Building Website Traffic

By Craig Miyamoto, APR, Fellow PRSA

(From Public Relations Strategies, a quarterly publication of Miyamoto Strategic Counsel)

The Web was built (and operates) as a "By Invitation Only" entity. This is the way Nick Negroponte, editor of Wired, has described the digital phenomenon that exploded in the early '90s. And it makes sense too, especially if you view the World Wide Web as a communication tool - as a medium. Every medium needs promotion to succeed, to attract viewers or readers, to influence and advocate.

If you don't invite an audience, nobody will know you're there, and nobody will come. We are all familiar with (and use) search engines and web indexes such as Lycos, Excite, Yahoo, HotBot and Snap.Com, but are they enough? If you've ever used them, you know how a simple query can turn up thousands, perhaps millions of sites. Yours is probably one of these, but if you're not in the top 20 or so on the list, chances are you won't be found.

There are, however, ways to boost your chances, and improve your position. Here are two:

'Keyword' Your Website

Many search engines utilize what are called "spiders," which comb the web for the search words when an inquiry is made on their search site. Typically, the spiders look for word frequency on your page; therefore, it makes sense that a page with more key words is more likely to be deemed relevant by a search engine spider one where the word appears once. But nobody wants to list all the relevant keywords on the web page, lest it look like a dictionary page.

So what do you do? The solution is simple - use title (descriptive) and meta tags, and place them in your home's and doorway pages' HTML before the

< META NAME="KEYWORDS" CONTENT="public relations, communications, research, planning, strategy, tactics, community relations, crisis management, publicity, issues management, media relations, book reviews, employee relations, environmental public relatons, ethics, integrated communications, special events, public service announcements, counseling" >

< META NAME="DESCRIPTION" CONTENT="A resource for public relations practitioners, and for college students aspiring to enter the profession. Essays and monographs share what Craig Miyamoto has learned about public relations since his first public relations job in 1972." >

Which keywords will work? Here's an effective way to find out: Do a search for your site. See which of your competitors' sites are listed before yours. Go to their pages, then in your web browser, click on "View" and then on "Page Source." The HTML will appear. Copy their META tags.

Make sure you do not overdo keywording, however. If a keyword appears too many times on a page (experts say in excess of 7% of total content), your site will be considered "spam" and will be rejected altogether by the search engine.

It is imperative that you test your keywords often, because their relevance changes as the audience changes. What works today might not work next week. Do test searches to see how your position improves. Somewhere along the line, you need to ask yourself the question: "Is all this work worth it?" It will be, if you use your website correctly, if you make it interactive, if you make it interesting and entertaining, and if you have your goals and objectives clearly defined. Remember that in public relations, merely educating and informing your audience does absolutely nothing for you, unless you can persuade them to take a specific and tangible action.

Create 'Hallway' Pages

This is a sneaky strategy. It involves creating index pages that have links to all of your doorway pages (your home page and others that you've optimized for easy discovery by those web spiders we talked about in the previous "keywording" section). Hallway pages therefore become additional home pages, which search engine rank higher than content pages.

Very simple text-only hallway pages will do the trick, as you do not publicize these hallway pages. They merely exist to be found by spiders, which will be rerouted to your main doorway pages. A supportive technique that you can use is to place them on various domains and servers other than your principal one.

Free home page space is available at dozens of "web communities," so this technique should be relatively inexpensive.

A similar technique would be to create additional complementary, simply (yet attractively) designed "home pages" with an automatic re-direct that will send the guest to your main home page.

A few caveats:

• Be warned again that overdoing it will invoke the search engine's "spam rule" and you might find yourself entirely disappearing from search lists.
• You are dependent on the spider's ability to traverse the links, and that might take additional time. In the long run, though, it will be worth the wait.
• Register with the major search engines anyway.

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