Now pair Google Analytics with another free (and this time open source) solution like Wordpress and well, it is hard not to get a warm fuzzy feeling.

What you may not realize is that you can get a lot more out of this Google and Wordpress pair than simply sticking the tracking number into the footer. There are quite a few rocking Google Analytics plugins that really kick up the functionality of your Google Analytics up a notch. Check them out.

1. Google Analyticator

This is my favorite plug-in in this area. Not only does it add the javascript needed to start tracking your site, it turns your Wordpress site into a tracking monster! Rather than just tracking the normal "default" elements it also covers:

• Outbound link tracking of all links on the page, including links not managed by WordPress
• Download link tracking
• Event tracking with outbound links / downloads instead of the old pageview tracking method

It also has plenty of great additional features such as a dashboard widget, front-end visitor widgets, localization and more...

Download Google Analyticator Here

2. Ultimate Google Analytics

This plug-in is on par with Google Analyticator in that not only will it put the necessary google analytics javascript on every page, but it also will track outbound links, downloads and mailto: links. While the default configuration will work for 90% of the users it pays to go through and customize it for your own needs, everything is customizable for your specific situation or need.

The plugin is highly configurable. Read trough the list of features below to get a feeling of what this plugin can do. You can enable and disable all features individually, although the default configuration will suffice for 90% of the users.

Download Ultimate Google Analytics Here

3. RSS Link Tagger for Analytics

On many blogs the conversion point is getting new subscribers. Even with services like feedburner you don't always know what is most effective in getting new subscribers as there is no clear way to track an RSS subscription. However with RSS Link Tagger you can actually track your RSS feed using Google analytics to get a better idea as to what types of articles and posts are most effective in recruiting new subscribers.

Download RSS Link Tagger Here

4. Google Analytics for WordPress

Much like Ultimate Google Analytics and Google Analyticator this plugin automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and other downloads. It even lets you track Adsense clicks! This plugin is great for tracking downloads as it allows you to specify what types of file prefixes should be used as downloads.

Download Google Analytics for Wordpress Here

5. Google Analytics Dashboard

This would be my favorite plugin for client sites. Rather than trying to teach your clients how to login and use Google Analytics (which is an extra step and cumbersome) this plugin puts a view of your analytics data right from your Wordpress dashboard.

Even for savvy users this plugin is a great way to keep track of your sites performance with out having to log into Google Analytics every day.

Download Google Analytics Dashboard Here

This of course can be a hard concept to get away from as many of us are striving to make designs that are aesthetically pleasing... and by aesthetically pleasing it typically means pleasing to ourselves. Yes, with this approach the client will agree it looks great and we can look at our portfolio with a glimmer in our eye, proud of our works of art. However what really should be a gauge for success is how well the site performed.

Keep in mind some of the most successful sites would probably look ugly in your eyes, but are perfect in the eyes of the target audience. The Knot for example, doesn't strike my fancy in any way shape or form... but brides to be?

My not so subtle point is that we should be striving to create effective designs and in order to do so we need to really understand our target users. This means going beyond what the client tells us they like, going beyond looking through CSS galleries to see what we like and instead it means reaching out and finding out what those target users actually like.

Don't Trust The Client

If nothing else the first step is to understand that you client has a better understanding of the audience than you do. The next step is to acknowledge that everything you (or the client) think you know about the user is wrong. This sounds contradictory but what I am getting at is that while doing client interviews is a good first step to some vague understanding of the audience but it will no doubt lead to assumptions that are simply incorrect. Additionally you can be sure that some of the information gathered from the client is based on assumptions that are incorrect.

Your goal during the initial interviews is to get enough information and knowledge to know where to look to start performing actual research. The interview and client questionnaire is not the research itself.

Phase I, The Basics

The first design meeting that you hold should really aim to understanding the basics of the target audience. Basic age, demographic and interest information. I stress that you shouldn't try and extract any more information. Rather than looking for answers instead look for examples.

