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Help for increasing site traffic for online journalism class?
03-24-2014, 04:18 PM
Post: #1
Help for increasing site traffic for online journalism class?
I'm taking a class in online journalism, and as marketing manager I'm supposed to bring more traffic in. What are the best ways to do this? Our site is:
http://whshatchet.com/
if that helps to answer the question
also you could include anything we can improve on

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03-24-2014, 04:28 PM
Post: #2
 
Dear Alice,

Welcome to the world of Search Engine Marketing (SEM).

Regarding increasing traffic, the first and most important part of the equation is to ensure your site has strong foundations—otherwise, the building will collapse one day or later.

In order to build long-lasting traffic from search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask), it's very important to do your homework—or make sure you did it right—, as follows:

—1. The minimum you can't ignore—

You can't improve what you can't measure. I saw that that your website traffic is monitored thanks to Google Analytics tracking code. So it is important not to be merely contemplative in front of the vital signs of your site (e.g., number of visits, referring sites, keywords searched) but proactive by analyzing all the data gathered.

Also, make sure search engines are fully aware of your site and pages by managing proactively the relationship with them, by registering your site to Google Webmaster Tools, which will allow you to see how Google sees your sites, be notified of errors Google's crawler has detected, and recommendations on how to fix them. For more info, see the best answer I gave to the question "How to add your webpage to search engine?" at http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...127AAsLQdB

—2. Building good foundations for global search—

Implement search engine optimization (SEO) best practices to meet demand (visitors' searches) with an offer (unique content). Read the self-explanatory "Google's SEO Starter Guide" at http://www.google.com/support/webmasters...swer=35291

This handbook includes, among other best practices:

—Identifying relevant topics through analysis of searched keywords
—Leveraging the right keywords in your pages (e.g., title, description metatags)
—Writing content on identified relevant topics

IMPORTANT NOTE—Take a closer look at your website through the lens of the Google's SEO Starter Guide to find out where you can improve it—e.g., I've found that your pages are currently missing the description meta tag (which is displayed in search result snippet to entice people to click), and that keyword density for important keyword combinations is too low). For instance your site, among other redhibitory errors, doesn't have any <h1> tag implemented and images are not optimized (all these errors are discussed in the Google SEO Starter Guide that will help you find more).

—3. Connecting with your audience directly where it is—

Leverage social media. Saw you use Twitter, great. Create an account in other platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, and make others know about your website/blog, and keep up the good work by making all of them grow. Search forums—the most overlooked social place—for post related to your business. Bookmark your site for specific topics/tags in sharing platforms like Digg and Delicious. You can also add the ShareThis widget to your site as a wrap of all the social features enumerated above.


Once you start making your website more search engine friendly (on-site and off-site), you will start reaping benefit from it.


—Pascal Perry
Online Findability and SEO Strategist
.

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