This is a site about teaching aerobics, but in my fulltime life I am a web developer.  A few of you have developed websites through my do it yourself online web development company at http://www.biggersmarterdesigns.com/. 

Below is this month's newsletter that I send to my web clients.  The information is useful for anyone who has a fitness website, or is thinking of starting one.

Getting More Traffic to your Site
Some websites entice, some give information, and some allow customers to order products online.  No matter what your website does for your customers more traffic will usually lead to more business.  E-commerce sites should be shooting for a 3 - 5% conversion rate, although it is possible to achieve higher.

So how do you get more targeted traffic to your site?  Today I am going to focus on the basics.  In future newsletters, I will drill down to some more specific sources of traffic.

1 - Search Engine Optimization.  You have heard the term.  Have you truly educated yourself on what it is?  Do you know the difference between organic and pay per click traffic?  Do you have keywords set on your site (check your Admin panel under "Marketing and Search Engines"?)  Have you submitted your site to the search engines?

Search Engine Optimization is a science in itself, but you need to educate yourself on the basics.  I suggest you subscribe to the newsletter at http://www.sitepronews.com/.  Read it every time you get it, but don't get pulled in by the product offers.  Just read the information about search engines.  After a few newsletters it will start to make sense.  This is information you need in order to run an effective website .

2 - Get out There!  Here is where I want you to get creative.  Think outside your website, where are your potential customers currently going on the web?  Is there an opportunity for you to get the webmasters of those sites to link to your site?  Send those webmasters an email telling them about your site and asking them to link to you. 

Then take it further.  Put ads on CraigsList.org.  Find industry specific local and national directories and make sure they are linking to your site.  USE THE NEWSLETTER FEATURE of your website!!!  Make sure you are sending emails to your visitors at least once every 2 weeks so they don't forget about you.

3 - Think Outside the Web.  make sure that every single print piece pertaining to your business lists your website address.  Call in to your favorite radio show and mention the website while you are on the air  Write articles for industry specific magazines, and mention the website in your bio.  Get the local news station to come do a story on your extremely exciting business growth.  Blog, and comment on other peoples' blogs (of course, mentioning the website while you are there.)

These are 3 suggestions to get you started.  Try some out.  You will hear more about these concepts in the weeks and months to come.

Anti-spam tip:
It's really smart to allow visitors to contact you through your site.  And it's really easy to throw your email address up on the site and say 'Email me at blah@blahblahblah.com'  The problem is this; spammers have robots that search the internet looking for email addresses that are exposed like this.  They copy the email address down, and suddenly you are on every spam and phishing list from here to Nigeria.

Always allow visitors to contact you, but make sure you make them fill out a form on the site.  This will allow an email to be sent, but keep your email address hidden from the visitor until you reply to their email.  Your website has a very easy form builder feature meant for this purpose.  Use the forms and please, don't ever list your email address directly on your site.