The 3 Best Website Traffic Sources

Not a day goes by that any serious website owner doesn't wonder how to get more traffic to their site.

This intense desire to generate more clicks makes virtually any online entrepreneur easy prey to many of the traffic schemes and scams that pervade the Internet like conmen on a carnival midway.

Promises of fast traffic and big bucks often separate even the most savvy business person from their money because they want to believe the promises made by these traffic hucksters.

However, rather than thinking "complicated equals better" in the traffic game, the best website traffic sources rate extremely easy to separate from the useless garbage traffic.

Fact: "Good Traffic" equals "Targeted Traffic!"

That means the visitors come as a result of desire to find out more on a specific, niche topic, not as a result of "exit" traffic or membership in a "safe" list where members simply pitch each other in an incestuous spam fest.

Good traffic comes from people clicking links on topics targeted to their interests and getting directed to a website containing information they want and expect as a result of clicking the link.

Bottom line, when you get right down to it, the best, most dependable sources of targeted traffic come from links that people click.

So, next time you're considering spending money on a traffic source, understand that unless it involves a targeted link that a targeted visitor can click to get to your website, think twice before opening up your wallet.

To my knowledge, only three ways exist to get a link to your site: buy it, "voodoo" it, or grow it.

** Buy Links**

Buying links actually rates the fastest way to get traffic to your website.

You simply sign up for Google AdWords at Google.com or you open an account with Overture.com.

You then run ads with a link on those sites and any time someone clicks the link, you pay for the click through a relatively straightforward bidding process based on the popularity of the keyword.

You can also buy links in ezines, newsletters, and on other people's website either on a per-click basis, for a period of time (a week or month), or in exchange for paying them a commission if a sale gets made as a result of a click on the link.


** Linking "VoodDoo" **

Linking "voodoo" refers to attempting to manipulate the search engines into displaying links to your website.

You can find a large number of automated software programs online at any given time that will claim to help you get more search engine traffic.

Depending on the intensity of competition in a specific market and the fact that search engines change their rules frequently, pursuing search engine links this way can quickly turn into the online equivalent of Alice chasing the rabbit down the hole.


** Grow Links **

I personally prefer this method to get links to my websites: growing them.

The best type of link to get involves one person telling another person, either explicitly or implicitly, they should click the link and visit the site at the other end.

One way to do this is simply to exchange links with another site which targets the same audience as your site.

You can manage this process manually or use one of the many software packages that will mange the process for you.

A search on Google.com for "reciprocal link manager software" yields a good start.

The easiest way to grow a link is through using articles other people post on their websites which link back to your website.

The reason articles work so well for "growing" links involves the numerous ways in which articles get distributed online, each of which can create dozens, hundreds, even thousands of different links back to your website by publishing a single article.

In fact, the following represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the places you can grow links by publishing articles online.

~ Blogs - Your articles can not only appear on your own blog, but get posted by others on their blogs with surprising ease.

The links in these articles can point directly back to your website.

~ Article Directories - Article directories such as IdeaMarketers.com abound online.

They not only provide an easy way to display your articles to allow others to pick them up for posting on their websites, but also in and of themselves attract readers searching for content.

~ OPS (Other People's Sites) - Popular websites like WebProNews.com attract repeat visitors by offering targeted content to their readers.

Since they can't produce all the content themselves, they publish articles created by others. Links from these sites can bring a steady stream of targeted visitors by giving you targeted exposure.

~ Ezines - By getting your articles published in other people's ezines, you can get a link on the most valuable real estate online, a targeted prospect's email "inbox."

Many ezine publishers run articles written by others to their targeted readers, and your link in the resource box can bring you a veritable avalanche of targeted site visitors when hundreds, even thousands of people receive your article at the same time.

Whether you choose to buy them, "voodoo" them, or grow them, getting targeted links to your site posted on the Internet represents the absolute best way to get steady traffic to your site.

Though not as fast as buying them or as exciting as trying to manipulate the search engines, growing links with articles gives you a long-term, dependable presence online.

How To Add Fresh Content To Your Website

I've read over and over that when it comes to building a website and getting a lot of traffic to it "Content Is King." If you do a search for any topic you will find the websites that come up in the Top 10 all have a lot of content on their websites.

When somone does a search they are looking for information and the search engines job is to provide it to them. For your website to increase in popularity you have to constantly be adding fresh content. This will increase your ranking for the keywords on your site and ultimately increase your traffic and repeat traffic.

Here are a few simple things you can do to add fresh content.

1. Do you publish and ezine? If so add a file to your index for each issue and archive it online. This will bring all kinds of keyword rich content to your website on a constant basis.

2. Start and article page. Add new articles to it. If you write put your articles on your website. Subscribe to a few ezines that are industry related. If you come across an article you like add it to your page.

