Category: Traffic

  • Getting a Consistent Flow of Website Traffic


    Setting the foundation for traffic

    Anyone who owns a website knows the importance of website traffic. An individual may have a terrific idea for a website with an excellent product or service, superb design, great content and excellent functionality; but if s/he does not use the right techniques, that site may not attract the all important highly targeted website traffic required to keep it visible and relevant.

    Getting a consistent flow of traffic to your website has very little to do with the site itself and a lot to do with how the webmaster or website owner advertises and promotes it. With hundreds of competing sites, you must employ the most effective Web marketing techniques that will actually deliver results.

    There are different Web marketing techniques a webmaster can use; and all these methods and strategies aim at increasing your website traffic because s/he must find a way for web surfers to find his/her site. So, if you are such a website owner and want to drive traffic to your website, you have to put yourself in the shoes of your prospective visitors and future clients and see the internet through their eyes.

    Make the search engines love your site

    Where do they usually go whenever they are looking up something on the web? The answer is a search engine. In fact, of the two most popular websites on the web today, one is a search engines and the other is a social network portal. Thus, you should focus your Web marketing efforts on the search engines, unless you have some expertise in the area of social media marketing.

    People will usually search for something using a search engine and click on the top sites – sometimes the top 3 to 5 sites – found on the search engine results page (SERP). Therefore, you must use the right Web marketing techniques to get a high search engine ranking. To gain a high ranking in the SERPs, you can use several Web marketing strategies.

    Search engine optimization is a set of methods that are aimed at improving the visibility of your site in the SERPs. Since the method of indexing sites utilized by search engine is looking at the site’s popularity (one-way links), content relevancy, meta description and – in some cases – keyword density, your site’s content must have favorable popularity, content, meta-tags and a keyword density that will make it “search engine friendly”.

    Use the article submission strategy

    Content relevancy is one of the most important internet marketing techniques itself. If you provide excellent content on your website that is fresh (not duplicated), geared towards achieving a high search engine ranking as well as provide useful information to your visitors, then you can expect a reasonably high search engine ranking. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. Countless other sites may be using the same internet marketing technique as you are. Thus, you must continuously find new ways of attracting more website traffic.

    Aside from the traditional marketing techniques such as print ads, billboards, brochures, testimonials, flyers etc. you must also use other effective Web marketing methods to gain additional website traffic. One of the most popular internet marketing techniques today is submitting articles. Writing and submitting articles is an extremely powerful method for promoting your websites, products, and services.

    By writing short articles on the topic related to your website, you can offer these articles for other website owners or newsletter publishers to use by submitting them to a number of article directories.

    Article directories: attractive to humans and bots

    These directories get crawled by search engine “bots” on a regular basis because of the high value of content they provide. If you have not yet been picked up by the search engines this is the easiest way to get them to find you. You also get exposure to those who are looking for articles in the directories for use on their sites.

    List-building the easy way

    When they make use of your articles on their websites or in their newsletters, you will get the credit as the author along with a link back to your website. Not only will you get visitors, but you will benefit from the hyperlinks that are created. This internet marketing technique is now being used by thousands of site owners. It has gained popularity because of its relatively high success rate in attracting a consistent flow of website traffic.

  • Increase Traffic to Your Site With Five Proven Strategies


    There are so many ways that you can promote your Web business or website that it can seem overwhelming. Some methods are more effective than others. So how do you know which ones will work. These five methods are proven to generate traffic to your site as well as generating income for you.

    Offer good quality freebies

    One thing that appeals to everyone is “free.” If it is free people will take it. Think about all the samples of perfumes given away at department stores. Do you really want a small sample of perfume? Probably not! But you take it anyway simply because it is free and someone is nice enough to offer it to you. This same principle applies with information or services offered via your website. However, you must make sure that the freebie is of reasonable value.

    You can send out free newsletters, free email courses, or offer a free trial period. some traditional items that have been given away in the past – and still are in some instances – were free credit reports and free PC scans. These freebies are what we in the marketing field like to call “teasers”.