The problem with asking "What does your audience care about?" is that you will get an answer that is really what your client thinks the audience cares about... which most of the time is not the actual case. Instead ask to give an example of a perfect customer, one that they would like to have 10 times more of. This will draft up a real example where you can get an idea of life stage, interests, gender, family, geographic location, etc... I would also stress to try and get contact information for this example as well.

Repeat this process to get a decent sample size of actual examples of customers based on factual information and you have a pretty good base to start your research.

Phase II, Understanding

With 4 - 5 examples of the "perfect customer" you will start to notice some pattern. It might be age range, family size, occupation, interests, region, etc... but you should be able to find some common thread among them. However this isn't enough to really decide what should be visually communicated to them in a manor that will maximize website effectiveness.

From there you can dive a little deeper. You can now start asking more probing questions, however it is important to only record answers that are based on fact rather than assumption. For example it may be a good idea to ask "Why did this customer purchase from you rather than a competitor?" -- if the client hasn't specifically asked them, don't bother. However more sophisticated companies with healthy marketing departments will be cataloging this sort of information in a CRM system.

If the client is unaware of why they purchased that is OK, instead ask permission to contact the client for a brief interview via e-mail or phone. If the customer really is a "perfect customer" they would be happy to spend 10 - 15 minutes of their time answering questions about your clients company or product.

This is the perfect time to start drafting interview questions, such as:

• Why did you select this company over a competitor?
• What do you identify with in regards to this company?
• How would you describe yourself (if you can show people an image of someone they would agree is "like them" you increase empathy dramatically)
• What emotions do you associate with the company or product you purchased? (Happy, sad, fear, etc...)
• What are you looking for when choosing a company/product for this need?

These types of questions will give you incredibly valuable insight into the decision making process of the "perfect customer." It is important to ask these sorts of emotional and logical questions rather than design questions (such as what is your favorite color) as most people will give suggestions that will actually not resonate with them at all. This will let you as a design aggregate the information and responses and draft a visual strategy that communicates the goal of the message with out the recommendations of those who are not trained in visual communication.

Phase III, Immersing

There has long been a strategy of design research in which a designer actually follows and monitors target customers over a period of time. Typically this is documented through photo journal to provide easy visual reference and inspiration when it comes time to design. Unfortunately this practice is rarely practiced as turn around times become shorter and budgets become smaller... however you can really get the same sort of effect simply by doing some research through easily available social media.

• Finding examples of the "perfect customer" on FlickR will give you a snapshot into what photos are most important to them in their lives.
• There are plenty of Facebook fan pages, groups and discussions that will give you insight into consumer hopes, concerns and aspirations.
• The always classic blogs and forums are a great way to follow and understand your market.
• Searching for conversations on Twitter regarding your service or product will give you lots of people to follow and better understand on a micro level.

Yes... It Actually Works Wonders

If you have any doubt that two equally stunning and beautifully designs that have different approaches can perform completely different than consider this example:

At one point the popular Guitar Magazine decided to redesign the cover of their publication. If you have done work in the publication industry you will learn that the cover of a book can make a dramatic difference in sales and this is no different for magazines.

Originally the covers featured prominent guitarists and musicians. This made sense as these were often the primary articles of the publications and it was only logical to try and sell the best content the magazine had to offer. However after doing extensive research on their target market they found that what people cared amount more where beautiful guitars themselves, not the musicians who played them.

So after a redesign the cover then focused on a different, beautiful and interesting guitar every month rather than a person of interest. Despite the fact that the content didn't change and the new cover wasn't any better designed (from an aesthetics or rules of design perspective) sales increased dramatically.

This would have never happened had research been ignored during the redesign process. They likely would have changed the magazine enough to make it look interesting and completely missed what the target users really wanted to see when they were browsing through the magazine stand.

Wordpress makes it very easy to publish content. In fact once you have it installed the hardest part is to actually make yourself write, find or commission the content. The actual publishing of the content is a second thought. How could this get any better do you ask? How about if we can make our posts super optimized with just a few tweaks and plug-ins?

