Copyright 2005 Log Cabin Rustics

People are paying pretty significant dollars for website
traffic these days. Pay-per-click charges of $1-10 are not
uncommon for top search terms. Multiply that by the 300
unique visitors per day that my log furniture website gets,
and you are talking at least $300 per day, or $9,000 per
month?depending on how many days are in the month.

?There Must Be Some Easier Way?

While pay-per-click may be a good business model for your
website, there?s nothing like free traffic to lay the
foundation. My log furniture site used to get 100 unique
visitors per day before it started fetching in 200, and now
300 on an average basis. The personal goal here is 1,000
unique daily visitors?but 10,000 would also be welcomed!

Following are some of the best ways we have found to grow
website traffic:

#1: Website Optimization

A local business magazine recently ran an article calling
SEO (search engine optimization) the equivalent of
?hocus-pocus?. The author of the article, who apparently
worked for an SEO firm, described optimization as a
somewhat ?shady? activity that?s impossible to get a handle
on. I say ?Baloney!?

SEO is not pseudo-science. It is a very tangible and real
way to increase website traffic. If you haven?t taken care
of the basics?e.g. making sure your website has a relevant
title, focuses on the right keywords, avoids practices that
are disdained by the search engines, etc., you can be sure
that, once found, your website will not rank as highly (or
get as much traffic) as it otherwise would. Begin your
traffic-garnering efforts by making sure your website is
up-to-snuff.

#2: Publish Helpful, Relevant Content

Publishing helpful articles on the Net with a link back to
my log furniture website seems to result in traffic spikes
nearly every time. Notice the emphasis is on ?helpful?
articles. There is plenty of useless drivel out there by
people who are being paid $5 to write an article. Not to
insult anyone, but I spend 2-8 hours on the articles I
write?depending on how much research is required and how
technical the article is?and that costs more than $5.

It doesn?t seem to matter what you write about. My topics
so far have included SEO, the simplicity of Amish life,
improving your bottom line, and understanding Google
operators. The key is to make them relevant, short and
helpful.

#3: Add more products to your website

Our experience has been that adding more products to the
website helps us to come up in the search engines more
often. A person who finds a rustic night stand at our site
might notice that we have log bunk beds. Somebody who is
shopping for an unfinished pine dresser might not be
thinking of rustic furniture at all, stumble across one our
products, like the whole site, and end up furnishing their
cabin. Each product is like a fishing line cast in the
sea. The more well-described bait you have out there?the
more ?fish? will bite.

#4: Improve your website conversion rate

Five years ago, we used to get one log furniture order for
every 100 website visitors. Now it seems like closer to
one order for every 300 unique visitors. Part of the
reason for this, we believe, is that the web has become
more competitive. But we also pay attention to our
conversion rate.

We are in the process of making a change right now that
might really help. Someone pointed out that when you click
on an item to buy it within Miva Merchant?s standard
interface, there is no confirmation that the item has been
added to your shopping basket. This might lead some
customers to believe that the website isn?t working
properly. They might not be savvy enough to check the
shopping basket. They might even leave the site without
ordering (perish the thought!)

These ?glitches? can really hurt website sales. We went to
the Miva Merchant site for third-party modules and found a
script that displays the shopping basket after each item is
added. We purchased the script and install, and are
watching to see how it affects website sales and conversion
rate. Our guess is that this will have a positive impact
on sales.

Conclusion

Obviously, there are a lot of other ways to increase
website traffic. The four listed above are a great place
to start. If you?re not into SEO, find somebody who is.
If you are paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars of
month for pay-per-click traffic, it may be wise to divert
enough of those dollars to ensure that your website is the
traffic-snagging, profit-generating machine you intend it
to be.


About the Author:

Cari Haus is a CPA and entrepreneur who has been offering
quality log furniture on her website,
http://www.logcabinrustics.com/