Tried And Tested Methods Drive Traffic To Your Website

7 tried and tested methods to drive traffic to your website - Starting Yesterday


Just think of the ideal flow. Get online. Run a Business. Make Profit. What critical word and activity is missing? Traffic! Every single article you will find about making your web site or online business successful will inevitably include the importance of generating traffic. (It doesn't come by itself!)

At the heart of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based online business. It is the lifeblood or the company is nothing. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, your company’s internal operation is set up to run the business, you have to get out and, well, sell. And on the internet, that means generating traffic.

If you already have a website and you believe it is not working for you (not generating the traffic that you're "supposed" to be getting), then you have to consider traffic generation (aka online marketing) strategy. THeinternet never sleeps. Even if your competition is staying still (by the way, they're not) the search engines are changing the rules of the game on an hourly basis. So what do you do? What tried and tested methods DO exist to keep you ahead of the competition, drive traffic to the website and give you the overall feeling you shouldn't have done all this "Yesterday".

Well, no time like the present and with search engine optimisation, you should always be on your toes and a day ahead of everyone. - Because EVERYONE (including you) is already too late to the game. Everybody catches-on quickly as soon as a new technique becomes clear. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point to increase traffic, it should always have been yesterday!

There is consequently a lot of smoke and mirrors about search engine optimisation but admist the noise, some real home baked "Dos". Here are seven tried and tested ways to increase your website traffic starting yesterday and continuing tomorrow.

1) Optimise your site content to make it fit the key phrases your clients are looking for. There is a lot of stuff and nonsense about this but it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, absolutely critical to searchability. Invest time and effort to make sure your site is as well optimised as possible in terms of its content to your likely most searched-for terms. Now, we spend time elsewhere in the Masterclass going through keyword optimisation which we won't repeat here, but at least remember this. Go from the most specific (i.e. unique) words and phrases about your offering first and work 'outwards' over time to the most generic. Usually people start the other way round and it is a huge mistake. Build reputation from being unique (and more likely to be found) first, then worry about the more speculative terms.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites. This is generation '2' of search evolution. (1 being keywords; 2 being links; 3 being reputation and 4 we'll get on to). By exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic can be expected.

3) Generate reputation. Generation '3' of search evolution says "yeah, 1 and 2 are correct, but in order to beat the link spammers, then we'll accord more weight to sites TO WHOM most links go" i.e. who have the "thing" that is so worthwhile everyone wants to be there. You need to 'be' that site and you need to convince your link partners to defer 'you-specific' content to your site - not just "give you a link".

4) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site. (Still generation 3 - reputation, right?). Submit articles to sites that contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your site's description, an "About the author" at the end of the article as well as the link.

5) Join forums and form online communities and refer your site from any "about me" pages. (This is generation 4 - demonstrating social evidence of what you do). (If you're still thinking about "yesterday or today" - well this was THIS MORNING!). Generate a social network and demonstrate your expertise and credibility. One way to do this is to grow a blog in tandem with your site. With a good site and compelling blog, people will trust you and your site and a) participate in its growth (by commenting and giving feedback via the blog and) b) will pass on a referral in turn to people they trust. Traffic will increase organically because you being to build a Trustmark, around your proposition.

7) Seventh point. Write offer newsletters and upload them to your site. Newsletters not only keep your proposition in front of people that you know, but as HTML documents themselves, they can be uploaded and form part of a permanent, searchable, record of your business.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find loyal and growing traffic that provides you with more and more reputation-based traffic. And by following all the above steps anyway, your more 'random' search base will be growing organically because of your optimisation of search terms.

Point 8) Hang on! I thought this was seven points? Yes, it was seven points YESTERDAY!

Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising mechanisms that are very popular and get your site 'out there'. One word of warning though: Take advice with any Pay Per Click advertising campaign. If you do not know what you are doing, you risk losing a lot of maoney - granted if you get good advice and / or know what you are doing yourself, this is a very good way to drive targeted traffic to your site.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

9) Use Viral Marketing. First of all what is it? It is using an infectious medium, such as a funny video or small, free game, to associate your brand name with to ensure the 'attractiveness' of the freebie gets your name spread about with it. Its a bit sneaky and enters the greyer world between ethical and unethical marketing.

About the Author: Richard Martin of Briquesetclics is a Certified Management Consultant and Accredited Internet Marketing Consultant of 20 years experience in IT. Briquesetclics offers exquisite eBusiness solutions, website design and Internet Marketing with English to French Translation to expat and French Comunities in Southwest France. He serves the Limousin, Poitou-Charentes and Aquitaine regions and the cities of Limoges, Poitiers, Bergerac, Perigueux, Angouleme, Cognac, Bordeaux, Niort.

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