There are an endless number of things that go into making a successful website and keeping it on the forefront of whatever subject to which it pertains.  One of the best ways to attack this subject is to make sure that your website is constantly building reputation in the form of unique visitors as well as new visitors.  The question is: how do I do that?  By being savvy and customising your website with features such as search engine optimisation, your site will quickly and effectively build its rank among search engines, which in turn will drive additional traffic to your site.  The following paragraphs cover some of the basic tenets of increasing the popularity of your website among search engines and individuals alike.

Add Consistent Content

Search engines look for sites that are updated regularly and have similar styles of content.  Believe it or not, a search engine can determine whether you are using your website to promote, sell or inform on multiple categories and unless you are already a highly-established website, you will be penalised in search rankings.  Always make sure to keep your website pertinent and relevant to one category or topic and to add content regularly.  Even if it just a small amount of content every day, the amount adds up over time and search engines like to rank websites higher up that have large amounts of relevant content.

Use a Blog

Search engines and individuals both like having access to unique content that is written in a personal sense and by using a blog, you not only increase the amount of content available on your site but you also increase your rankings with search engines.  For many webmasters who struggle between offering a website with a personal touch versus one that implies professionalism, blogs allow for the line to be straddled.  You can create personalised blog posts and reach out to your visitors without making the entirety of the site too personal.

Monitor Your Traffic and Rankings

Knowing the current status and ranking of your site among search engines and traffic analysers is half the battle in increasing your traffic.  As you make changes to your website over time, you may notice changes in the traffic and rankings of your website and its individual pages.  One of the best tools to validate the current popularity and traffic of your website is Pingler’s Compete Ranking Tool, which analyses statistics collected by Compete.com, a traffic analysis organisation.

Optimise Your Content

Making sure that each and every article and page is optimised for the search engines will give you an extra advantage over many other sites out there.  Each page should attempt to conform to a series of keywords that, when searched, will hopefully bring up your website as close as possible to the top of those search results.  Examine every page and piece of content on your site, develop one or two phrases or keywords that you wish to be the search triggers for your site (preferably search results with less than 300,000 results) and add these phrases to the content at a 1-2% overall density.