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Question : Need assistance in growing my site traffic
I have a dining and nightlife website thats local to the Boston area and the surrounding towns. Its been up and running for awhile now, but the site traffic sucks (~10-20 unique users a day, not including search spiders). Being more of a techie, the marketing thing is proving to be quite difficult for me. I've done SEO, offered money in the form of contests, told everyone and their mothers about it, and yet I cant get it to grow.
The majority of our hits comes from google SERPS, certain establishments we rank in the top 5 so I think im doing something right regarding that aspect. The problem is, a user will come to a restaurant or bars main page, get the info they need, then leave. I'm in the process of adding a new fetaure on these pages that suggest similiar establishments to the user, in hopes that they may navigate the site a bit more. Other than that, im not sure what else to do...
the site is
www.QuestingStone.com
Any help or suggestions is greatly appreciated!
Josh
Answer : Need assistance in growing my site traffic
Forgive me for saying so, but the site itself needs some more work before you can begin to think about growing traffic. Quickly...
The site says "
Questing Stone is all about its community.", but the look and feel of your site isn't about community at all, it's about search.
I don't see where there's any 'community' other than reviews? No discussion forums? No user posts?
Your logo dominates the top section of the site. People don't care about logos, they care about finding something quickly. Emphasize the search.
Why would you need to enter your state for a local search?
The text says "...then click submit", but the button is actually labeled "Search", and is way down at the bottom of the page.
There must be a more logical way of searching than all these check boxes and drop downs. There's almost too much going on here, and it can be arranged in a more user-friendly way (see first paragraph below).
The design looks a bit dated, like something from 1999 rather than 2009. I would recommend a sans-serif typeface, less drop shadow, a more unified color scheme, less marbling and more compactness of the text and boxes. Sorry to be harsh, but design is very important to give you a professional look. It doesn't have to be fancy...think about getting as close to 'Google-style' simplicity and usability as possible.
kyodai is right. Search-wise, the words "Boston" and "restaurant" should be all over this site, especially in the
. </li><li>You've done a good job getting <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aquestingstone.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Google to index each listing</a>, but you might rework each <title> to reflect the name of the area or establishment. Google heavily gauges what's in the <title>.<br /> </li></ul>If I were testing this interface, I would have friends of mine (who didn't know the site very well) come over, one at a time, and give them a few tasks to do on the site, like; 'find Indian food in Andover', or 'find the closest Irish pub'. Sit behind them and watch what they do. You can learn a lot by seeing how they accomplish a task, and how you can best streamline the interface.<br /><br />If you haven't already done so, a little opposition research might be in order. What other sites have similar listings, and what do people like and dislike about those sites? Is there even a market for a dining / nightlife site, or are these areas more than adequately covered by sites like boston.com?<br /><br />Also, the name of the site. "Questing Stone" seems to me more about intellectual knowledge and homework. Yuck. :-) Dining and nightlife is supposed to be about having fun and relaxing. Perhaps you can re-brand or retool to reflect a more laid-back, less rigid feel? A logo that has the word "stone" in it doesn't necessarily have to look like it's made of stone.<br /><br />A web site is like any other business. 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