    By running the free credit report or PC scan, the vendor/marketer gives himself/herself the opportunity to do business with customers by repairing/removing their problem for a fee, if something unusual is actually found on the credit profile or PC. This can be an effective way to get information to your potential customers, create sales and generate traffic to your site.

    Provide useful information

    Your website contains information about a service or a product that you are very knowledgeable about. You can generate traffic to your site by writing articles in your area of expertise and have them published in an ezine or an article hub or directory. Submitting to directories is often free and can be very effective in generating links back to your site.


    The most effective way to use articles is to write them for free and ask in return that the publisher allow you to include a byline. A byline is a brief summary of the author and his/her credentials along with link back to his/her website. Your byline is a way in which readers will come to know you as an expert on a particular topic. This generates trust that your site is a source of credible information.

    Utilize pay-per-click programs

    Some search engines allow a website to purchase ranking. This is an excellent Web marketing technique in that it is effective and inexpensive. In the pay-per-click programs, your website is billed only for those who actually visit the page. This is a more effective strategy than banner ads which may be seen by millions but only used by a few.

    When using the pay-per-click programs you choose keywords relative to your site’s content and when those keywords are entered into the search boxes your site will appear. If the surfer chooses to view your site, you are then billed for that click. Many pay-per-click programs offer several other benefits as well, including updated lists of commonly used keywords and tracking.

    Network with other Internet marketers

    Remember that there are many other individuals out there trying to succeed in this business as well. You can choose to network with those who have similar marketing ideas. When networking, you share links and refer customers to each other.

    Always be very cautious when choosing a networking partner since everything that you recommend is a reflection of yourself or your product. Therefore, be certain that your networking partner is a reputable source of information. Know something about the product or service offered by reading, listening to, or by actually using the product.

    Utilize offline sources of advertising

    Simply because your website is online, doesn’t mean that all your advertising has to be on the Web. Advertise in newspapers, on TV or the radio. You can send out a press release to get your information to thousands of people all over the country. Pass out flyers and postcards in your neighborhood. Use your imagination to find unique ways of letting the public know about your product or service.

    Utilize any or all of the above strategies. These five strategies will ensure your Web marketing success when used consistently.

  • Driving Traffic To Your Website With Articles


    Click for your copy of the Storytelling Manual!

    A Web marketplace made to order

    Many people begin their road to their dream of Web wealth by putting up a website and trying to sell a product they created themselves. They may have written an e-book, recorded a CD of original songs, or published some great recipes accompanied by beautiful pictures of appetizing dishes.

    Enormous volumes of hype have been published with the claim that the Web is an easy, if not mindless, way to create wealth. The Web is now a global advertising grid, and millions of people surf each day for things they would like to buy, learn about, or discover. They search for the proverbial needle in an electronic haystack that suits their fancy for the moment. And adding to this convenience is the reality that shopping online has become reasonably safe.

    The first problem is, how will shoppers with their credit cards in hand and the urge to buy find your website? According to a Google blog post published July 25, 2008, there one trillion (as in 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the Web at one time! That was just over 3.5 years ago at the time of this writing, so that number is likely to be much higher today. So getting exposure for your little website that promotes recipes to prospective customers may take a little work.

    Simple + informative = attractiveness

    Search engines use complex algorithms (mathematical formulas) to determine if the content of a website matches its owner’s claims. Self-proclaimed experts who follow this route for exposure must research every day to ensure their success. The search engine companies themselves keep their algorithms secret to avoid unscrupulous marketers taking unfair advantage of the whole internet shopping and surfing experience.

    So what is a recipe seller to do? Search engine experts can charge upwards of $25,000 to guarantee that your site might be the first to be found when someone enters a search. That’s a whole lot of appetizing recipes. Some very easy and free methods are available to drive traffic to your website. One of them is writing simple articles. You’re reading one such article right now, aren’t you?