1. Search Optimized Title

The title of your posts and pages is a large factor in how well your content ranks. All of the search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing all heavily weigh the title of your page and the keywords in it when deciding how relevant it is to search terms. This means that if you include keywords and phases in your page title you will get significantly more search traffic. Now by default Wordpress does a great job of including the title of your page in the document title, however we can improve upon it a little bit.

The closer the keywords and phrases are towards the start of the title the better you will rank. Wordpress put's it at the end of the title tag after the name of the blog, what we want to do instead is put it at the front. Luckily this is easy with the All In One SEO Plugin. Simply download and install and you can configure how the title is automatically generated.

2. Search Optimized Internal Linking

Links are critically important to SEO, in fact they can have one of the highest influences on how your sites rank. The search engines both take a look at how many links are pointing to your sites and pages as well as the words that used as the text for the links (ie: the anchor text). While links from other sites are the most effective types of links you can also improve your sites ranking by optimizing how you treat your internal links.

An easy way to do this is to ensure that each post has the title linking to the permalink for the page, this reinforces the keywords that are in your title with the post. This is an easy item to control through your theme template or simply by selecting a theme that uses the title as a link. If you can have the title also be a heading this will be even better.

Here is an example of the mark up / templating you can use to optimize your page titles:

 <h1><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h1> 

3. Care with Duplicate Content

Many of the search engines are extremely sensitive when it comes to having several pages that have the same content. This is because at one point people wrote scripts that would scour the internet and steal your content, posting it on their own sites as a way to try and gain search traffic for advertising or affiliate links.

Wordpress out of the box is not great when it comes to duplicate content. Many of the tag and archive pages can end up duplicating your articles under several different URLs. To combat this we recommend two options:

Display article excerpts on archive, category and tag pages rather than entire articles

On the pages where you are displaying archives or tagged pages, instead of showing the entire article use the wp_excerpt(); tag to display a teaser of the article with a link to learn more. This will prevent search engines from picking up the same post or article on several different URLs.

Exclude archive pages with your robots.txt

If you would prefer to have your archive, category and tag pages display full articles you can always exclude all of them except one by using your robots.txt file. The robots.txt file can tell web crawlers like the ones that are powered by search engines not to index parts of a given site. This is simply done by putting a text file named robots.txt in your root directory and including code similar the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content
Disallow: /tag
Disallow: /author
Disallow: /2010
Disallow: /2009
Disallow: /2008

4. Search Optimized Sitemaps

As you publish more and more content search engines can start to have difficulty finding all of your content and ensuring that it is all indexed. There are two ways we can ensure that search engines have as much information as possible as to what content is published on our wordpress sites and where they are published.

Keep an up to date XML sitemap

Search engines now look for a sitemap.xml file that contains the structure of your website with in the root directory. Additionally many search engines will also let you register and specify where you sitemap.xml sits on your server (Google Webmaster Tools for example gives you this capability). The XML sitemap plugin will automatically generate and update your sitemap.xml every time you create a new post so you can be sure that the search engines know about every post that you have.

Keep an up to date HTML sitemap

The other way that search engines find new pages and articles on your site is simply by navigating the links on your pages. By having one page that lists all of the posts on your site, the search engine can easily access every post from one central easy to find place.

Rather than update a page every time you create a new post or page, we suggest using the sitemap generator plug-in for Wordpress. Much like the XML sitemap generator, this plug-in will generate and update your HTML sitemap automatically every time you add a page or post.

5. Search Optimized Promotion

Once your have created a blog and some posts you need to actually promote them to get users and the search engines to take notice. Simply posting content and hoping that people will stumble upon them might be a little optimistic. Instead we want to be proactive about getting our content noticed and there are some great ways to do this.

