Obtain Greater Repeat Traffic Without Dipping Into Your Bank Account
Aus Salespoint
Author: Rubin Foster
Your website is up and running. It is bursting at the seams with great content, and more first-time visitors are popping in every day. This is only the beginning. After people come to your site for the first time, it is now your job to make sure they come back again and again.
The surest way to drive visitors away from your site is to leave the content the same. When visitors to your site see nothing new after a couple of visits, they will not bother coming back for a third time. In addition, search engines do not pay attention to sites that do not change content often.
The people who come to your site want to see new information all the time. If time is a constraint, you can always use guest bloggers or post links to other relevant articles. You can also try taking some of your earlier content from years ago and reposting it. Even something as simple as adding a date counter to your site that shows when your site was last updated will help your rankings with search engines and your image with customers, if you update frequently, that is.
Hoping that your visitors come back regularly is not enough. Repeat visits are earned through much effort. Make your site easy to bookmark. Give your visitors the option of signing up for a newsletter or to be alerted when you post something new. Another option is to add plug-ins that allow visitors to share and recommend your site. These make it easy for a visitor to quickly share your content with friends via e-mail, or to recommend it on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, or Dig.
If your site is keyword optimized and has relevant titles, first-time visitors will be able to find it easily and will be more likely to come back. What if visitors forgot to bookmark your site or subscribe, but enjoyed your site? They might want to return and will search for terms that were related to the content they read on the initial visit. Hence, it is important that you optimize your page well to ensure that these visitors find your site quickly; otherwise it will be very much like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Spam stinks. More to the point, spamming rarely works. In fact, it does just the opposite of what you want it to do. Your reputation will likely be tarnished if you use spam. Use your subscription lists selectively. Do not email them with any information they did not specifically ask for. Unwanted solicitations only make people angry and may lead to unsubscribing from your site altogether.
Be sure to post superior content continually. Meanwhile, don't be afraid to shake things up a bit now and then. People who learn they could get something for free or win a valuable prize are going to return to your website. At the very least, the thought that they might win a monthly drawing or receive an exclusive subscriber-only promotional discount is enough to keep people subscribed to your newsletter.
Site makeovers implemented at regular intervals will keep customers hooked to your pages. Use different content in various forms to make sure your readers do not get bored. Keep in mind, though, quality is always your first priority. Make frequent content updates with beneficial and interesting posts. This will go a long way in ensuring repeat readership. Satisfied web users will turn out to be loyal and regular site visitors.