     

    Hundreds of “article directories” exist on the Web just for this purpose. The main and simplest thing people search for on the Web is information, because they want to know about something, and often a good place to find a snippet of information is in an article directory. Thousands of 500-1500 word articles have been written and published online, and people love to read them. If they are short and informative, they will become popular to read, and not too time consuming.

    Start writing to attract visitors

    Then once your website is up on the Web, write a brief, helpful article about your product. Target the style and content of your writing to suit your friends and customers, as well as yourself. The average newspaper is written for a grade 9 level reader, and tabloids are written for a grade 6 level or lower. Writing on the internet runs the whole gamut of education. Explain a problem that needs to be solved, and at the end provide a solution. Sales copy is more involved than this, but an article should be entertaining, or fit the parameters of a possible search.

    The most important part of the article besides the content and the attention grabbing headline, is a live link to your website in the author’s box at the bottom. More often than not, the reader will click that link – if it is live – to see what other information might be available on the particular subject. This link must lead straight to your recipe website. A reader is less likely to copy and paste your website address into their browser if another similar article is listed in the directory.

    Write a short paragraph stating your expertise with cooking and recipes, and invite the reader to visit your website. This will be your “author’s bio”. If someone does read the whole article, they are often curious about who wrote it, if it covers the subject they are interested in. Most article directories will accept html code in the author’s bio box.

    Submit articles and traffic will come!

    Search for the words “article directory”, and make a list of as many as you can. Most directories are free to read and submit your articles to. Registration is usually necessary, with your email as the username. Get another free email address to use specifically for article submissions to avoid any trouble with spam.

    After you have submitted your article, it may take a few days for publication. Check back to the directory to see if your article is published and your link is working. Then do it all again. The articles will stay published forever, or as long as the directory exists. Over time, people will continue to read your article, and click back to your website. If you submit your article to 20 directories, and 40 people interested in recipes read it, that’s 800 more potential customers from one article. If you have the time to write 20 little articles and submit them to 40 directories, and 40 people read each one over time, well you can do the math.

    Article submission is one of the easiest ways to direct some website traffic your way. Although not necessarily the quickest, it is guaranteed to get results at almost no cost. Give it a try, you may be pleasantly surprised.

    Click for your copy of the Storytelling Manual!

  • Increase Traffic Flow With Blogging And Pinging

    Blogging and pinging as traffic magnets

    If you are a a website owner it is reasonable to assume that you might be interested in having it do as well as it possibly can in the search engine rankings; and if you do have such interests, you may be interested in the knowledge that you do have some control over getting good rankings and increasing your traffic. It’s true! You can take the success of your website into your own hands and increase your traffic and income by blogging and pinging. Haven’t heard of blogging and pinging before now? Read on to learn more about these techniques!

    A blog is just the short way of saying weblog, which can be compared to an online journal or diary. However, blogs don’t have to be consisted of personal information. They can include news, thoughts, opinions, challenges, history, and anything the blogger wants to publish. The most important aspect of a blog is that it is updated on a regularly scheduled basis with fresh new content.

    Rate of frequency determines page rank

    Some bloggers add new content once a week while others blog daily or multiple times per day. This is where increased search engine rankings come into play, since there is always fresh new content which is given heavier weight in the search engines than if no new content was provided. This results in higher search engine rankings and increased traffic.

    A ping is simply a program that sends out a message to another server or computer in order to get a response. So, for instance, if you update your blog you want to ping the search engines so your pages are indexed and your site ranked higher.

    Why some marketers blog and ping

    You probably know that if your website does not show up in the search engines you are unlikely to get tons of traffic, and if you have a website you want traffic. So, the best thing to do is write a regular blog, ping the search engines, and your site will get indexed significantly faster than it would otherwise. By putting in a little bit of extra work you are getting your site indexed with the search engines and inevitably more traffic.

