There are scores of articles and guides on the internet which talk about the various ways of driving targeted traffic to a blog or website; hence the reader might find that some of the content in this guide on how to increase website traffic is redundant but it should be useful nevertheless. Without it a website can never make money; a website without traffic is like a theme park without any visitors. Once you have done all the hard work of creating the content for the website, creating sales & landing pages, one time offer pages and other necessary stuff, you will have to focus on getting people to know about your site and getting them to visit it. One of the problems that newcomers in the internet marketing field run in to is that they create a couple of websites, do a bit of promotion, place AdSense in the pages, links to Amazon products or affiliate links to ClickBank info products and then start lamenting in internet marketing forums that they are not making any money; just like a real world shop in a busy marketplace, unless people start entering the shop (site), there would be no sale or money made. In this guide, we shall not only see the popular ways to increase the number of visitors but also how not to do it and getting kicked out of publisher networks or affiliate programs.
Search Engines; Organic traffic from search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo are the number one source of traffic on the internet. To get visitors from search engines, you should have more content (with more quality) than your competitor websites and should be optimized for search engines properly. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the term used to describe the process of modifying your website and also doing off-page optimization in order to get high rankings for keywords related to your niche in the SERPs (search engine result pages). On-page optimization will include stuff like using the correct Title tags for the WebPages, using descriptive Meta description tags and writing content without any fluff, spelling mistakes or grammatical errors. The site structure should also be optimized keeping the reader in mind; links to other related pages should be easily navigable, the pages should load fast and with no popup’s or pop-under scripts. Keyword stuffing should also be avoided. Pages with duplicate content should be no-indexed or hidden from search engines using robots.txt. Outgoing links should have the rel=nofollow attribute. Use a monitoring and analysis system like Google Analytics to find the stastistics of referrals from search engines. You might also want to add the site to Google Webmaster and Bing Webmaster tools; these will give valuable diagnostic information on problems faced by the website when being crawled (such as 404 errors).
PPC Campaigns; PPC campaigns are the quickest but also the costliest way to get people to visit your blog. If you are promoting a product that can immediately result in a sale, you can use PPC programs. Say for example you have a site that sells toys for babies; you can have your website shown alongside search engine results whenever someone searches for toys or toys for babies; because of the commercial intent, the visitor clicking on the AD can end up buying something from your site. However PPC should be used wisely, otherwise you can end up losing a lot of money, more than what you invested.
Forums; Most forums allow their members to have links to their blogs or websites in their signature. To get started, find the most popular forums and discussion boards in the niche your website is in and join them. Some of the forums might require you to post a certain number of posts or replies before you can have a link in your signature. Actively answer the questions of other members, help them with their problems related to the niche and get involved in discussions in the board. This way you not only get valuable backlink juice to your website but also get visitors who click on links in your signature. It also creates a sense of trust and gives an authority stature to your site.
Banner Ads; Banner advertisements are the old school method but they are still very effective. Identify popular websites and blogs related to your niche (can even be your competitor websites) that are ranked high in search engines and see if they have a page for advertisers. If not, you might want to use the contact us form to send a message enquiring about advertising rates. Banner Ads are usually charged on a monthly basis. Some sites also offer text link ads in their blogroll, as a way of advertisement (though many people misuse it for SEO purposes).
Paid Blog Posts and Reviews; Identify popular bloggers in your niche and get them to review your website or product. Please keep in mind that some countries require bloggers to disclose that they have been paid to promote. The brand value & influence of the blogger and his or her website can help get a lot of visitors to your website. For example, TechCrunch is an influential tech blog and many startup websites try to get reviewed by them so that they can get a lot of eyeballs.
Guest Blog Posts; This involves yourself writing content for other popular blogs; in turn for providing content, the other blog owner or company allows you to place a few contextual links in the article. If the blog is influential enough and your site also has good content, you can expect repeat visitors.
RSS Feeds; RSS feeds are kind of underutilized when it comes to getting traffic; there are still many people who use feed readers to get the latest information. If you are using WordPress for your website, there are many widgets and also in-built functionality for RSS or Atom feeds.
Podcasts; There are many fans of podcasts on the internet; it is similar to RSS feeds but instead of the pages of your website appearing in the feed, it will have audio content and other media (either you or someone else talking and giving valuable information related to your niche). You might be wondering how this will help getting visitors; a good & well made podcast can successfully convince people to visit the website or buy a product from the page.
Comments Section; don’t forget to have a comment section in your site. Comments help building a community around the content and getting repeat visitors. For example, if someone replies to a comment made by another user, an email is sent to the original commenter and he or she will be tempted to visit again to see what the reply is. Though the comment system in blogging engines like WordPress are spammed a lot, you can still use other systems like the Facebook comment box or Disqus comments.
Facebook; Facebook is fast becoming one of the most popular referral systems thanks to the ripple effect caused by sharing and Likes. Place the Facebook Like button in your webpage and if a visitor likes it, his or her friends will see the shared items and will in turn visit your page themselves and “like it” further. The mammoth user base of FB can result in a flood of visits to your site because of the social ripple effect.