Improving your Ping Pang

When you create a new post wordpress sends a notification to different services to look up and acknowledge the new content. We can improve this however by expanding the list of services that Wordpress pings. Simply go to settings > Writing and paste the following list into your "Update Services" box

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://xping.pubsub.com/pin

Promote Socially

Almost every search engine looks at links as a vote that your site and content is worth reading (and thus should appear higher in search engines). Promoting your content to social media is an excellent way to get high quality links and traffic to your posts. Additionally many search engines are now monitoring and tracking real time discussions and linking such as Twitter updates. It is likely that if they are not using this in their algorithm now they will in the future.

To promote users sharing your content make it easy. The ShareThis plugin makes it easy for users to add your content to any number of their social networks or simply e-mail it to a friend. The added links using the plugin will give you will make your entire blog an SEO beast.

The Problem

I am sure if you do client work you have run into the situations where someone comes up with the idea to "do a blog." With out really discussing the "who, what, why, when and how." IE: Who is going to read the blog? What is going to be on it? Why would they read it? How are they going to find it?

This tends to be much much more dangerous with social media as a dormant and unvisited blog looks bad but doesn't attract a lot of attention. With social media you are connecting with people on a personal level so any action or inaction is watched on a closer level and with a higher level of scrutiny.

Recently I did a presentation for some bright students at Eastern Michigan University regarding why social media succeeds or fails (you can see my slides here). In preparation I was able to really boil down my thoughts as to the core elements of social media marketing strategies. To be honest about my general viewpoint regarding social media and marketing is that 80% of the time it is used in the wrong situations and in the wrong ways. You could say I am a harsh critic of social media and recommend against using it more often than I recommend it (I will go into why a bit later).

What To Consider

Typically when a company or brand gets on the social media "band wagon" they will go out and sign up for what ever range of networks that suits their fancy, friends people how ever they can and then proceed to broadcast updates about the company or brand. Thanks, that's annoying. Tivo and DVR tools have proven that people prefer to skip commercials and other forms of broadcast interruptions, why would they want to invite it into their social interactions as well? Hmm... let me think... oh they probably wouldn't.

What companies and brands need to figure out is how they are going to use social media to add value to peoples social interactions. Broadcasting updates about your brand does not add value, if it isn't going to make someones day better then forget it.

How Do You Add Value?

The most common and effective ways to add value through social media is through the following approaches:

• Listening to what people are already saying
• Talking with people about their likes, dislikes, suggestions, etc...
• Helping build energy and excitement about your product or service
• Helping users embrace their use of your product or service
• Supporting consumers with their troubles (or facilitating other consumers to support each other)

Listening

You know how everyone says that the most important part of communication is listening? Guess what, that is the case with online communication as well. You know what, it also is one of the most important part of marketing in general. Don't believe me? If you don't listen to your market to find out what they want and what they need you will simply create products and services that nobody wants. Congratulations, your business is going to fail!

Listening is probably the easiest and best place to start with social media. If nothing else just pay attention to what people are saying on twitter, facebook, youtube, etc... you will get a lot of valuable insight on how you could improve.

Talking

Ah talking, everyone likes to talk about themselves and with brands that doesn't seem to be any different. The problem is that your consumers don't want to talk to you about you, they want to talk to you about them. It's a subtle but important difference. When a brand gets to the point that they are responding and talking with consumers it is important to listen first, respond second. Only contact consumers when you can offer some value, otherwise don't bother them.

Build Energy

Building energy takes a lot more effort and creativity to do properly. The idea is to provide a valuable game, take away, contest, that gets people excited about your product (or release). Some good examples would be the MadMen Yourself campaign, the IKEA furniture giveaway or <add one more>. All of these examples were a fun, engaging and value added way to get people excited about the brands.

Embracing

Campaigns that help users embrace your brand can often build excitement and energy as well, however the approach is often different. With embracing you are really looking to create tools, opportunities and services that enhance how a consumer interacts with your product or service. It could be a way to TIVO new shows based on friends recommendations, or potentially giving users the ability to store or share usage information to facebook or other networks.