    There is a lot of free blog software out on the Web that you can simply link to your site and start blogging. Including RSS feeds, which are the pings, means the search engines are going to know you are out there and as a result start indexing your site. So, if you want to increase your traffic, start blogging and pinging and you will see a difference in traffic in a hurry.

  • Drive Laser-Targeted Traffic Using Workable Methods

    Traffic generation: A Web survival tactic

    A Web marketer may have all the things needed for him/her to succeed in a business such as affiliate marketing. S/he may have the necessary drive, diligence and perseverance that will enable him/her to understand how the system works. S/he may have all the tools necessary for maintaining the business, including a really unique and interesting website which could earn him a fortune if only the whole world could see it.

    However, all these skills would prove useless if s/he does not know how to drive traffic to his/her website. The business s/he operates would sink into oblivion together with all the sales, fortune and dreams that s/he might have realized if s/he only knew how to perform this one important task.

    Getting people who matter to see your website is a difficult undertaking if you take into consideration the fact that rivals everywhere are waiting to pin you down. It will certainly seem an insurmountable task if you allow yourself to be bogged down with such thoughts.

    The immensity of this resource we know as the Web, including the affiliate marketing world has given birth to fierce competition between affiliate marketers, each of whom has his/her own unique product to offer. With all the websites piling on top of each other, how then would you possibly be able to stand out? The answer is, there are several ways to drive laser-targeted traffic to your website which would help anyone who who is determined to stick with his/her Web business wherever it is bound to lead.

    Exploring the avenues to increased traffic

    Using this method of driving traffic to your website would entail relying on search engines and what they can do for concerned affiliate marketers. Because they are popular for driving free targeted traffic, they should not be ignored by any means. Having top search engine rankings is vital to building popularity links, and use of the right keywords is important in attaining this goal. Once a website is on top of the list, it is easily accessible to anyone who wants to see it for himself.

    This method of driving traffic to your website works with the cooperation of other webmasters for a possible link exchange partnership. Locating websites that are related to your own site is the primary task. Once you have that information, you should then be able to establish communication by personalizing everything as much as possible. It is then possible to make reciprocal link exchanges between webmasters whichever way you and they can agree on.

    The third method is through writing your own articles. This is an effective way in promoting a website, because good content that is appreciated by readers will lead them to visit the writer’s very own website out of sheer interest. I won’t spend too uch time on this method because this subject alone can provide enough for another article, plus you are probably more familiar with writing (blog posts, articles for your site, etc.) than any of the other methods discussed here.

    Venturing into an area of the like-minded

    One method that has proven effective is known as joint venture marketing. This is one of the most effective ways of promoting a product or a service. Having a partner through ad swaps or link exchanges is beneficial to both parties as it allows them to reach a wide customer base in a short period of time.

    When some marketers think about creating their own affiliate program(s), they become intimidated by the process instead of measuring the effectiveness of this method of traffic generation. But having affiliates to do the work for you means encouraging them to bring tons of traffic to your website. Skyrocketing sales would be achieved as a result, and both the affiliate and the website owner (publisher) will benefit from the arrangement.

    You have probably heard about the all-important “list” method and the promise of “the money is in the list” jargon. A lot of what you heard is true but it does take time and work to develop your list. Having a list of subscribers that you can refer to on a regular basis, would prove to be valuable asset for your any ma business. The use of autoresponders and personalized newsletters is one way of keeping track of them all, and holding on to them by letting them know about new products and services is an essential task that should be done by all affiliate marketers.

    Knowing your audience and marketing to them

    Product knowledge is obviously important, but having a thorough knowledge of your market is just as important when you’re marketing on the Web. It is important for traffic to be targeted to those who might have a special interest in the theme or topic of your website. This way, a solid customer base is going to be created because once a potential customer shows an interest in your website s/he will visit it, therefore you should not waste too much time in showing him/her that the effort to visit is worth it.

    Traffic generating strategies are important in trying to make your affiliate marketing career inch forward. It is always advantageous to plan your work, and that applies to any business that you might undertake, but is particularly so in affiliate marketing. If a Web marketer knows how to get people to see what s/he has to offer, then s/he is on the right track.