Google+; this is similar to Facebook; having a lot of people in your circles can help get a lot of people to visit your site whenever you write about it. Having the Google+ button in your site also helps in SEO.
Twitter; Twitter is another good way to promote your site. Try to get as much as legitimate followers and engage in a good conversation. Once in a while tweet along with a link to your new blog post of webpage URL; depending on your follower loyalty, it might be retweeted a lot of times and can result in good traffic. Another good method is to have a celeb tweet about it; this helps because celebs have a lot of fan followers.
Pinterest; Pinterest is the latest sensation in the social sharing space on the internet; it is very popular among ladies especially. It is similar to social bookmarking but instead of submitting a single link (like in Digg or Reddit) you have to submit multiple links and they get arranged like posters pinned to a board; the interface is quite easy to use. Similar to Likes and Tweets, there are Pins and Repins in Pinterest.
YouTube; Create useful videos on topics related to your website niche and post them in YouTube. You can have your website address as the first line in the description of the video. This can help get a lot of visitors to your site if the video becomes popular or goes viral. Alternatively, you might also want to get more and more subscribers to your YouTube channel so that people look out for new stuff and can become repeat visitors.
Social Media Promotion; Promote your site by submitting to bookmarking websites, social sharing sites like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, LinkedIn etc. A bookmark hitting the FrontPage of Digg or Reddit can instantly flood your site with lots of traffic.
Article Marketing; Though submitting articles to sites like eZineArticles, Hubpages, Squidoo etc. is almost dead after the Panda effect, they can still bring valuable traffic if promoted properly. Most article directories allow you to have a resource box at the end of the article which will point you to your blog.
Give free info-products; You might want to give free info products (eBooks) to others in other related forums and websites; in the info-product (usually a PDF file), have both contextual links as well as header and foot links to your website. If the information provided is good enough, it can become a valuable source of traffic.
Promote using opt-in lists; you can send links in emails of people who have opted in to the list; the list need not be your own. Many internet marketers use joint ventures to cross promote their websites and as a part of this, they allow other people to use their email list, for a fee. However you must also have an opt-in form or a newsletter option in your site because it helps in letting your readers know and to come back and take a look when you post something important.
Question and Answer websites; Get involved in answering questions related to your niche in Q and A websites like Yahoo Answers and Quora. Run Contests; if you are starting a new site or introducing a new product in the website, you might want to run contests to get people to participate in the contest and in that process come and take a look at the site. If the site content is also good, people will get hooked to it and will come back.
Offline Promotion; Do it the old-school way; promote by giving free Tee-Shirts with your URL printed on it, handout flyers, banners and radio or TV for high profile websites. You might also want to have any celebrity talk about it. Include the site address in your business card and the yellow pages. Try to get your site reviewed in related magazines in your niche. Nowadays some people in Fiverr.com even offer to have the site address written on their forehead or other visible parts of the body as an advertisement!
Google Places; if your site corresponds to a local shop or business make sure that you get it listed in Google places; this can get a lot of laser targeted visitors when people search for local information.
Other forms of ADs; other ways to get visitors is to advertise in Games like mobile phone games, in-game ads, ads in software etc.
Provide discount coupons; if you are in to selling something, you might want to distribute discount coupons. People like to get a discount though most of them know that the seller still profits after the discount or in reality might have hiked up the sales price before giving the discount. You can also tie-up with offline businesses to offer their coupons online. This will be mutually beneficial; the business owner gets new customers and in turn offers to show your website AD in his or her shop.
Polls; conduct polls on hot topics of discussion. Have a comment box below the poll. This helps start a discussion around that topics and many people come back to argue or defend their point of view. Press Releases; Press releases are news items that are released to news website around the world. They contain links back to your site in the text and can get a lot of traffic if top news websites decide to publish it. You might want to use a site like prweb.com to do this for you; they can distribute the press release to a large network of publishers. Viral Promotion Techniques; Nowadays there are many social media marketing companies who can create viral videos or articles around your product or website and get people to visit it. It takes a lot of effort and knowledge to do it yourself though.
Add a forum; if your site already has tons of visitors, you might want to add a forum so that a discussion community is formed. A forum apart from getting content all generated by members also is a place where members like to revisit. A forum is the ultimate traffic source because even if your site falls down in search engine rankings, loyal forum members will keep coming back and they keep adding new content.
How not to promote; don’t buy paid or expired domain traffic. Most of these are usually a scam; though the person selling it might tell you that he or she can send you thousands of visitors for a ridiculously cheap amount, in reality they might be using automated bots (software programs) that try to mimic a real user, hiding behind proxies. Or they could be using sneaky popunders or popups that appear on malware filled low quality webpages that are created for nothing else than tricking the user. This can even get you banned from AD programs and affliate programs. Also avoid sneaky redirects from other websites or expired domains. Another thing to avoid when doing SEO especially is to buy from people offering Facebook Fans, Likes or followers in Twitter for sale.
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