It may be a silly question to ask yourself but making sure your site is sticky is imperative to having a successful site.
Take a minute and look through your bookmarks on your own computer you will come across a list of sites that you bookmarked because there was something on that site you found interesting or something you wanted to go back to another time.
I looked through mine and I had everything from how to cure black spots in my rose garden to inspirational quotes plus everything in between. But the most important thing about all of them was that each and every one of them had something that made me save it.
Take a good look at your Web site, really try to look at it from your visitors point of view. Ask yourself these couple of questions:
- Do you have anything on your site that is unusual or different from most other sites?
- Do you have your most important call to action above the fold?
- Do you have anything of value you can offer your visitors?
- Do you offer a library of resources or industry related information?
- Have you tried to add visual content to keep your visitors attention?
- Do your photos or graphics appeal to your specific buying audience?
Take a good look at your site and try to add or change your site with some of the above tips in mind and you can make your site a sticky one.
Here is a great way to add unusual but unique content to your site…add a “Did you know section.”
For example:
If your site is an online toy store you could add this content to your site in a catchy highlighted box or graphic on the home page that said;
Did you know…The ratio of Barbie dolls to Ken dolls sold each year? Roughly two to one.
How about this one;
Remember Pac-Man?The name comes from the Japanese word paku, which means “eat.”
You could even use some nostalgia information like this;
In 1900 the Sears, Roebuck and Co. Catalog sold wire jump ropes for .10 cents.
Have fun with your content, make it different and your site will stand out in the crowd and be different which really does make it sticky.
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- An inbound link has more value if the text is a relevant keyword phrase, and even more so if the keyword phrase is used in the title tag, H1 tag, and body text of the URL being linked to.
- Submitting articles to directories is a great way to build creditable inbound links.
- Submit your site to industry related directories.
- Syndicate your content with blogs or RSS feeds.
- Taking advantage of the power of press releases? - Check out pweb.com!
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What is the longevity factor? To put it simple, it is how long your domain name has been visible on the Internet. Often times a Web site may not have the greatest search engine optimization going for it but often we see the longevity factor come into play in these cases.
Web sites that have been up and online for a number of years will most likely by pass newer sites with better optimization. Lots of times longevity sites will have strong link reputation and link popularity which will always out way perfect optimization.
There is evidence that the search engines will actually consider your domain history in their ranking algorithms. The longer your domain name has been active the better and more trusted your site becomes in the eyes of the search engines.
A couple things to think about if your site may be benefiting from longevity;
- Always renew your domain name for more than one year.
- Use a dedicated IP address.
- Don’t change hosting companies.
- Don’t change your URL
This is one case where age is better then beauty!
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A recent survey done by Jupiter Research of 2,300 Web users found that 67% of those that participated said they had searched for a company name, product or service names, or advertising slogans they saw in offline marketing. Those who started with an offline marketing message 30% eventually made a purchase.
Amazing isn’t it! As a marketer I have said all along that your offline marketing is as important as your online marketing and this survey certainly holds true to that statement.
The big questions is are you making it easy for those people to find you online?
Here are a few tips:
- Include yoru site address on all your companies marketing material.
- Display your URL in all print ads.
- Be sure to mention your sites’ address on all TV or Radio Spots.
- Include your phone number with area code plus city, state and zip on your Web site in straight HTM code for the search engines.
- Get your site listed on Google Maps
- Optimize your sites pages for specific products or services and your company name and geographical location.
The survey tells us that our customers are already trying to combine both offline and online marketing methods so lets make their search easier by following some of the guidelines above.
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By now you have all heard about Google launching its Universal Search this past May. Since then I have been watching and testing it myself to see exactly how it was going to effect our rankings. My finding are nothing but good for us SEO’s, that have been building search engine friendly Web sites and taking advantage of vertical search services and vertical search engines.
Let’s first explain how the new Universal Search works.
Google has started to mix listings from their news, video, images, local and book search engines (their vertical search services) among its regular searches that are crawled from the actual Web.
They predicted that Universal Search would have a big impact on those marketers that did not take into account the importance of vertical searches, but those marketers that saw to it that their sites were listed in various vertical searches should not see a big difference. What they will see is more exposure for their marketing message.
Read the complete article at http://www.searchengineacademysc.com/seo_marketing_articles/universal-search.htm
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The Link Popularity Checker tells you how many websites are linking to yours. Website popularity is an important factor in your search engine ranking. The more popular your site is, the better it will be ranked on the search engines. The first link will even tell you what the anchor text that site is using to point to your site.
Check them out!
http://www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/
http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/link-popularity-checker.shtml
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The Search Engine Academy was just introduced to a new SEO Audit Tool called SEM Check Audit, by Michael Marshal Academy Instructor.
The tool allows you to run and Web site through a series of Search Engine Optimization checks and provides you a report of the most common SEO challenges along with a brief description on how to correct each item.
SEO Check Audit will report on number of SEO factors such as:
- Deep-nested Site Hierarchies
- Alternate Domain Availability
- Domain.com to www.Domain.com Redirects
- Dynamic URLs
- Frames
- Home Page Redirects
- Flash/Splash Home Pages
- HTML Validation
- HTTPS Link Splitting
- Embedded Javascript/CSS
- Virtual Hosting
- Robots.txt
- Server Status
- Text Link Sitemaps
- Index/Supplemental Content Status
- Unique Description Tags
- Unique Title Tags
- If-Modified-Since
- Plus more
Give SEM Check a try and see how your Web site performs today on all of the various SEM check points.
It’s quick and easy to use. Visit SEMCHECK.com
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