Supporting

Supporting is another area in which social media has been used effectively in a lot of diverse situations. When someone is frustrated enough with a product or service that they become vocal through a network they have the potential to influence a large portion of their network. However what they are really expressing is a desire to have their problem solved. By solving the problem you can change their negative opinion and have a high likelihood of converting them into enthusiasts.

Another great example would be the use of a site like Navy For Moms in which it is a venue for users to support each other. This site has been extremely effective, partially because the support and feedback didn't come from the organization (in this case, the Navy). By encouraging enthusiasts to participate on a site like this they can help answer questions in an true and honest manor, which is much more likely to be taken seriously as there are little to no ulterior motives.

Stick To Adding Value

If you look at classic examples of failed social media campaigns you will find that there is no value to be found. Despite the fact that it should be the first thing to consider many campaigns ignore it all together.

For example the classic "What would you do for a Whopper" campaign in which Burgerking would award anyone who unfriended 10 people on facebook with a free Whopper. This unfriending was of course published to your feed for everyone to see, including your friends who were snubbed because you wanted to save $3. This means that you valued each person you unfriended at less than 30 cents.

This campaign failed because it actually removed value from peoples social interactions. The participation was poor at best and it is a classic case of anti-social media.

The skittles homepage is another classic "no value failed campaign." Skittles thought that their new homepage would be best represented by displaying a list of the most recent tweets that mention skittles. Ask yourself all you want, "How did this add value?" and you will not be able to find anything significant. It simply was a mirror of what was already going on. As a result twitter users caught on and tweeted creative ideas such as "skittles are made from people" and "skittles cause cancer." Probably not what skittles had in mind when they came up with the concept.

So core take away is that you need to add value with your social media campaign or don't use social media at all. There are a lot of companies and brands where it simply doesn't make sense to do anything but listen. If you can find a way to add value through talking, embracing, energizing or supporting then build from there.

If you have a huge advertising budget getting targeted traffic is not that difficult. There are countless tools available for identifying the right markets and you can simply write checks to your hearts desire. However most of us are placed in situations where we (or our clients) simply can not afford to spend tens of thousands of dollars on internet advertising.

Luckily, if you know the right strategies you can get plenty of targeted traffic with out spending any hard cash.

1. Build an E-mail List

Building an e-mail list is something that many of us have seemed to have forgotten about. It may be due to the association with spam, or that it has been around so long, or maybe social media and RSS seem like a better option. E-mail offers a very unique difference and advantage however. First you have the ability to send specific e-mails and messages to specific groups and segments of your audience (where RSS is an all or nothing approach), but additionally you tend to have a more captive audience which results in higher response and conversion rates.

RESOURCES

• Lyrus E-mail Marketing
• How do you build your e-mail list?
• Entrepreneur.com on building your e-mail list

2. Focus on Organic Search

Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has the capability to pull in large amounts of traffic with out having to spend a dime (in theory). Organic search is simply the unpaid listing of websites that show up when someone performs an internet search on a site such as Google, Yahoo or Bing. With 80% of all transactions starting with an internet search, not only do you have an audience that is ready to buy... it has the potential to bring in more traffic that almost any other approach available.

While we would all like to get more organic traffic it often is easier said than done. It is important to keep in mind that there is no way to trick your way to good rankings. The best practice is always to create high quality valuable content and ensure your website is built in a way that is search engine friendly. Keep in mind that when you are focusing on organic traffic getting high quality links with targeted anchor text tends to be most effective (for example, DIY Solar Energy)

RESOURCES

• SEO Basics
• The SEO Book
• SEO For Wordpress Guide

3. Social Media

Social Media is the use of employing sites and media that allow you to connect with other people on a social level. The common examples would be Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Linkedin. These sites let you connect and converse with other users who have similar interests as you. Because all websites have some overarching theme or topic, you can connect with people who are also interested in the topic. This gives you the opportunity to build awareness of your site/product/service with your audience on a personal level which is much more effective than on a push media level.

