In our last post, we highlighted the art of driving traffic to a website. Contests and micro sites are both effective ways to do this, but here are three easy steps to simple search engine optimization.

1. Find

Locate useful keywords using the Google Keyword Tool. You can find keywords based on a number of criteria, such as related site content or geographic location. Once you enter the words or phrases you think your audience is searching for, check out the results. Similar keywords show up, noting popularity, competition, volume of traffic, etc. Choose which keywords you think will work best for you. Avoid ones that might have a negative impact. 

2. Tag

Take those keywords found using the Google Keyword Tool and put them to use. These can be distributed among blogs, Facebook, Flickr, Digg, and more. This way, your online presence will be easier to find when people search for any of the keywords you use. For example, The Cyphers Agency Flickr photo stream is tagged with keywords like “Maryland advertising” or “Annapolis ad agency”. If someone searches these terms in Flickr, our photo streams appear.

3. Track

After putting your keywords to use, keep an eye on their impact. A tool like Google Analytics can keep this kind of detailed information. It helps keep track of where the visitors are coming from, how they reached your website, etc. Overall, this tool makes it easy to keep updated and informed on online activities you wish to track.

Driving web site traffic is an art. An art that we at The Cyphers Agency have worked hard to perfect. Sometimes driving traffic involves more than using social media and search engine optimization. In addition to those tools, building micro sites is a great tool to use to increase web traffic. Those micro sites often become host sites for contests, which we have recently done for two clients. Contests are another win-win. Participants get entertainment and the opportunity to win a prize, and clients get traffic to their web sites and increase their potential clientele.

We created the “Warman Fuzzy” Photo/Video Contest this spring for Warman Home Care, a home care service provider. We asked participants to submit a photo or video showing what warm and fuzzy meant to them. Once we received all the submissions, we uploaded the photos to flickr and the videos to YouTube, and turned the voting over to the participants.

More than 100 contest participants were trying to win an iPod Touch and iPod Nano, and were spreading the links to friends and family trying to get them to vote for their photo or video on these sites. The result was thousands of photo/video views, hundreds of comments and increased traffic the Warman Home Care web site. And if those contest participants (or their acquaintances) are ever in a position to find a home care provider, who will pop in their head first? Probably Warman Home Care.

With the first contest deemed a success, the second round of the Warman Fuzzy  contest has started, this time in honor of Grandparents Day. With a quick upload and description of a favorite memory with a grandparent or senior, participants can be one step closer to winning an iPod.

Another contest we created for our client, Patrice & Associates, is the “My Job Sucks Contest,” which is hosted on the micro site “Did You Get That Memo.” For this contest, all that participants have to do is submit a story about why their job sucks, and they will be entered to win a cruise!  Entering the contest is just one of the many things that site visitors can do on the site. They can complain about their current job on the “venting wall,”  kill time watching funny office videos, or even get in touch with a Patrice & Associates recruiter, who can help them find a better job.

We don’t suggest contests to clients simply because it would be fun to look at Warm and Fuzzy pictures or because reading the venting wall on didyougetthatmemo.com is simply hysterical. Although we enjoy looking at Warm and Fuzzy photos and laughing at the funny stories on the venting wall, the bottom line is that contests are effective.

Not only do contests help drive traffic to web sites, they are also a way to reach out to new potential clients or customers. Even if the participants don’t need your product or service, when they do, they’ll be likely to remember your name. Contests are also another way for a business to show some personality on the web outside of it’s corporate site.