Web Site Traffic,
how do you get some?
1: Search Engines.
The first place to focus your energies for long term traffic
generation.
A competent search engine optimisation and submission strategy
is essential if you want to draw the maximum number of visitors
possible to your site.
You don't necessarily need to hire a company to do this you
can quiet easily do it yourself, but be prepared to put the
time in to do it properly.
Take a look at this article on how to optimise
your site, guiding you step by step through the process.
There's also a list of search
engine submission pages available on which you can find
a link to a search engine relationship chart.
2: Forum posting.
The quickest way to drive traffic to your site is to find
Forums on sites with content related to your own site, and
post to them.
This is not spam! What you should do is find busy forums related
to the site you are promoting, read a few posts and single
out one you can offer useful advice on. Then sign up to the
forum, post your advice. Then find the appropriate section
to post for a site check of the site you are promoting. All
the time signing off with the site url. Its simply good etiquette
to give before you take and it will avoid you being accused
of spamming the forum.
Apart from attracting visitors to your site. The other benefit
to this of course is that forums get indexed by the search
engines and your url will be picked up.
A similar tactic was possible on newsgroups a few years ago
but you will now more than likely be lost in the spam soup.
3: Write articles
Number two for a quick boost in site visitors.
Write articles based upon your site content or that add value
to your site content.
These articles can then be posted on your site and even better
submitted to other sites for publishing consideration. Site
owners are always in need of fresh content for their sites.
You could even find your article being published in a sites
newsletter and emailed to thousands of subscribers, guaranteeing
a rush in visitors to your site. You could always apply to
be published in a newsletter directly.
The idea is that you sign off your article with what is termed
a resource box.
Containing a little information about yourself and a link
to your site. Providing the article is interesting enough
you should see a healthy click through to your site.
The other benefit to this is that articles will generally
be archived on the publishing site, resulting in another highly
targeted link back to your site, boosting your search engine
rankings.
There are a number of sites that will allow you to post your
articles to their archives were they can be searched by site
owners and possibly picked up for publication. Here's a brief
list -
· Womans-Net
· Ezine
Articles
· Idea
Marketers
· Expert Articles
· Free
Web Articles
· Go
Articles
Of course for the best result you should approach sites directly
and target sites especially with a good Google PR rating.
4: Traffic networks
Despite the services you may have come across online that
run this kind of operation and look decidedly dodgy. It does
actually work if you use the right service. I've been using
TrafficSwarm
for close on twelve months now and I always see a steady stream
of traffic from it to the URL's I submit.
The system works by you setting your homepage to the TrafficSwarm
network. This is not as bad as it sounds, I'll explain in
a second. Each time you open your browser you gain a credit
and view 6 links each with a short description of the site
content. If non of the links appeal, click next and your
presented with 6 more. Should you click on a link you receive
anything from 1 to 5 credits. All credits earned go towards
the number of times your site link is displayed on the network.
TrafficSwarm is now in the top 500 most visited sites on
the Web.
If you can persuade others to sign up with TrafficSwarm then
you also gain credits through their use of the network.
If the idea of changing your homepage puts you off then save
your usual homepage to the links folder within your favourites
folder. Then set the links to display at the top of your browser
by right clicking at the top of the browser and making sure
Links is ticked. You're just one click away from your homepage
again.
Alternatively if your homepage is Google, install the Google
toolbar and you can also then take Google with you to
any site you visit. There are also a number of useful features
including a pop up killer that come with the toolbar.
An alternative pay for hits service I came across recently
looks to be working very well. You can get 5000 hits to your
site for as little as $10.99. Take a look at Ad
monster.
5: PPC (Pay Per Click)
The front runner in terms of PPC right now is Googles
Adwords. Although a number of other search engines offer
the service non of them can compete in terms of the users
that Google has. Mention should also be made of Overture
the original pioneers of the PPC system on search engines.
The Adwords are displayed down the right hand side of the
Google search result s page. The higher you set your click
price higher up the listings you appear.
You only pay when people click on your ads. You have control
over how much you pay. You can set a maximum daily budget
and a maximum cost you are willing to pay for every click.
The system also rewards the best-performing ads by placing
them further up the page.
Adwords now also appear through the Google
Adsense network, so in effect your ad could be appearing
across the Google partner network and on a number of sites
on the Adsense network.
You can join the system with as little as $8 (£5) pounds
in your account and there are no minimum spend or time requirement.
The trick with Adwords is to find the keywords that would
most likely return the best chance of a click through and
purchase. This means targeting the keywords for your campaign
as specifically as possible. E.g. If you choose Dogs but
your site is about Labradors then your throwing clicks and
cash away.
The other point to remember is that its worth looking at
less competitive keywords to target. This will work out
cheaper and still provide the click through's.
I use a great little tool only recently released that takes
the work out of researching your keywords and the guess work
out of which keywords to target. It
actually
tells you how
many people searched on your target keyword and related
keywords/phrase on Google and Overture, how many sites are
targeted at your keywords/phrase PLUS how many Adwords campaigns
are already running on your keywords.