  • Tips And Techniques to Generate Traffic Via Search Engines

    In pursuit of search engine traffic

    Web Traffic! And lots of it is the dream of every webpreneur. After all, without a steady stream of visitors – or should I say potential customers – to your website, how will you earn your Web fortune?

    In the first place, where do most Web business start-ups go when they need a quick traffic fix? The search engines! And rightfully so because, after all, the top ranking position(s) on a major search engine is one of the most effective ways of increasing traffic to your website(s) without spending your hard-earned advertising dollars.

    Statistics have repeatedly shown that anywhere from 20% to 80% of your website’s visitors will find it via a search engine. However, you should also know that statistics show that most web surfers never search beyond the top 30 results they receive, and in many cases they don’t go beyond the first 10. With that in mind, it is clear that a top position should be the goal of any savvy site owner.

    Ranking well in the search engines

    But top spots are no longer achieved by crossing your fingers and blindly submitting your web site to 900+ search engines and directories using a free submission service. Competition for top spots is getting fierce, so it is important that you learn the “right” techniques if you want to ensure that your website is well ranked. Even more importantly, you should do so while this great advertising medium is still FREE!

    As I said before; for high traffic generation to your website, it is very important that your site ranks in top spots in a search engines. You may ask “What are the search engine looking for when they rank my web site?” Well, although each search engine uses different set of algorithms to rank web sites, generally speaking, there are still basic similarities and requirements.

    In the following paragraphs we discuss a few of the main factors considered by search engines over the last decade or so.

    The link popularity method of ranking

    Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, and the web pages search promotion of Yahoo! use a ranking system that involves measuring and ranking the number of links that are directed towards a particular web site. This is an extremely powerful traffic generation tool because:

    Reason One – Building a well thought-out linking strategy is a powerful way to attract large volumes of high targeted traffic. By putting your web site on every major web “intersection” where your target market meets, you will ensure that your web site receives a steady flow of qualified potential customers.

    Reason Two – Links are equivalent to recommendations! They established credibility even before the visitor reaches your web site, dramatically increasing the likelihood that they will buy.

    Think about it… David arrives at his favorite web site and notices that they have posted a link to your web site. He knows and trusts his favorite web site and therefore assumes that, because they have a linked to you, your business must be credible too. He clicks through the link to your web site and is immediately open to offers you present him with. Why? Because your credibility was established before he even arrived at your homepage.

    Reason Three – Since many a search engines now factor link popularity into their ranking decisions, your linking strategies are that much more important! If you want to be ranked as high as possible in search engines, you now need a factor in your link popularity – and, as you already know, earning a top spot in the major search engines is key to increasing your web site traffic.

    Obviously, developing a linking strategy that generates a high volume of targeted traffic to your web site is not an overnight process. It will take you anywhere from two weeks to six months to secure quality links you need. However, I promise you that it is worth the effort! Once you have done the initial footwork, the links that are established will remain on these web sites for years to come. Your perseverance will pay big dividends in the form of a continuous flow of targeted traffic generation.

    Domain name and keyword density factors

    A domain name plays a vital role in traffic generation to any web site. Domain names rich in keywords will rank higher in search engines because a search engines love URL’s that are saturated with keywords. Brainstorm keywords and key phrases for your web site and then use them to create a catchy URL, or load the domain name with your best keywords to get ranked higher in the search engines.

    Keywords definitely refers to the number of times your keyword appears throughout your site. Your keyword density is a factor that is heavily weighted by a search engines, so it’s very important to make strategic use of your keywords.

    So, these are some of the important facts, tips and tactics through which you can drive high traffic to your web site. I should also mention that you should not expect to enter a couple of your top keywords into the search engines and instantly start making money through your web site – that is a one-in-a-million possibility. But yes, you can really get high traffic via search engines without crossing the line into “keyword stuffing” and with a little time and very little money, if any at all.