how to get more traffic to site

[mrcad007]

How do I get more visitors to come to my site and look around and/or purchase from site?

How do I do this on no money as I depend on social security for my main source of income. So I am financially strapped for the forseeable future.

No one else is in this boat I know, just look around at all the new cars on the road

[Matt R.]

It might help if you can post your website here. We can all review it and give you some feedback, as well as some SEO tips on how you can increase your organic search engine listings (if you do this yourself, it is free).

Good luck.

[mrcad007]

Thank you Matt,
I will post my site for review. Question from a newbee what does SEO stand for?

Here is a link to my website happyjeweler.com

[Alan B]

You can Google or Wiki to learn about SEO, but I wouldn't worry about it at this point. Focus on improving the quality and content of your site. Create an attractive, professional looking site with good text content. Then, if you can, get some related businesses or directories to link to you.

I'll give you a frank assessment in order to help you identify what you need to do differently when you re-design the site. Your site is, bluntly, poor. It looks amateurish and appears as though it was done using some sort of bad template. Here are a few specifics:

• The Active-X control it tries to load will scare off many potential customers. Why do you think you need it?
• Forcing each link to spawn a new window or tab is bad practice and annoys visitors.
• Users cannot tell what is a link and what is not, because you've prevented any visual cues (e.g. underline, italics, different colour) for links.
• The hit counter and date display are awkward and amateurish, looking like a free GeoCities site.
• Your search tool is broken.
• The fixed-width fixed-position tables create ugly, unbalanced layouts on some pages.
• Some of your pages trigger IE7's Phishing Filter, warning visitors that your site could be fraudulent. You need to investigate what's in your code that is triggering that.
• Product photographs are dull, poorly lit and fuzzy. They do not do a good job of conveying the beauty of the products.
• The overall appearance is harsh and unattractive.

[mrcad007]

Alan B

Thank you for your frank assessment.

I will do my best to follow your suggestions
as they seem more professional.

It looks like all my midnight sessions have been fruitless.
I have a lot more to learn.

Michael Reeves, owner
happyjeweler

[Matt R.]

Michael,

You've come the right place to learn. We have a friendly community here and we're all happy to help.

[Wayne R.]

Honestly, a good suggestion might be to use a decent shopping cart software (one example might be Zencart), which is designed to show products which your viewers can buy. For any of the shopping carts out there, there are always many free & paid themes that you can use to give your site a nice look & feel. Some are designed poorly, others are well done... it will take some time to find something that suits your needs.

There are of course alternatives, but this would give your product listing structure throughout the site and have a nice uniform feel. I also bet you'd spend less time installing a script through Fantastico! and adding your products, than it took you to do the original layout

Keep working, and keep posting. Many here will be happy to provide good advice.

[Alan B]

Wayne's is a very good suggestion. A professional looking shopping cart system will also give your customers more confidence.

[rajagiri4]

if you want to traffic in your site that we will use the e-mail marketing,tele-marketing,mobile marketing,forum posting.it was very useful.

[romanohenry]

Link building and some PPC will help a bit.

On page SEO is my major consideration like content building -unique. will let you stay on track.

[calvynlee]

I organize a program call "link exchange network"

i shot exchange link with a lot blogger. Once of my client website raise to PR5 on previous index

[marksalehouse]

Don't give up on it!

None of us are born with the knowledge and we all live to learn - until we die. Sort out some freebie stuff like replacement tools (eg: http://www.handyfiletool.com/index.html) which allow you to take a line of code and replace it inside every one of your pages. As an example: change the "open in new window" to "open in current window" problem in every page within seconds.

A lot of engines look for a PAD file. This is excellent for a business and very easy to set up: Fill in your particular details, create the XML and load it up to the server.
http://www.asp-shareware.org/pad/

Consider a side vertical nav bar - you will get all you links together instead of splitting them top & bottom. Though it is good to have a basic links at the bottom - do so in small size text.

Use alt-text and titles where possible (pictures, links etc.)

I am using high reolution and the text size is far to big. I shuuder to think about this at low res.

Use a pale pastel backgroud to make it easier on the eyes. Not a primary colour! Off white (light grey), or pale white with just a hint of colour.

Check out Xenu to find broken links.

Keep it simple and run it through W3C's HTTMl & CSS validators.

Good luck with it.

M

[Samsbc12]

I agree with Zencart and fantastico.

[Twiztid]

I have to say an easy way (well easy for ppl. who know what meta tags are) Just add any word that describes your site products ect., that way the web crawlers have more words to crawl and store, hope that helps

[Niche]

How do I get more visitors to come to my site and look around and/or purchase from site?

How do I do this on no money as I depend on social security for my main source of income. So I am financially strapped for the forseeable future.

No one else is in this boat I know, just look around at all the new cars on the road

There are lots of things you can do for free to improve traffic to your website. problem is they all take time

Try building a following on the bookmarking sites like Digg and propeller

Search engine optimization. It's something you need to start doing soon. No point in building all those pages and finding your on page optimization is all wrong. Also focus on getting some do follow backlinks to your site.

Networking sites like twitter help a little but I find the traffic from Twitter does not convert as well as the traffic from Facebook

Article marketing is another free option

The earlier you get on to these, the sooner they'll start working for you

Good luck

[mrcreeek]

You could try submitting articles to websites based around the topic of your site. This will benefit both sites and so, it's a useful tool in your arsenal. The only drawback is the time involved in producing unique articles , should you not have someone to do it for you. Try theme specific directories too and link exchanges.

I just visited your site and the image are not loading for me in IE, so design work is needed too.

[omniuni]

I second that ZenCart is an excellent choice. If you are new to web development, and want something set up in a hurry, I have a shopping cart that is part of my companies Content Management System that can be set up very easily. (It just integrates with PayPal). If you like, you can take a look at my website, http://omniimpact.com, or PM me for more information.

[kote.dr]

ZenCart perfectly integrates with the majority of modules installed in my shop, everything works you can see http://usa-ruservice.info

[siddu]

There are many creative ways to increase traffic to your website.

Optimize your website to be search-engine friendly.

Spread the word about your affiliate program by submitting it to affiliate program directories and contacting the owners of related websites.

Create a links page that will contain the links to other non-competing websites in the same industry.

Post in forums.

Comment on blogs.

Create an e-mail "signature" - your name, your website address and a short tag-line describing the main benefit of your site.

Look into traffic exchanges.

Advertise your site at free classified ad sites.

Update your Facebook status to let your friends know everytime you update your blog and create a Facebook fan page.

[quangcao]

thanks so much for useful info