One of the main problems most webmasters face is getting traffic to their site. They may have an amazing site but without traffic it begs the same question as `If a tree falls and no one is within miles of it does it still make a sound’? There are many ways to easily boost your traffic and boost it fast; however, many of these strategies involve money. For a small business starting their web site it is not always easy to pump dollars into advertising especially if you are offering a resource site where the planned income is to come from advertising or affiliate relationships instead of the sale of your own product or services. For sites like these I offer the following 8 traffic building strategies to get your web site additional traffic for free.
Before I begin I must say this. I could tell you everything I know about web site promotion and it still would not mean a thing if you do not put this knowledge into action. `A rolling stone gathers no moss’, and with that in mind here are 8 strategies that I have proven to work listed in no particular order.
1. Search Engine & Directory Submission It is nothing new that search engines and directories can provide web sites with large amounts of traffic, after all, searching is the #2 most frequently done activity on the web.
When your site is developed to a satisfactory level, submitting to search engines and directories is a must. Not only is there great potential that users searching on these sites will find yours but also many other web sites use the results from directories such as DMOZ and search engines such as Google to fuel their search results. Added exposure at a price you can afford…Free!
So which directories and search engines should you submit to? There are so many out there that I would be unable to list them all in this article but the major ones are the ones that really provide the traffic numbers. Google for example is the #1 search engine at this time and a good listing in this search engine can multiply your traffic several times over. You can submit your web site to Google at this address http://www.google.com/addurl.html. DMOZ.org is one of the largest directories as well as Yahoo.com. When submitting to directories it is common for you to have to go to the category that best suits your site and then you will be able to submit it from there. Always follow their submission guidelines to ensure that your submission is accepted.
There is no downside to being in the search engines and directories if you want your site to be found, however, it can take up to several months for your site to be included in some cases. Get a jump start on time and submit your site to all the directories and search engines today!
2. Search Engine Optimization Search engine optimization is the before and after solution to getting even more traffic from the search engines. A website that is listed on page 5 of let’s say Google, compared to one that is on page 1, will receive far less traffic from Google as many people aren’t willing to search through 5 pages to get the information they require. You need to get your site the best position you possibly can to maximize the benefits of being listed in a search engine.
Search engine optimization, if done well, can greatly increase your chances of being on page 1 or even the #1 listing. For the right keywords a #1 listing can produce large amounts of traffic, so much that you may have to upgrade your hosting account or even move to a dedicated server in order to handle the load.
Search engine optimization is not easy but is a must to be a major competitor in your industry today and though it is a free process it can be time consuming. Learn it, do it and reap the rewards.
3. Increase Your Web Site Content Content plays a significant role in bringing in the viewers as the more up-to-date content you have the more reasons people will have to return to your site and tell others about it. The search engines also love content and the more content pages you have the better chance you will have to appear in their results under numerous keywords. Content should be kept relevant to your site and should not be used purely for search engine reasons. A good `rule of thumb’ is to add at least one extra content page per week.You can adjust this to your availability of content as the more the merrier.
But what if my site deals with products? How will I be able to add content then? Content can be in any form. It doesn’t have to be articles it can also be detailed product or service descriptions. When adding content to your site, just ask yourself, “Self, what would I want to know about this if I were a member of my target market?”, then start from there.
4. Write Articles on Topics You Are Proficient In. This method is highly overlooked but if you are reading this article then it proves that it works. Webmasters love getting free content for their sites. It saves them the dollars they would have to pay to have someone write for them as well as increases the value of their site to their users and to the search engines. Well written articles are a great way to generate additional traffic as:
(a). users, seeing your article on other sites, who are interested in what your article is saying, will have a greater tendency to visit your site to learn more.
(b). you gain additional link popularity as your article, if posted on other sites, should have your URL in there.
(c). you are also adding valuable content to your own site if you also publish the article.
5. Request Link Exchanges Exchanging links is also another great no cost way to get additional users to your site. If you contact webmasters of related sites and ask for your link to be added to their site and offer to do the same many times they will be ok with this. This method also increases your link popularity which some search engines, such as Google, have included in their algorithm as a method of determining your site’s importance. I still to this day receive decent amounts of traffic from sites that I have exchanged links with in the past.
6. Offering a Free Service. This is a proven method that works like a charm if done right. Hotmail used this and still uses this and as a result has become one of the top sites worldwide for offering email services.
Here’s how it works, you offer a free product or service that spreads the word about what your site has to offer. You then promote it via your site or any other means and then watch it bring in the traffic. Adding a tracking URL to this would be a good idea so you can quantify exactly what traffic is coming from this product or service. I have used this method on one of my sites before and it worked wonders bringing in similar amounts of traffic as did Google.
But Alec what kind of product or service can I offer? The sky is the limit. Use your creativity and think of what your users would love and love to send to others then go from there.
7. Signature Files A signature file is the information added at the bottom of your emails or at the bottom of your posts in forums. If what you are discussing in a forum or sending in an email interests the reader they are highly likely to at least read your signature file and if you have a URL in there, which you should, then they are likely to click on it as well.
What should a signature file look like? You can make your sig file any way you choose but to keep it effective it should contain at least your URL. I sometimes use the following
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
A Duncan http://www.lilengine.com – Search Engine Optimization Resource
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Also something else to mention; if using Plain Text emails you will have to add the full URL to ensure that it is clickable e.g. http://www.lilengine.com
8. Pop-Under Networks A pop under is a window that opens when a user visits a site, however, when it opens it loses focus and goes behind the previously viewed window. How is this useful? Users aren’t as annoyed by pop under windows as they are by popups as it doesn’t interfere with what they are currently doing. After they are done and close their browser then they are shown the window that popped under. There are many popunder networks out there and what they do is, for every time your site shows one of their popunders they will show yours. Different sites offer different exchange ratios. The most common being 2:1 so for every two popunders you show on your site they will show yours once. I have used this in the past for generating initial traffic but as traffic numbers became sufficient I removed this feature. Some of the more popular popunder exchange sites are W3Exit.com and ExitExchange.com.
Wrapping Things Up! Now each of these techniques will bring you additional traffic if done properly. It is up to you to figure out the smartest way to apply these strategies to your traffic building campaign. I hope you try some, if not all, of these to see for yourself the impact they will have on your traffic. For more information visit http://www.lilengine.com.
Happy traffic building!
Copyright LilEngine.com 2003.
Click here to sign up for FREE B2B newsletters from Murdok!
Alec Duncan is the founder of LilEngine.com
a search engine optimization resource site. Visit
http://www.lilengine.com and also visit their new Web Hosting
resource section at http://webhosting.lilengine.com
Copyright LilEngine.com 2003
