Category: Article Marketing

A Secret Way Of Getting Traffic


 

If you are reading this article, more likely than not you own a website that you would like to see become a success. To achieve that level, you need traffic to your site. But where does traffic come from?

One of the better ways to get traffic for your site is to submit your site to the many directories that exist online. Online directories are similar to your phone book yellow pages: These directories are categorized (education, entertainment, health, etc.), and when you submit your website, you suggest a category for your website. Often, you will even be able to submit to a sub-category within a major category. For example, suppose your website is about aromatherapy.

In your submission request, you would suggest “Health” as your main category, “Alternative Medicine” as your sub-category, and “Aromatherapy” as a further sub-category.

Some of the leading online directories are Yahoo!, MSN Small Business, and the DMOZ directory. Unlike search engines, however, listings in online directories are usually not free. As of this writing, you can submit for free to the Yahoo! Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com), but there is no guarantee on how quickly your website will be reviewed for listing.

If you need your site reviewed faster, you can pay Yahoo! $299 US for “expedited” service and they will review your site within seven days. However, this fee is a yearly recurring fee. Your website is subject to a yearly review, and is guaranteed neither initial inclusion or to remain listed year after year.

The MSN service is $49 US, and it functions more like a search engine submit service. Their submission service incorporates inclusion in their own small business directory. DMOZ, on the other hand, is free, but because it is operated by volunteers, it could be a while before your site is included. Your best options are to submit to DMOZ and pay for the MSN and Yahoo! services.

 

But why should you spend money? Can’t you just optimize your site for the search engines? You can, but not everyone goes to a search engine for what they are looking for. For example, if someone is searching for gourmet dog treats, they may not use a search engine. Instead, they might go to one of the online directories and look at the listings, much like someone would use the yellow pages in their phone book. Your investment in gaining inclusion in the online directories will pay off for you in a multitude of ways:

1. You will increase traffic to your site. Your site will be included in the online directories, as well as the search engines, and this will help you gain traffic as people search directory listings and find your website.

2. You will increase the number of backlinks to your site. If the directory pages are listed in search engines, the link they provide for your site will be listed in the search engines. This benefits you by creating more ways for people to find your site. Ultimately, this will provide more traffic for you.

3. Submitting to directories is a quick way to gain links. Optimizing your site for the search engines is very difficult and time-consuming. It can take a lot of time to learn how to write for the search engines. In the meantime, any links you can get will help you with the search engines, and submitting to directories will get you links.

4. Submitting to directories is relatively inexpensive, and a good investment. As stated earlier, you can submit to Yahoo! and MSN for less than $350. DMOZ is free. If you run a search for online directories, you will find many more where you could submit inexpensively, or even for free.

In short, submitting to online directories is one of the best ways for you to build traffic to your website. In the end, you need traffic to survive online. So get started!

 

A Few Tips To Boost Your Website Traffic


Activity and creativity begets success

Doing business on the Internet is not much different from doing business anywhere else. If you are active and creative you will get success. If you have these two qualities it would be wise to use them to boost your website traffic. Getting traffic is not as easy as you might think.

Although millions of people use the Internet, there are also millions of offerings out there. If you want to get a share of the visitors you will really have to work hard. If you are just starting out there are a number of techniques you can use to boost traffic, as well as to improve the search engine ranking of your site.

Traffic is drawn to interesting websites!

This doesn’t mean that we subscribe to the “build it and they will come” philosophy. However if your website has many pages of information, then each one of those pages will be packed with words and phrases that people will find when they make searches.

On the other hand if you have only published a “brochure site”, a website that is a mirror image of an offline introductory brochure about your company, then there will not be much “spider food” on your site. That is, there will not be much for search engines to put in their data base, and you will not get much traffic from search engine queries.

Another consequence in building an interesting site is that other sites will link to you, viewing your site as an important resource. In fact, this is what Google had in mind when it set up its current ranking system. A site that is informative and filled with useful information will be noticed and other sites will link to it. Each of these links is viewed by Google as a “vote” for that site. Make your site interesting, and people will link to it without you even knowing about it.

In addition, never underestimate the importance of word-of-mouth. If your site is interesting people will tell their friends and they will check out your site. A content rich site is the first secret of boosting traffic.

Publish articles to other websites

This is one of the most effective ways to boost traffic. If your site is full of useful material, then other people will also want to publish it on their websites. Webmasters are hungry for content to beef up their sites and their newsletters.

Here are a few places where you can offer your content (but make sure that you put your url and contact information on each article, this is how you actually get the traffic).

Improve your search engine ranking

While good content is an essential part of any traffic building strategy, it also helps to take steps to improve your ranking in search engines. If your content is not optimized – both on-page and off-page – it will not get the exposure that it deserves.

You can improve your search engine ranking by placing your important key search terms in the title tag, the description tag, in your site’s headlines, and in link text on your web pages. These are the on-page factors of website optimization. If you do this successfully your site’s search engine ranking for a particular keyword or keyword phrase will improve.

It is also important to work on off-page factors that are related to search engine positioning. Your ranking is partly determined by how many other websites link to you. If you have published your material elsewhere, then you will get a good amount of important links. If not, you may have to launch a reciprocal links campaign or place your site in paid directories in order to increase the number of incoming links to your website.

Creativity combined with activity is a good recipe for traffic building. Build your site as best you can, and then spread the word about it. Use these three tips and you are sure to succeed.