Before we get into the “meat” of the article let me say this. The best way to build traffic and receive visitors is to build an interesting and accommodating website (or blog). This will go a long way towards having your site recommended and building a subscriber base. If your website has many pages with good information, each one of those pages will be packed with words and phrases – keywords- that people will find when they make searches. Another plus in building an interesting site is that other sites will want to link to you, viewing your site as an important resource, giving you even more visitors. 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 noted and other sites will link to it. Each of these links is viewed by Google as important to your niche. Make your site interesting, and people will want to link to it. A content rich site is the first secret of building ongoing traffic.
Paid Ads:
For immediate traffic to your site the best way is to buy it. It’s also the most expensive way as opposed to the more natural and organic ways. By buying traffic (pay per click – or PPC), you can target the people already looking for the product or service you’re providing. The biggest player here is Google. For those new to this industry, whenever you run a Google search, the listings that show up on the right hand side can be bought by anyone. They are the sponsored links. You pay a certain amount for each click as defined by the preferences you set beforehand in your account. You can have traffic showing up to your website 5 minutes after setting up a Google AdWords account. Other search engines also offer this PPC service -Yahoo, Bing, Facebook and LinkedIn also have PPC services. The next step after paying for traffic is to your monitor results. You can track the number of hits from various sources to focus on those ads that are producing sales. Every type of advertising must have a tracking system with good accuracy. Just keep the ads that produce for you and delete the others.
Publish on other Websites:
This is one of the most effective ways to build ongoing traffic. By publishing some of your information on other websites you’ll be getting backlinks from those websites as well as some of their visitors. Using this “link juice” is one of the most effective ways to get your site or blog noticed as an authority by the search engines. Search engines LOVE both good content and high page (PR) ranked backlinks. If your site is full of useful content, other people will also want to publish your content on their websites. Webmasters are hungry for content to beef up their own sites and their newsletters.
Article Marketing:
This is one of my favorites. For every article you publish to an article directory, you’ll get a backlink. Just make sure that you insert your website or blog URL and contact information into each article. Good article content is the key here, just like good website or blog content. If you provide useful information and quality content in your article on a consistent basis, the article directories will remember you – and your site. By submitting consistently good articles, higher page rank directories will want to publish your articles. Just like the higher PR websites, higher page rank article directories will provide quality backlinks to your site.
Emailing a List:
If you own a list, that can become one of your greatest assets over time. There are no overheads – unlike PPC marketing – and you can create a huge rush of sales every time you send an email. Creating an email list absolutely takes longer than most of the other methods here, but this is one of the best methods of generating traffic to whatever you choose to advertise. By using an auto responder, you can attract these visitors back to your website again. There’s a study that was done a while ago that says people need to see an invitation 7-10 times before they’ll actually buy or join what you’re promoting. Knowing how often to send emails to your list is also important. The key here is to add value and send regular free content In between asking them to buy something. Send something free that has value. Generally, once a month is an appropriate time period between emails, or maybe more often depending on your market.
Joint Venture:
This strategy is simple. Other websites send out emails and place strategic links on their website to attract visitors to your website. You only pay them for the sales produced from any clicks you receive. Generally 50% of the profits generated is the best, since it’s an equal share. The key here is to make it as easy as possible for your JV partner to advertise for you. Create emails for them, banner ads and any other promotional material that will help them advertise your product or service. JV deals allow you to create a lot of traffic to your site in a short period of time and help you to build your own mailing lists very quickly. You can receive JV support from all of the established companies in the field you wish to enter if you approach them correctly.
Creativity combined with activity is a good recipe for traffic building. Build a good site, then spread the word about it. Use these guidelines and you are sure to succeed.
