Web site traffic,,,,,,,,,,,,

Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
Status
Not open for further replies.
stevers

stevers

Member
Joined
Dec 18, 2005
Messages
2,991
Location
Bullhead City, Az., USA.
Hi all,
Just wanted to brag a little. In the last couple of months, I have gotten several nice web site hits. Hits that came from google and yahoo searches. My site traffic counter tells me who the referring URL is. Of course, a lot of them are you all, but lately, I have been getting outside traffic. To some that may be nothing new, but for me that is pretty cool. For the first year, I had maybe a handful of hits a week. And they were mostly family and friends. I credit a lot of this to this site. Thank you for allowing us to post our web site addresses as a link. I have had over 1330 hits in the last 6 or 8 months. That flags my site for the search engines to see. I just boxed an order and last week sold another. In all, I think I have sold 6 or 7 pens from my site. I don't do shows yet, so that really helps.
Just wanted to gloat a little. Thanks for listening and thanks again for allowing me to use IAP as a spring board to fame and fortune.
 
Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
Great Job Steve. I have just started to research setting up a website of my own for my turning and scroll saw items. Good luck in the future.[:)]

Mike
 
Isn't that a great feeling to see your hit numbers really surge? Having 1300+ visitors in 6 months is quite an accomplishment - you certainly have bragging rights! Before long, you'll see 1300 visitors in a month. Nice job on your site, BTW. Easy on the eyes, good functionality, and well thought out.

Find ways to get some more sites to link back to yours, to increase traffic and page rank. More linkbacks = higher search engine rankings. The holy grail is to have your site's listing show up in the first page or two of the search engine results (SERPs) when someone searches using relevant key words.

The how-to articles you already have on your site will help. People will discover them and and some will link to them. Good way to build some more traffic, and search engines tend to respond favorably to text content-rich sites. And having more useful information like that sets your site apart from others.

Cheers.
 
Hi Steve, I hope this will help you and others with website traffic. One of the best way for search engines to find you is while building your website or add it in later is to have a good Title, a good description and good keywords. Go to a website and right click on the page, not on a photo and click VIEW SOURCE, sometimes you can see title, description and keywords in the HTML code what other websites have listed. Have your website linked to other related websites or local listings for shopping. Go to Google and enter made in vermont and you will see all the places to list a website and then look for the same in your state. There tons of places you can submit your link. Do a free submit to places that will submit your website to several search engines, 10 or 20 that's all you need not 100's Do that every month or so. Do not submit to link exchange people, they only want your link to help themselves. Why have your link at places that sells baby stuff or websites that has nothing to do with your website. I want people to find my site looking for pens or things made in Vermont. You can do a Google search on me, Jim Cunningham or Jim Cunningham Vermont and I am usually 1 or 2 on the first page. I get 75 to 125 visits on my website a day and sometimes it takes a thousand visits to get an order. It takes 1 to 2 years to really start getting the traffic to your website. I made my first website over 7 years ago and I'm not an expert. I still feel I'm a beginner at this. There's nothing to it just have a good Title, a good description and good keywords is the key.

Good luck
 
Jim has some good tips. Avoid link exchanges with non-relevant sites. I get tons of requests (usually automated) from webmasters of link farm and "scraper sites" - sites with zero Page Rank that just post a bunch of loosely-related links. Some search engines even derate sites that have too many inbound links from these types of sites.

The title page is by far the most important of the metatags within your HTML - choose the wording carefully and think about what a typical person might type into a search engine to find your kinds of products. Keyword metatags are only marginally indexed by some engines, and are ignored entirely by Google. Back in the '90s, unscrupulous web designers listed huge amounts of keywords in their code ("keyword stuffing"), and the search engines quickly got smart to that. Still, it doesn't hurt to put a dozen or so keywords in, but resist the urge to go much beyond that.

Search engines tend to "prefer" plain text, and sometimes have a tough time indexing sites with lots of Flash and other types of animated graphics. Fancy "splash pages" look impressive to the designer, but they irritate visitors, and often make it difficult for the search engines' bots to find their way through.

Ask people you know who are in allied fields if they would exchange links. Suppliers, customers, etc. A few high-quality links will get you better search engine rankings and more traffic than a bunch of useless ones.

Submit to the DMOZ listing:
http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

And Google's submission page:
http://www.google.com/addurl/

Yahoo:
http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

MSN:
http://search.msn.com.sg/docs/submit.aspx

BTW, I already have a link to you on my WW links page:
http://users.goldengate.net/~kbrady/woodlinks.html#5.1

I also have a brief primer on site optimization that may be helpful. The article is targeted to law firms, but the info can apply to most any site.
http://users.goldengate.net/~kbrady/webpromo.html

Download the Google toolbar. This has some nice added functions, including a Page Rank indicator, and a good backlink checker.
http://toolbar.google.com

A good site with lots of info on how NOT to design a site:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/
I hope I never see my site listed there... :)

Cheers,

Kevin
 
Thanks all.
Lee, I E-mailed you.
Jim and Kevin, thanks for all the good info. I'll be looking into some things in a while. Lets get through the holidays first.
Chris and Mike, good luck. It's a lot of work, but it's fun to do and the feeling is pretty cool. It's a lot of time in front of the computer, but it's also a lot of time taking "good" photos and processing them for the site. I spent countless hours in front of the computer sizing and cropping and framing and labeling and on and on. Then once you've posted them they have to be hyper linked. The end result is worth it though. I actually get quite a few compliments on my site. And I am a newbie, not to mention a computer challenged old fart. There was no such thing when I was a kid. We had "metal" Tonka trucks the size of a microwave and our GI Joe's were 11 inches tall and had kung fu grip. Uh oh, did I just give away my age.
Thanks again all.
 
Just got another Google hit. They want a Gent or Statesman in Elk antler. This could be a better holiday than I thought. Ya baby. Just may have found my new job. Sorry, I woke up. I'll be at work in the morning.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom