A small yet powerful tool

A small yet powerful tool

Increasing traffic to your website can prove to be a daunting task and can be pretty confusing sometimes, both for newbies and seasoned professionals. There does not exist a step by step guide to attaining more visitors or high rankings as there is no real science behind it. Experimenting with tips and tricks offered by various self proclaimed SEO gurus and industry leaders is one possibility that many of us explore. However, there are infinite number of tricks and techniques and it is practically impossible for anyone to be able to use all of them. A seemingly small yet powerful tool tends to get lost in this maze of abundance and many people fail to realize what they are missing.

People associate this tool with many names, some call it widgets and some call it gadgets, while others call is badges. Irrespective of the names, this tool is becoming increasing popular with consumers and online marketers. The popularity of widgets is fueled by the fact that it lets the users to interact directly with the source of information, is portable and can be easily added on a webpage or to one's desktop. It provide users with a whole new way of directly connecting to the content by cutting down the need of using a browser. Jeff Williams, Associate Director, Digitas once said, "Widgets hold an interesting creative possibility to create a conversation with consumers." This aspect can be effectively and efficiently used to augment your search engine optimization and online marketing efforts.

Widgets are a great way of ensuring that you stay connected with people who do not come to your website frequently. By doing so you build a special tie with your prospective customers, and at the same time enhance your brand image and recognition - its all about reach. But this can only happen if people find your widget to be useful and simple. Widgets should have these characteristics or else people would choose to stay away from it. This would therefore defeat the very purpose for which it was built.

Apart from building brand recognition and equity, widgets have a great potential to become link bait and will help in getting valuable links. This especially works well in social media and therefore one should ensure that the widget is designed to work in most environments (it is almost impossible to get them working with all different applications). Since widgets can be used as a great direct response mechanism, it can possibly generate sales besides adding value to your business. It has also been proven that it can do wonders to affiliate marketing. These benefits are a great supplement to your search engine optimization efforts. The best part is that getting a widget designed and developed would not cost you a bomb and still provide significant results.

The world of widgets is still in its infant stage but is sure to feature high on every marketer's wish list, in the days to come.