Get Your Business Noticed by Finding Your Niche to Drive Traffic

Many entrepreneurs struggle with getting traffic to their new site. With millions of other sites out there, how do you get put at the top? There are countless "SEO" companies that charge exorbitant fees for their services, but by using a few simple, common sense strategies you can get your product noticed.

"Bum" Marketing
Spend some time working on a high quality article about your service. Do you sell wicker baskets? Write a 500-600 word article on how to spot a good quality basket or how to care for baskets you own. Take that article and put it up in article directories like HubPages or Squidoo You can even write "How To"s on sites like WikiHow or eHow. In your article, link to places to buy baskets, or further information, including your own web page. This will get your site noticed by the search engines, and increase traffic from interested readers.

Blog About It
Set up a separate blog with fresh information. Most blogs allow your to "date" your post, so it will be published on a specified date. This will let you write a week or two worth of posts in a single day, and always have fresh content on your blog. Write on anything pertaining to your business. Post about unique uses for wicker baskets, ways to fix common problems or the cutest new basket on the market (that you sell on your site, of course).

You can use stand alone blogging software and integrate it with your existing site. The fresh content will keep your site "interesting" to search engines and drive more traffic. You can also create several free blogs (Blogger.com, WordPress.com) and post your entries to each of those with links to your site.

Keep It Focused
There are several "codes" for search engines, that some SEO companies say they've cracked. They all basically boil down to having fresh, unique, relevant content. When you write an article, a blog post, or even just a sales description, make sure you use the "keyword" for the product or services you're writing about. Use "wicker baskets" several times in a general article, instead of pronouns like "it", generic names like "basket" or specialty names like "Loneberger", so when someone searches for a term with "wicker basket" your article will appear.

Also utilize the "title" tags in links, the "alt" tags in images, and the "meta" tags on your page, whenever possible. While your readers won't usually see this information, the search engines will. If your page has five images (and both search engines and readers love images) all with an alt tag containing the term "wicker baskets" your page will be more popular for that search.