Copywriting 911

Do you like psychological tests? I bet you do. Even if sometimes the tasks seem completely stupid and the results evidently far-fetched, psychological tests or surveys remain a popular entertainment for many people. So, you might like to pass yet another one:

The Implicit Association Test

When you see/hear the word traffic what association do you have?

a) you visualize a busy street in a rush hour, taxis beeping, pedestrians hurrying to cross the street at the red lights, and your poor car standing in a jam;

b) you can’t but think that the stuff will be supplied tomorrow and you should keep it on the low;

c) the only thing that bothers you is your website and its unbelievably low traffic.

Traffic should be:

a) calm;

b) clandestine;

c) the higher the better.

Now check out the results.

All the chosen points are a): you may be a driver.

In your answers b) prevailed: you may be a drug dealer.

You’ve selected only c): the easiest one – you are a website owner.

You’ve spent restless nights creating a unique competitive site, you’ve worn white and black hats in turn or both at once, yet everything seems to be in vain. That nasty traffic doesn’t want to flow. It prefers to stream around your site making your life a misery, coming as a nightmare when you’re asleep and as low SERP ratings when you are awake. Hey, here is a little consolation prize for you, don’t give up! Try these

11 Steps to Increase Your Traffic

At least you’ll know you’ve tried 😉

1. Squeeze all you can out of on-page optimization. Choose a memorable (non-hyphenated-?) domain name, use carefully selected (long-tailed) keywords, optimize the title and meta description tags, create unique and useful content and see that it is regularly updated… Improve navigation; pretty sure not all of your site visitors will be PhD’s, so make it as clear as possible. Try and check that the code is clean and not more than 100K.

2. Try and submit your content to the main directories, like Yahoo and DMOZ.org, as well as to niche ones. Article directories could also bring some visitors (check out EzineArticles.com, ArticleFinders.com or GoArticles.com). Note: The copy should be really useful and unique. If you have an ebook, submit it to corresponding directories, e. g. EbookJungle.com, FreeEbooks.net and EbookPalace.com.

3. Get inbound links. Actually, link building is a topic which can be discussed for hours, so, let’s look at some of its strategies:

– Invite other website owners to publish your articles with links to your site;

– Leave testimonials and comments (but be helpful);

-Answer people’s questions at AdSense Help discussion group and Yahoo answers, placing a link to your site at the bottom;

* Some web masters also don’t scruple to buy text links, nevertheless, Google frowns upon this, so one should be very careful.

4. Hang out in the blogosphere. Take part in blog discussions providing relevant and thoughtful comments. The quality of your posts is critical, as nowadays many blogs are full of spammy silly comments the only purpose of which is to leave the author’s URL. Do stand out of that crowd: create original and pithy posts. Set up your own blog, leaving such tags as “Digg this” or “Add this to del.icio.us” below each article. Some social networking sites have amazingly massive traffic and, once your content is original, you gain visitors automatically.

5. Publish useful posts in forums, using keywords for your online profile. Growing forums often need additional moderators. Offer your services in exchange for free ads of your site.

6. Create your own forum as well if you can, yet consider a few points first. Someone has to moderate the forum in different time zones, 365 days a year, removing spam and managing its work. So, you’ll need several reliable moderators ready to share your trouble. Launching a forum, it’s very important to remember that this is just a helpful tool for your website’s promotion. In other words, make sure your visitors pass from forum discussion to the site itself, otherwise this plan won’t do.

7. Distribute a captivating informative newsletter for encouraging repeat traffic. Tell your readers about new and the most popular articles, offer them to take part in the survey you’re running, arrange some interesting contest and give away freebies. Ensure that the charm of novelty never fades, and your repeat traffic will boost. After all, why spend time and force on flirting with SEO, if the visitors forget about your site as soon as they leave it?

8. Don’t forget the power of well-written press-releases. “Well-written” means pithy, compendious and gripping. Grab the readers’ attention with a killer headline and some hot topic being discussed. Once an effective press-release is ready, submit it to BusinessWire, PRWeb, PR Newswire and other press release distribution sites.

9. Use PPC advertising. The treacherous aspect of good content is that you risk losing money instead of earning it. Thus, if your pages feature brilliant content, it may distract visitors from sponsored ads. The fact is that, if you pay for traffic, your content should also be persuasive. To increase the conversion rate create landing pages dedicated only to publicity. Attract people’s attention to the product/service you promote and make them fill out the sign-up form. Many website owners buy pay-per-click advertising on Google’s AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing, but these tools can be helpful only if your site’s conversion rate is rather high, otherwise it’s quite unprofitable.

10. Make your content available through RSS. Providing a content syndication feed with a link to your site will help surfers to find you in the endless Web ocean.

11. Apply for a consultation of professional SEOs and let them draw you a checklist of things to be improved/changed/implemented.

All in all, make sure you’ve taken your website promotion seriously – and you’re likely to soon be getting real serious traffic.