3. Add Free Syndicated Content Feeds to your article page. This is really easy to do. All you do is copy a few lines of code into the HTML of your web page and you have a constant stream of new articles for your readers. Here are 2 of my favorite sources:

http://www.submityourarticle.com/syndicate/

http://www.web-source.net/syndicator.htm


4. Add Pay Per Click Advertising to your site. Most people think of PPC advertising as a way to promote their site. I have found it very easy to build new web pages around different keywords relating to the the theme of my site and actually get paid for the click. One of my favorite pay per click advertising sources is SearchFeed. This is very easy to work with and provides a nice income boost every month as well.

http://www.team-schuman.com/searchfeed

Here is an example of a page I built around the SearchFeed advertising model. Notice that I have made the look of their box compliment my own page. Also a key here is that as the advertisers with SearchFeed change so does the content on my site and I never have to do anything except add some easy code one time.

http://www.team-schuman.com/make-money/homebasedbusiness

I have an article on the page and I change that periodically as well.

5. Start a Link Exchange Program. This is a little harder to set up and is time consuming, but I have found it to be worth the effort. In a future article I will go into detail on how to properly do link exchanges. For now just let me say that linking is a great way to constantly be adding new content to your site as you link with new websites that compliment yours.

One company who does a great job if you don’t want to spend much time linking is LinksManager. They manage reciprocal links, and help increase your website traffic through linking with other like-minded quality sites. Check them out here:

http://www.linksmanager.com/

6. Think outside the box. It is worthwhile to continue to think of new and easy ways to keep adding fresh content to your website. Go to Google and do a search for “Fresh Content For My Website” without the Quotation marks. Currently there are Over 1.9 million results that come up. Everything from cut and paste charts, to RSS feeds and a whole lot more.

In conclusion "Content Really Is King. I have found my position with the search engines improve dramatically when I really started building more web pages and adding more fresh content.

It is time consuming at first, but the payoff in the long run is worth the effort when the search engines reward your effort and your traffic and income grow proportionally as well.

5 Free Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic

I don't know about you, but when I first entered the world of internet marketing I thought I could just submit my newly finished website to a few search engines, then sit back as the visitors flocked to my site.

I imagined that people would arrive on my website, as if by magic, purchase goods, and perhaps come back again for more.

A week or so later I came down to earth with a big bump.

I realised that it would take a bit of time and effort to see the results that I was dreaming about!

Since my reality check, I have learned all about the weird and wonderful ways of internet marketing.

In this article I will tell you about my top 5 free ways of increasing website traffic.

All these methods are completely free and if you spend some time on them you will find that they work consistently.

(1)Writing Articles

Writing an article on a subject related to your website and getting that article published has two major benefits:

- People who are interested in your article will read it and often click on the URL in your resource box find out more. This gets you another free targeted visitor. Targeted, because that reader wants to find out more on the subject of your article, which is hopefully related to the subject of your website.

- Every publisher of your article must also publish your "resource box". Adding a resource box with your URL to all of your articles will increase the number of links leading back to your website, which in turn helps to increase your search engine position

For a list of directories to submit your article to, see Article Submission Directories

(2)Forum Networking

There are many discussion forums on the internet, on every topic you could possibly imagine.

Most discussion boards allow posters to attach a "Signature" with their post containing additional information about themselves, such as their name, URL and sometimes even an advertisement.

By visiting a few forums regularly and participating in the discussions, asking and answering questions, you can build up trust with other forum members, whilst at the same time getting free exposure for your website.

Just try to make a useful contribution to the forum - be sure to read the forum rules and don't spam!

(3)Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking has two main benefits for you.

Firstly, the more links that you exchange, the more chance there is that someone will follow a link from another site and land on your website.

Secondly, your website will be perceived more importantly by search engines.

The more links you have from other sites, the greater your chance of getter ranked more highly by all the search engines.

Here are some Dos and Don'ts to help you get more out of your link exchanges.

- Do link with sites that will be of interest to your visitors.

- Don't link with pages that have unorganised link directories with hundreds of links on each page. This won't benefit you with increased traffic or search engine rankings.

- Do link with sites that have a clearly labelled "Link Directory" from their main page. You aren't likely to get much traffic from a hidden or hard to find link directory.

- Don't use link farms or FFA pages. You are unlikely to get extra traffic using these methods and the search engines may penalise you.

- Do use link directories to help you find link partners. You can find some Link Exchange Resources here

- Do stay organised. Use link exchange software, or a spreadsheet to keep track of the link exchanges you have requested and the contact details of the webmasters.


(4) Email Signatures

This is a very simple, but often forgotten way of increasing your website visitors.

Most of us are sending lots of emails a day, but many of us just sign them with just our name, or perhaps nothing at all.

Instead, why not end your emails with a short signature containing your name, a bit about your website along with the URL?

Keep the signature short (4 lines), to the point and avoid hype or SHOUTING.

You may be surprised at the extra visitors you receive through doing this. It's amazing how curiosity will lead the recipients of your email to click on your link!


(5)Using Traffic Exchanges

Finally, this is one easy way to guarantee instant hits to your website. You can build up credits for free by surfing or building up a downline to surf for you.

