Earlier we mentioned the 3 ways to get the customer to your site: typing in the URL, clicking the link from another website or document, and clicking the link from the results list of a search engine. A direct entry in the address line means that the user has seen the URL either on a business card, a street sign, or printed marketing material. To make sure your customers use this feature, you should include your URL on all of your marketing material (brochures, pamphlets, business cards, street signs, or window signs).

The second option - a redirect is either generated by social media, email or by cross linking. Successful tweets, post or emails will drive up traffic (interest) in a website. The secret is to provide teaser information; for example, an interesting headline, with a short high level narrative linked back to the content on the site. To take full advantage of a customer's captured interest, the website should invite the customer to sign up for the organization's newsletter or email subscription, to follow the organization on Twitter and/or to become a fan of the organization on Facebook.

Cross linking is when organizations share links between complimentary business relationships or as a gateway to additional complimentary or related information. The key is words that are complimentary or related. An example would be a Wedding Planner. The Wedding Planner might have links to DJ services, bands, caterers, florists, tuxedo rental, wedding apparel shops, and limo services. The businesses would also have links back to the Wedding Planner.

It's been said that search engine's results lists in many cases are a matter of luck, or are they? Search engines can increase company's visibility - strangers know who you are. Search engine optimization is now an industry; organizations have paid in the thousands to have their sites optimized.

There are some basic things that will help move your organization to the top of the search engine list: Content, Content, and MORE Content. The more relevant and current the content the higher your optimization score will be and the closer to the top your website will be.

Another critical item is meta tags, proper use of meta tags in the actual code that makes up the webpage can help bump your website up in the results list. When creating meta tags, use the webpage approach - only include meta tag keywords that actually appear on the webpage.

Other items to improve optimization include the proper linking of pages within the website, registering the website with the dominate search engines, and logical, legal and ethical use of cross linking. Utilization of effective social networking such as You Tube provides additional links back to your organization's website.

In order to maximize your website's value you must monitor who is visiting your website, how they got there, and the pages they are reading. The function of tracking visitors is called web analytics. Proper use of web analytics will allow you to determine what tweets, posts, and emails work.

Bottom up analytics allows the tracking of response to other market efforts. For example, if you attend a marketing event and give business cards to 10 people, A bottom up analytics would tell you that 3 people were interested enough to look at your site. In addition, web analytics would inform you that one person visited from Company X's domain, looked at 9 pages, spent 22 minutes viewing. and subscribed to your organization's newsletter.