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21 Web Traffic Generating Strategies
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Author: Eric Head
Topic: Marketing
Viewed: 50 time(s)
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1. Link Exchanges
One strategy that many website owners utilize is "Link
Exchanges". This is where the web master emails other websites
that have a similar theme to their own and ask if those websites
would like to exchange traffic. If you get enough links back to
your webpage from other sites, it can really bring in a lot of
traffic. Also, the more links you have back to your website, the
higher your website will rank in popular search engines, such as
Google.
2. Directory Submission
There are numerous website directories on the Internet and it
can be very beneficial, as far as traffic is concerned, to
submit your website to these directories. It's recommended that
you not waste your time submitting to every directory you find.
Just the major directory sites will probably be enough.
3. Alexa: Important Factor
Alexa.com is a website that has a popular rating system for
websites. Many of the other search engines base the value of
your website on how high your rating is at Alexa. So, an
important strategy for getting traffic is to try to get the
highest rating at Alexa as possible.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This is probably the most useful technique to get visitors to
your website. It involves altering the content of your website
so that it is structured for the popular search engines to find
you and index your site on in their Search Engine Result Pages
(SERPs).
5. Forum Signatures
Posting on forums can be a very productive way of getting
traffic. By simply including your website in your signature,
everyone that reads your post will be a likely candidate to
clicking on the link and visiting your website. (Important Note:
It is not recommended that you advertise your website in your
forum posts, unless the site allows this. Many users consider
this to be SPAM and it's possible to get banned from the forum
this way.)
6. Email Signatures
A useful technique is to include your website link in the
signature of your emails. Every time you send an email out, it
is like you are sending out an advertisement as well. You may
think that because it's your friends, then there isn't much
potential for traffic; however, you would be surprised how your
email is often forwarded to others and can result in many people
learning about your site through your signature.
7. Viral Emails
Sending a funny or interesting email out to friends with the
intention that they will forward that email can result in a
large amount of people getting a link to your website. Just
remember to include a link to your site and before you send it
out, that it is something interesting like a joke, story, or
funny picture. Nobody likes to get forwarded annoying chain
letters that tell them they will die if they don't forward your
email.
8. Articles
Writing articles is a great way to get traffic. The way it works
is you write an article and at the end you include your name and
website url. Then you submit this article to the dozens of
article submission websites that give permission to webmasters
to reuse the article on their website (as long as the article
remains unchanged). What happens after that is webmasters take
your article and feature it on their own website with your link
at the end. It's not uncommon for one article to generate
hundreds of back links to your website.
9. Tutorials
Like articles, you can also get a lot of people through creating
tutorials. You submit the tutorials to the major tutorial
submission sites and sit back as the traffic pours in. It's not
uncommon to get over 5,000 visitors the first day your tutorial
is featured. The downside is that over time, the visitors drop
off (due to your tutorial no longer being featured on the front
page of the tutorial submission site); however, in the long
term, you do still get about 20 visitors a day from one tutorial.
10. Cost per Click (CPC)
Cost-per-click programs are those that will feature or advertise
your website for a given amount of time for a flat fee. For
example, they might charge $100 to show your site on their
homepage for 1 month. The price typically depends on the amount
of traffic to that particular website. If the website gets a lot
of traffic, then they will probably charge more money for a
shorter duration of time.
11. RSS Feeds
RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and is part of the XML
family of communication standards. These programs or scripts can
allow you to have your news and updates from your website
broadcasted on other sites that are willing to post your RSS
feed.
12. Pay per Click (PPC)
Pay-per-clicks are programs that will advertise your site across
the Internet. The PPC companies will charge you a certain amount
for each click that sends a visitor to your site. Some of the
more popular PPC companies are Yahoo's Overture
(www.overture.com) and Google's Adwords (www.adwords.com).
13. BLOGS
In the last few years, blogs have become very popular and as a
result, many webmasters are posting articles or information to
these blogs with a link back to their site. It's also a good
idea to open your own blog to post updates to your website. When
you open a blog at blog sites such as Blogger (www.blogger.com),
these sites have a higher status in the search engines and you
may find that the blog you create for your site ranks higher
than the actual website itself.
14. Newsletters
A Newsletter option is definitely a plus to have on your site.
When users click on a newsletter link on your site, they can
enter their information. Whenever you have an update on your
site, you submit a newsletter to all the users that signed up.
The users get this email newsletter and return to your site,
thereby increasing your traffic.
15. Tell-A-Friend Links
Add a "Tell-A-Friend" link to your page. When the user clicks
it, they will be taken to a form where they will be able to
enter a friend's email address and send your site to them. This
is a great way to get users involved in the process of
increasing your web traffic.
16. Create a Community
This isn't so much a way to increase traffic as it is a way to
get the previous traffic to return to your site. By starting a
community with a forum such as the one available at PHPBB
(www.phpbb.com), you can gather a list of members that will
submit posts and return over and over again to see if anyone
responded. Creating this type of interactivity is sometimes a
great way to get steady flow of traffic.
17. Peer-to-Peer Networking (P2P)
One strategy that has been going around is to create an e-book
or other online file (with a link to your site) and store it in
your P2P download directory. When you sign on to your P2P
application and someone does a search for a keyword that is in
the title of your e-book, you e-book will appear in their search
results. They will then be able to click and download it to see
what it is. It's good to include some useful information in the
e-book, but don't give too much information, because then the
user will not be interested in visiting your site.
18. Incentives
Everyone loves getting things for free. One way to generate
traffic is to give away free merchandise to anyone with a
website that places a back link to your site (it's recommended
that you only do this with sites that have a certain Google page
rank level). The merchandise doesn't have to be expensive ($3
dollars or less), but make sure it appears expensive. Go online
and find something cheap to give out as free gifts to webmasters
that post your link on their website or blog.
19. Partnerships
If your website offers a product or service that another website
can utilize, then it's a good idea to email the webmaster of
that site and see if they would like to cooperate in a joint
partnership. This is different from a link exchange, because the
two of you will be agreeing to forward traffic to the other site
in regards to the product or service that each of you are
offering. For example, if one site makes spaghetti and the other
site makes sauce, then when someone arrives to the spaghetti
site looking for sauce, the webmaster agrees to feature a
section devoted to your website for getting sauce (and
vice-versa).
20. Affiliates
If you have a product or service that you are selling, then you
can allow other websites to become affiliates, whereby you would
give them a percentage of anything that you sell as a result of
the traffic they send you.
21. Buying Traffic
There are many sites on the Internet that offer to provide you
with traffic to your site if you pay them. The large majority of
these are scams and the traffic they send you are the result of
annoying pop-up ads than hardly any user would want to look into.
About the author:
Authored by: Solution List (http://www.solutionlist.com)
To read the most updated version of the list, check:
http://www.solutionlist.com/internet/getting-traffic-to-your-webs
ite/
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