An important note about social media. Make sure anything you do, publish or say on these networks is done in a way that actually adds value to someones day. If you are simply signing up to spam links to your site you are likely to have sub-par results.

RESOURCES

• Mashable Social Media 101
• Example Social Media Policies
• The Social Media Bible

4. Develop Some Public Relations

With so much focus on digital media public relations has lost a lot of the attention that it used to hold. Public relations is a valuable part of any marketing mix and it is an approach to building awareness and traffic that shouldn't be ignored. Especially considering it can be a low cost (or no cost) solution. There really are two areas in which we can benefit from public relations, through traditional forms of media and new forms of media.

While there are many different facets of PR, where you stand to gain a lot of new traffic is by having stories and articles written about your website.

Offline

Back before the internet became what it is today, companies would send a small one page write up with "news worthy" content regarding their company to any relevant media sources. These went out to newspapers, magazines, journals, etc... This write up was called a "press release" and simply covered the "who, what, when, why and how" of the story. Despite the fact that the internet is changing the way people consume news, it is still an effective way of building awareness about your website and/or company.

There have been plenty of studies and reports that show a direct correlation between traditional media mentions and website traffic. Even if your website isn't listed in the article you will find more branded searches for your website (and thus more traffic). If you know that you are going to be covered you can also try and capitalize on the increase in traffic and offer special discounts or personalized messages.

The process is fairly simple. Round up any related publications and look for the news contacts, almost every publication will have an e-mail where you can submit news. Write up a short press release and distribute it to the list you created previously. Don't be afraid to call up the media and pitch the story to them a few days after you have sent the release.

Online

This process doesn't have to be limited to offline publications. There are lots of industry blogs and websites that regularly post content and news to an audience consisting of your target market. While the concept is similar (get an online publication or blog to talk about you, your product, your company, etc..) it tends to be slightly different in approach. In most cases getting articles and news published can be a bit trickier as you are not always working with professional journalists who always need that next story.

When pitching stories to bloggers or online publications you may need to spend more time developing a relationship with the authors first. Additionally finding a list of relevant blogs can be a bit more tricky and require more searching. The more open and honest you are about the situation the better your results will be. It is unnecessary to write a formal press release (and ineffective), focus on starting a conversation with the author instead.

RESOURCES

• How to write a press release
• How to pitch to bloggers
• Blogger Relations 101
• How to pitch

5. Add Value to Other Sites

Ok "Web 2.0" might be a cliche term, but there are a countless websites that thrive on user participation and contribution. I assure you that there are some related to your industry or that consist of your target market, as people naturally want to connect and discuss things that are important to them. Some industries and topics may be harder to find than others, but if you are listening there are people talking.

Once you have found these types of sites, take a little bit of time every week to add value to them through participation. Over time the users will begin to become familiar with you and trust you. By offering your knowledge you will build awareness, good will and trust for your company/website/profession. Additionally most of these sites will even let you have a profile or signature that can contain a link (or several) to your website so you don't have to be so direct about your motives.

The more you participate and the more you contribute the more you will get out of this technique.

6. Get Others Involved

Sometimes the best way to build awareness and traffic is through word of mouth. Word of mouth is actually one of the most effective forms of marketing online and off. Not far behind word of mouth in terms of effectiveness is celebrity endorsement. This method can drive traffic to your website by using both of these proven techniques. When you get other people involved in your website (either as guest bloggers, giving them an interview, etc...) you are doing two very powerful things. First you are actually giving people a small portion of ownership in what you are doing. When they invest the time to contribute and assist the site they buying into the idea that it is worth their time and effort. Because of this they are going to be much more likely to want your website to succeed and thus tell other people. If nothing else they will likely link to their contribution and tell people about it.

Additionally by having a well known figure contributing to your website you are getting their endorsement and it can boost your credibility significantly (even to the point of matching their own). This subconsciously will resonate with users and put the site at a higher status than they would previously, making them much more likely to share your site, contribute to the site and return for future visits.

