Is Anyone Bookmarking Your Website

By Diane Leonte
Posted Saturday, August 28, 2004

How many articles have you read in the past few months which revealed the most effective ways for you to drive more traffic to your web site?

How many hours have you spent....

-tweaking your meta tag's keywords and webpage descriptions?

-creating doorway and hallway pages?

-analyzing keyword density on your web pages?

-resubmitting your web pages to the major search engines?

-monitoring your positioning on Alta Vista?

How much money have you spent on software tools, courses and ebooks to help you learn how to drive more targeted traffic to your web site?

How many Classified Ads have you placed to attract more targeted traffic to your web site?

How about banner impressions?

Did you bid for the keywords on GOTO.com that would bring more targeted traffic to your web site?

And so on......

Am I implying this money and time was not well spent. NO, absolutely not. We need to drive targeted traffic to our web sites, and search engines are one of the most effective and least expensive ways to accomplish this.

However, what I am wondering is that given you succeed with driving more targeted traffic to your website...is your website's content compelling enough to keep your visitors interested in staying around for awhile, purchasing your products, and bookmarking your site for future visits?

Did you spend half the amount of time and money creating a "Destination" web site, one that visitors bookmark and come back to over and over again? Or is your web site one more disappointing dead end for visitors?

Does your website provide compelling benefit rich content? Is your content original and hard to find elsewhere?

Do you offer something free to your visitor that is useful to them? Is this the same giveaway they can get at many of your competitors websites?

Do you offer your visitors a free ezine, or a free autoresponder, or a free email account, or free search
engine submission?

Can your visitors join an online community by participating in your discussion board?

Do you lose your visitors to outside links you imbed in your content? Or do you use the HTML "target" feature to keep the windows for the outside links opening up without leaving your webpage?(see (http://wealthinmind.com/htmltarget.html) for an example)

Is your content fresh, timely, and germane to your website's theme?

Can a visitor navigate your website with ease? Do they reach any link on any of your webpages with no way to get back, or not knowing why they arrived there?

Do you give away much more then you expect to receive in return on your website?

Do your visitors find what they expect when they arrive at your website? Is there benefit rich content on the subject they were looking for when they clicked on your link?

Are your visitors bombarded with gyrating banners screaming at them to buy products that are totally unrelated to what they came looking for?

And so on......

My point is simply that.. if you succeed in driving massive amounts of visitors to your website, most of them will not buy what you are selling if you do not capture their attention with "WORDS".

Nothing else will compel your visitors to buy except the way in which you use content on your website.

Free Content is still "KING" on the Internet. Information is still the main reason people get on the Internet. Load your website with free compelling, timely, quality content which is easy to access and offers immediate benefits, and your visitors will hang around and look forward to returning.

By all means I would encourage you to continue your efforts to drive more targeted traffic to your web site, but first design a welcoming website that invites your visitor to come in, reach for their cup of starbucks coffee and stay awhile.

If they find something of value to them when they visit, they will surely add your website to their bookmarks or favorites. Most likely they will buy something you are selling on their next visit.

Good luck Online!

About the Author
Diane Leonte is a Business and Personal Coach, Webmaster of "Wealth In Mind" (http://wealthinmind.com) and Publisher of the "Achieving Success & Wealth" newsletter mailto:subscribe@wealthinmind.com
"Are You Are Ready To Get What Matters Most To You?, If Not Now....When?"