchastic, language. Enjoy, but we take no responsibility for his attitude :) - SJ

Developing and evolving your keyword search term list is one of the most fundamental things you should do to drive traffic to your site.

Brainstorming with your staff and business associates is a good place to start. Knowing your industry, customers, language/terminologies, and cultures are initial enablers to building an initial keyword search list.

There are also professional research tools such as WordTracker and Trellian which provide leading keyword search term competitive intelligence. On a do-it-yourself budget, then tools such as 7Search are freely available.

Once you have a keyword search term list built, now it's time to evaluate and determine the perceived relevance to your customers. This is not a stick a flag in the ground we're done job, but rather a continual process of staying in tune with the ever-changing mood, language, and trends of your customers.

An NMT SmartSite puts you in complete daily control over your web business making it easy for you to update your pages at anytime with keyword search terms. Something new, hot or exciting going on in your business domain, update your SmartSite and the search engine traffic will come.