7. Syndicate Your Content

Chances are if you are looking for more traffic there are at least a handful of other sites on the web that cover the same (or similar) subjects that you are. By creating high quality content you can offer a win/win situation. Approach popular websites and offer to publish (or syndicate) your articles on their site. They win by providing relevant content to their readers with out having to perform the work of creating it and you can build awareness / traffic to your site through an article byline.

If you can't find any websites that will bite you could always submit your articles to article directory sites. They often have huge mailing lists on various topics and tend to rank fairly well themselves.

• Technorati
• Top Article Directories
• Syndicate your blog through social media

8. Contests For Your Services

Contests have always been a great way to build awareness and interest. After all who doesn't like wining something for free? Since we are talking about free ways to generate traffic purchasing an item to give away is out of the picture. Sure you might be able to find something you already have to give away but how likely is that? Instead offer up your expertise. Chances are you have skills or knowledge that is valuable to other people or companies. By offering a contest for the services you don't have to spend any additional capital and build awareness for all of those people who previously didn't know about your expertise but could use your help.

This is a perfect time to build your e-mail list. Ask those who are signing up for your contest if they would like to be entered into your newsletter for future opportunities and giveaways.

If you don't want to do a contest you could also do a free seminar or webinar, both of which can drive a lot of traffic and attention to your site as well.

9. Be Remarkable

Supreme marketing guru Seth Godin often talks about the importance of being remarkable. The idea is that if you are "the best in the world" at something it will naturally market for you. An important part of achieving this status is picking a very specific and narrow niche or specialty. If you have a content focused website, what very specific topic can you cover that you can do better than anyone else in the marketplace? If you run a service company, what very narrow and specific niche can you server better than any of the other companies in the market?

By focusing your attention on becoming the best at this narrow specialty you will become remarkable and an expert. Your demand will increase dramatically and people will start finding your site naturally. This actually is more effective and will generate more traffic than if you were to try and be "good" in a market that is already saturated with those who can do a better job than you.

RESOURCES

• Seth Godin: The Dip

10. Start a Group or Organization

Through out human history we have always desired a sense of belonging and community.It doesn't take much looking to find a group of people who are interested in the same things that you are. Start a weekly meet up, tweet up, chat up (if it is virtual), forum, digest, etc... that gets the group of people together to talk and discuss the issues. You would be surprised at how quickly a group like that can grow. As the founder and head of the group or organization you will receive a lot of notoriety and interest. It will also give you great opportunities to have links and advertisements for your company or website through out areas in which members interact.

Conclusion

There are lots of different ways to drive traffic to your website with out spending much (or any) money. Sometimes they are more effective than paid methods. The general rule of thumb though is that traffic tends to be high involvement and low cost, or low involvement and high cost. Search Marketing is a good example of this - where pay per click can get you traffic very quickly and with out much in terms of time investment, organic rankings can take significantly more work and take much longer but at a much lower cost.

It is important to understand what techniques, tactics and strategies are going to be most effective for any given situation. Blindly trying them all is not going to work very well, take the time to think through and plan your approach in building traffic.

A website that isn't persuasive will fail to convince users they should spend the time to perform what actions are required to convert. At some point they will lose interest and find a different site that is more effective at convincing them it is worth their time and money and you will be left scratching your head as to why they left when they did.

We put endless amounts of emphasis on design, clean code, standards, interactivity, functionality and even sometimes well written copy. However none of these elements necessarily mean that the website will end up being persuasive.

There are countless ways to be persuasive online. Psychological studies have identified common patterns and situations in which outcomes and actions of other people become predictable. By incorporating the findings of these articles we can develop sites that are more effective and have higher conversion rates.

1. Admit Minor Faults

Social psychologist Kip Williamns performed a study on the perception of lawyers and cases as seen by jurors. In situations in which the lawyer had mentioned a weakness in his own case before the opposing attorney mentioned it they trusted and liked the lawyer more.