Using this software you can find heavily searched keywords
that have few or no Adwords campaigns running. Armed with
this knowledge you can get the maximum ROI (return on investment)
possible. Adwords
Analyzer
6: Reciprocal Links
A good link exchange campaign can result in a significant
boost to your search engine rankings on Google and now a number
of other search engines take these links into account.
In general you should approach sites that have a good PR
on Google, download the Google
toolbar to check this, by using the toolbar you actually
boost your own sites ranking too, be sure to choose advanced
when given the option. Another toolbar from Alexa
will give you similar figures and boost you site ranking
there, Alexa is owned by Amazon. Look for sites with good
link popularity over all, check them with this free tool,
look for sites that are not competing with your own but
have relevant content. Relevancy is important the more the
sites have in common the better you will score. A handy
tool for choosing link partners is linktolink.
Personally I believe the writing of articles is a much better
way of getting these links. See no 3.
7: Press Release
Visit the Web sites of all the major broadcasters and publications
relevant to your product or service, or even just the local
newspapers, compile a list of their contact email addresses.
Then put together a press release.
This should be of a standard format -
Plain text, with no attachments, and the usual conventions
for a press release - begins, contact information, ends, notes
for editors.
Here's a template to give you the better idea -
http://www.marketingsource.com/pressreleases/releaseformat.html
8: Online games / chat sites or forums / signature
Whenever you are online you should be thinking of ways to
promote your site.
Most obvious of all is to sign off with your site url in all
the emails you send.
Do you use chat sites or forums online?, you always get to
choose a username/nickname, why not use your site url as your
name?
Every time you use the chat or forum and post you advertise
your site even before your post has been read and your signature
containing your site url seen as well.
Do you play games online?
Same principal use your url as your name. Contrary to what
you may believe a wide spectrum of ages and sexes play games
online. The better you play the more your name will be noticed.
This will give you even more of an incentive to win. ;-)
9: Offline promotion
Have you even thought of advertising offline?
More than likely there will be a cost involved somewhere,
but this needn't be to high.
Here briefly are a few ideas. Some of them take a leaf from
the guerrilla
marketers book.
Business cards, tried and tested.
With today's inkjet printer technology you can produce these
yourself to a very high standard that would be indistinguishable
from a professional print shop version.
Car decals or magnetic signs
Decals are the clear plastic strips with writing over them
that you see across the windscreen or rear windscreen
of some cars. Its very cheap to have them made up with
your site url and a brief description of what the site
is about. Keep it simple. If you use your car a lot you
could send a fare bit of traffic to your site. Remember
to keep in mind the legibility of the url. If its long
it may be an idea to have a slight space between the words.
The magnetic signs are essentially the same but differ
in the respect that they stick to the side of your car
and can be removed whenever you choose, or moved from
vehicle to vehicle.
In the US -
http://www.decalkits.com/
In the UK -
http://www.justsigns.com
Flyers
Can, again, be produced very cheaply utilising your own printer.
But if you intend to produce a large number then it would
be wise to pay a professional printer to produce them for
you. The cheapest option begins with just black ink on coloured
paper, the coloured paper is the cheapest way to introduce
colour. The most expensive option is full colour on glossy
card. With the rise in quality of home inkjet printers
the print shops, in trying to keep their customer base, have
become very competitively priced.
These next two are Guerrilla marketing tactics and I don't
condone them they may even be illegal in your part of the
world. They're here to give a fresh angle that may spur you
on to think of some other tactics.
'Post it' notes
Hmm, seems a bit useless this one. Well this will probably
work better than all the above. ;-)
You can have your own message printed onto 'post it' notes
very cheaply.
Keep the url bold and the message simple as before. The real
benefit here is what you do with the 'post its'. Treat them
as individual mini flyers and post them were ever people
gather, at parking meters, at cash machines, bus shelters
even on car windscreens. These are so easily and cheaply
produced you can have hundreds of them made up. Since they're
sticky they don't easily get caught in the wind and blow
away, but they're easily removed if somebody wants to keep
them as a reminder to check out your site. ;-)
Stencils
This is rather radical but could be very effective. Create
a template out of card with your url and a very simple
message. You will use this template with chalk in a can,
this works like spray paint but washes away very easily.
As for the post it notes, 'spray' your url where ever people
gather. Maybe add 'post it' notes to the equation and post
them near by.
Conclusion
I hope you found this article useful and informative.
Utilised properly there is no reason why the techniques above
shouldn't produce a healthy stream of visitors to your site.
About the Author
Darren Yates is owner of How-to-make-money-online.info
a site focused on Making
Money Online listing the many and varied ways of making
money online. Featuring, resources, thousands of Internet
Marketing articles and useful links.
This article comes with reprint rights. You are free to reprint and distribute
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