The downside of this method is that the visitors you receive from traffic exchanges are not as targeted as the visitors that you will receive via the other methods that I have described.

The reason for this is that people surf traffic exchanges for one reason - to earn as many credits as possible in as short a space of time as possible!

This gives you a challenge - how do you attract the attention of someone who is looking at your web page for 20 seconds or less?

Here are two tips -

- Know your market - spend some time surfing on the exchange that you are advertising on and pay attention to the types of web pages being advertised. Make sure that the pages you advertise are going to interest your target market.

- Use a short, simple attention grabbing page that can be read in a few seconds - there is no point advertising a huge page of text that takes 5 minutes to read. The chances are, your visitor will get bored and click on the "next" button without giving your page a fair chance.

Regularly invest some time in each of these 5 traffic generating methods and you will see your web statistics moving in the upwards direction before you know it.

How do I drive traffic to a brand new website?

Every single day, more and more people upload brand new websites to the Internet. I don't have any figures but there must be hundreds of thousands of new pages being added daily (if not considerably more!)

The one thing that all of these new websites need in order to make their existence worthwhile is traffic, which leads me to one of the most common questions I am asked and the subject of this newsletter:

'How can you generate traffic to a brand new website?'

Of course, there are a number of different answers to this question and what I would do myself is probably very different to what a completely new Internet entrepreneur would do. The reason I say this is that the first thing I do when launching a new site is make use of my existing website traffic by advertising the new site on my other established sites. In addition, I have the luxury of a large mailing list which I can use to drive traffic to the new site.

I appreciate that anyone starting out in online business won't have these options open to them (and in fairness, neither did I when I first started), so let's look at things from the beginning. Day one of your first website.....

It is a fact that the quickest and probably most effective way of bringing targeted traffic to your website is by paying for it. Now before you rush off and sink $50 into one of those '50,000 hits for $50' schemes, DON'T, this isn't what I mean. Those schemes are largely a complete waste of money. Even if you get the traffic that you are promised (as opposed to some software script visiting your site and pretending to be a visitor), it will not be targeted and therefore there is a very low chance that the traffic will generate sales. When I talk about buying traffic, I mean by using the pay- per-click services offered by most of the big search engines.

You probably already know the sort of thing I mean - for example, Google Adwords. Pretty much any search on Google will display a list of adverts down the right-hand side of the page and these are all paid adverts. Every time you click on one of them, the advertiser pays Google a fixed amount which could be anything from 5 cents upwards (depending upon how competitive the keyword is).

Pay-per-click allows you to be very selective about which keywords your advert is shown for and this allows you to target your advertising perfectly. Other big names in the pay-per-click market include Overture, Espotting and Findwhat.

Now, before you all start emailing me and saying that you already knew about PPC let me just say that I am well aware that people know about it. The problem (as I see it), is that people aren't using this type of service because of the fact that they don't want to spend any money on advertising. That's all well and good but the fact is that the Internet is getting more and more competitive each day and the chances of you building a successful website business from scratch without investing any money are tiny to say the least.

If you want to attract a decent level of traffic to a brand new website in a short period of time, it is almost a necessity that you use pay-per-click on one of the main search engines. If you don't, then the growth of your traffic levels will be painfully slow and inconsistent at best.

When I launched my very first websites I invested heavily in pay-per-click advertising. At one point, I was spending over $6000 a month on Google Adwords alone!!! Seriously I really was spending that much money. It was a constant battle to tweak the website sales copy and continue to test the advertisement text just to make sure that my sales were covering the advertising payments each month. At the time I was probably just about breaking even but buying traffic in this quantity meant that I was able to fine-tune my sales pages and start to build up a list of mailing list subscribers.

Once you have got to the stage where you know your sales pages are converting visitors into buyers, then you can start to gear up with other methods of getting traffic to your site - writing articles, linking strategies, viral methods (ebooks etc), using your eBay 'About Me' page, using your link as a signature when you post on forums etc. All of these methods will win you traffic (and in most cases it will be completely free) but it will take time for the traffic to build to a worthwhile level. If you rely solely on free traffic, you really will be building your business one hit at a time.

Of course, once the free methods of gaining traffic start to pay off, you can begin to wind down your paid methods, though you may not want to - after all, if you are earning more in sales than you are paying for your pay-per-click traffic, why stop it?

As your portfolio of websites grows, you will also be able to share the traffic around a bit by linking to your own sites and of course, if you are capturing your visitors email addresses, you will be building a mailing list of people interested in the products you are offering.

Like I say, I appreciate that the above may not be the ground-breaking secret that you were hoping for but as with so many things online, there really is no secret. Achieving success is simply about taking action and whilst you can succeed online by spending very little money, the chances are that you will succeed a lot quicker by making a bit of an investment. You don't have to be spending thousands of dollars a month as I was but any new business owner should be prepared to invest a few hundred dollars a month in order to get things off the ground....