By admitting small faults and weaknesses it actually increased the perceived trustworthiness of the lawyer. We can learn from this example by admitting minor faults and weaknesses in order to increase the trust in our claims of strengths and selling points. You can be sure that your customers and clients are doing their research to find out what your competitors offer that you don't. By admitting it first you will increase the amount that those potential customers trust you and your messaging.

2. Have Someone Else Boast For You

Many company websites are hesitant to sing their own praise for fear of sounding boastful and conceded. What we end up with are sites that sound vanilla and don't highlight any differentiating factors at all.

This is not an unfounded practice, we tend to take any praise with a grain of salt when the one giving it is tied to the company or product being described.

The solution is to get someone else to do it for you. Even if the person has something to gain from giving your praise, studies have shown that people do not discount the information nearly as much as they should. This means that you should find someone of credible nature (even if they work for you or the same company!) to introduce or talk about you, your product or the product engineer. Because it is being said by someone else it immediately increases the credibility and how much the user will take the information to heart.

Why do you think so many websites take advantage of client and customer testimonials?

In a case where a real estate agency changed introductions from "You should speak to Sheldon" to "You should speak to our condominium expert, Sheldon" they saw significant increases in new clients and sales.

3. Encourage the User To Be Consistent

Let's face it, your users are smart, savvy and educated individuals. You should be glad they are taking the time to visit your site and you should complement them for it!

This may seem like a wide step away from anything to do with consistency, but bare with me. It has been proven that people often accept compliments as truth even when the compliments are not really accurate. In addition, by accepting the compliment (even if it is just a mental note) they have made a decision that they are what ever that compliment was.

By nature we strive to be consistent. We see ourselves in a very specific way and it is difficult for us to challenge that viewpoint. So with this combination we can persuade a user to perform actions by complementing them and then challenging them to stay consistent.

In a study in which researches monitored the behavior of potential voters, 25% more of those surveyed voted if they were first asked if they would vote on election day.

We can use this by first giving the user a complement such as "You are smart when it comes to business and always make smart decisions." Later on the page by asking the user to make a smart decision you will essentially ask for the user to be consistent with what they already agreed that they were (a smart business person).

4. Focus on Fear Rather than Gain

Research has demonstrated that people are much more likely to act on fear rather than gain. This concept sounds simple, we are programmed by nature to try and reduce and avoid threats before we start considering ways to improve our lives. However it doesn't stop there, with out careful and detailed directions of how to correct or avoid the danger we may simply block out the message or deny that it applies to us. This is often referred to the "fear than relief" method.

A typical example of this would be inexperienced investors. Inexperienced investors are very likely to sell stocks too early because they are afraid of losing what they have already gained. Additionally they are also less likely to sell stocks that have gone down as this would be an absolute loss compared to where they had started.

We can use this on our websites by focusing on what could be lost by not using a given product or service as well as what can be done to avoid the lose. This is often used in advertising that informs customers of real-world threats that a good or service can prevent or alleviate all together. In these cases they always use very clear and specific instructions on how to reduce those threats.

5. Utilize Authority

We have been programed since birth to respect those who have authority over us. From police men to school teachers, those people who have authority command a lot higher trust and respect than the average voice. There are ways to short cut your way to being seen as an authoritative figure. Why do you think that doctors put their diplomas on the walls or why so there are so many professions with uniforms?

The principal of authority has been described  by the following, "we believe we will be better off if we follow the lead of legitimate experts, because they have greater knowledge and expertise in a certain domain than we do."

It is a common mistake to neglect communicating credentials and elements that establish oneself as an authority figure because we are taught that it is rude to brag. However this is actually passing up a great opportunity to be persuasive. If you feel uncomfortable describing credentials and expertise in your copy think about using method #2 and have someone else establish you as an authority for you.

Take any opportunity to establish yourself as an authority. This could be clients who by or use your product, write ups in publications, groups and organizations your company is part of, etc... All of these things establish you or your company as an authority. Users are much more likely to act if they feel there is authority and expertise backing up your messaging, product or service.