Boost traffic to your Web site

From Donielle Buie

Great Article! I would love to continue to see more like this.

From Gini Dietrich, Arment Dietrich, Inc., Chicago, IL

These are all good suggestions to creating a Web site conducive to traffic. Creating sales from that traffic is the next hurdle. Once you have a site that successfully promotes your company, target your consumer through public relations strategies. Google searches are great, but will only get you so far. Use a news release, newsletter, or blog to increase visibility and directly link back to your Web site. These efforts can be measured against the traffic on your Web site for effectiveness. The increased visibility brings new customers to your updated Web site that successfully promotes your brand.

From Michael, Florida

Hello, here are some things you can do: Open a Blog with lighting ideas and tips, I bet is going to work better than the Articles section you currently have, please erase that "Get Your Own Website", this is not good, put your phone number and address in "contact us", I hope your can do this, good luck with your business.

http://www.maksuco.com

From Besproutseo, Richmond VA

Marketing or selling on-line involves a two prong approach. The first task is to bring relevant traffic to your website; the second is to construct it so that it is conducive to making a sale. Based on our analysis, both are lacking.

To assist you with your website, we are providing additional tips that you may find helpful as we believe that it to be more important for you to understand the challenges that you are faced with before determining the best course of action.

You are in the business to conduct sales via your website. When one lands on your home page, however, the first impression is that your site is an information portal. If this is the case, you may not connect with the prospective buyers when they visit, leading to a high bounce rate (the Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page visits after landing your page). This will impact your conversion ratio for sales.

Next would be to identify the target market. Are you selling to the average Joe or are you catering to the higher end market? If the latter, then you need to upgrade the site. Using a basic template HTML site looks unimpressive. The product chandelier on your home page automatically invokes richness, but the bland earth tone contradicts this impression. The product tabs need to be categorized for simplicity and ease of use. For example, why do you have a tab for Chandeliers and one for Modern Style Chandeliers? Why not combine it under one category with a sub set? Also, the top menu bar needs to be cleaned up. Having multiple broken links, unrelated links (get your own website) and no company description or address leads to mistrust.

If you want to spice it up, you can incorporate flash; however, flash designed websites usually lead to poorer rankings and require exponentially more optimization to yield significant results. On a positive note, your checkout is a secured site which is great when your visitor gets to that stage.

Speaking of visitors, I would guess that there is a lack of significant traffic to your website via the search engines, especially Google. A quick analysis of over 165 revelant keywords associated with your website produced NOT one (1) top 100 ranking. That means for a keyword phrase such as "chandelier lights", your website's home page http://www.elampsanddecor.com does not fall with the first 100 places. This is crucial because, according to a recent study, 80% of all searchers do not go past page 3. With this in mind, the goal should be to get you ranked within the top three pages, if not the first page.

Now, keep in mind that the algorithim that Google, Yahoo and the other search engines utilize are very complex. Their respective formulas are not revealed but industry experts understand the methodology. Our belief is that your website is lacking in several areas:

1) Content relevancy – the relevancy of your content relative to the descriptions / overall site is estimated to be less than 30%. More applicable content, as well as accurate titles, descriptions and meta tags, are needed on the pages you would want them to visit. Since your applicable keywords/phrases list is quite large, make sure you are focusing on the right ones. Having high rankings for keywords which do not lead to sales is unproductive.

2) Website structure – Without the FTP file, it is difficult to accurately assess what needs to be done. But, most websites, when created, do not take into consideration the requirements needed to make it as seamless as possible for the search engine "spiders" to collect the information. This is usually the case when a website that is older than a year (yours is almost 2 years old) is not picked up at some level. Or Google has blacklisted you which is only the case unless some unscrupulous techniques were used in the past. Unfortunately, unless you are well verse in programming code AND understand SEO, it is nearly impossible for you to rectify the structural aspect on your own. It is important to understand this point since making corrections without a proper foundation would be like building a house with no doors to move in and out of the different rooms. Professional expertise is required.

3) Directories – We recommendthat you submit your domain to the search engines so that you are at least on the map. This alone won't get you high rankings but at least you're on their radar.

4) Keep your website fresh on the backend and front end of your website. The search engine spiders typically visit a website every couple or few days. If your website is static, the relevancy drops off and eventually so do your rankings. Consider previous advice and manage a blog and keep an active link campaign in addition to the back end changes to achieve more favorable ranks.

Again, the comments provided are to help you understand the bigger picture so that you can make a concerted effort to help address thes issues. This comment section is not a large enough forum to address all of the points. Having a tight budget does not make your task any easier, however, if you want to bring traffic AND produce sales, consider making the appropriate changes. We hope you are successful in your endeavor!

From Paul South Florida

Unclutter the home page and change the background color scheme. Delete of fix all unbroken links.Simplify but include keywords in text.Do not use keywords more than twice in the text section. Again simplify the home page.
http://www.searchtheentirecraigslist.com

From Keith; Raleigh, NC

Her site isn't listed in Google, and that's the first problem. She needs to have her site submitted for consideration. You should submit your site to all of the search engines.

I would also change the color scheme. The beige/butterscotch color takes up too much of the screen.

Why have the links at the top of the screen when she has a nice and efficient sidebar to handle all of those links?

I would place any affiliate programs in a sidebar or at the bottom of your page.

Images should have captions showing what they are. I know that they are lamps, but what kind of lamps?

I was confused by the word HOME at the top of the content. Then I realize she meant "HOME"page. I'd get rid of that since I thought it meant decor or lamps for the home.

The introductory text is too specific, and it is not inviting.

I think that the web site is a good start, but it is not very well organized. I do like how you have wonderful images of the products – very clear. I would suggest having smaller images that viewers could then click into for a larger image – maybe as a pop-up. The large images are distorting the layout of your page. You could then write a "story" about how each could be used in your home or some kind of text that would say why someone should buy this for their home. Give the product an identity.

My advice would be to hire a consultant. You could substantially increase your revenue by spending a little to improve your web site.

You have to spend money to make money — simple but true adage.

From Pete Maloney – Webteek.com; Palm Beach Gardens, FL

The author's ideas are all good traffic building suggestions, but Lidia is still going to have a difficult time getting the traffic necessary to produce adequate sales from this website. The problem is that she is in a very broad and crowded category, lighting and decor, with many large well financed competitors. It will be very difficult for her to rank very high in search engine results (Google, Yahoo, etc…) given the size of her business and her limited budget. This would also potentially rule out pay-per-click search engine placement due to the likely high cost per click. For a small business to be successful on the Internet, it needs to find a niche market/product where it is not going to be going head to head with large competitors and will be able to get on the first or second page of Google search results (very few searchers go past the first or second page) for certain narrow terms (examples would be "antique lamp", "bed and breakfast west palm beach" or "carnival food") and get volume of targeted traffic necessary for visitor conversions/sales.