Five Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Internet Presence

1. Track and analyze your web site traffic.

Most web hosts offer traffic analysis data to their clients,
and it is arguably the most important tool at your disposal in
measuring the effectiveness of your website. By taking the
time to understand this data, you can begin to understand the
motivations and interests of your audience. Are many of them
leaving on one particular page? Perhaps you should make some
changes to keep their interest. Are most of them looking at
one particular part of your site? Perhaps you should make it a
more featured area. Since this data updates on a regular
basis, you are also able to gauge the effectiveness of any
changes that you make. These are the most basic examples, as
there are many more useful bits of information available- what
search terms your visitors are using to find you, what sites
are bringing you the most traffic, how long your visitors are
staying, etc. Maintaining a successful website is an ongoing
process, and visitor data is crucial to getting optimum
results.

2. Exchange links with non-competing, quality companies
related to your industry.

This is a simple but effective way to get quality traffic
while increasing the prestige of your business. Visitors that
enter your site from a link that they find on another site are
predisposed to believe that they will find something of value
there (if not, why would the site take the time and effort to
link to it?). By making sure that the companies you exchange
links with are not direct competitors, you are unlikely to
lose business. The added benefit to this strategy is that it
can give a tremendous boost to your link popularity, which is
a major factor in determining how your site gets ranked in
most search engines.

3. Write informative articles about your business or products
and make them available to online publications and webmasters.

There are numerous sites that will allow you to offer original
informational articles for others to publish. Such an exchange
benefits you in several ways. First, all of these sites
require anyone who is reprinting your article to provide a
link back to your site, which can provide highly targeted
visitors (visitors that most likely already have a good
impression of you from your article). This is also another way
to boost your link popularity, which is vitally important to
your search engine rankings (as discussed above). Moreover, if
you offer a service, a reputation is your most valuable asset.
Widely distributed articles can help to establish you as an
expert in your field and help you to gain credibility with
your future clients.

4. Give your website visitors a clear call to action.

If your site isn't intended to sell a product or gain a
customer, than what is it for? Every page on your site should
focus on getting the visitor to take an action. This could be
purchasing something online, filling out a form or sending an
email, making a phone call, or even simply moving on to the
next step in the process. Your website should be more than a
static billboard proclaiming that you are open for business-
it should compel your visitors to follow a specific path that
leads to a sale. The answer can be as simple as placing a
prominent suggestion on each of your pages (such as "Request a
Free Demo" or "Ask Us a Question").

5. When it comes to your site, don't overlook the obvious.

Compare your website to an actual store- is everything clean
and organized, or is everything messy and cluttered? Many
websites give bad first impressions with issues that could
easily be avoided. Broken links are a sign of sloppiness that
are fairly common. To combat this, there are several websites
that will automatically scan your site and identify any broken
links. Seeing little red "x's" where a graphic or photo should
appear is another common problem that is easily addressed.
Does your site maintain its look and functionality with most
browsers? People are sometimes dismayed to learn that their
site (which looks great in Internet Explorer) doesn't maintain
its look or functionality with other popular browsers such as
Netscape. The time and resources required to fix these
problems are small when compared with the cost of tarnishing
your professional image.

About the Author

Scott Buresh is co-founder and principal of Medium Blue
Internet Marketing. For more helpful tips, visit
http://www.mediumblue.com. For a free search engine analysis,
please visit http://www.mediumblue.com/analysis.html.