How to Increase Website Traffic
There are many creative ways to increase traffic to your website. Some will cost you money, and some won't. Below you'll find many legitimate ways (ranging from free to costly) to boost the number of visitors to your website. But if you don't have so much as a dime to spare, read How to Increase Website Traffic for Free.
Steps
- Offer free, original, and quality content on your site. This is, by far, the
single most traffic-generating activity you can take part in.
- Make sure the content is helpful to your visitors. Quality is key here; don't use
information that is re-hashed from some other web site. Give your visitors the
information they need to achieve their goal or solve their problem.
- Create a fresh piece of content every two days if you can, or at least once a week.
- Do not use content generators. They are nearly useless now. Do not copy and paste,
either. Google, Yahoo and MSN are much smarter than a year ago and can detect
copied and unoriginal content.
- If you don't want to write article by yourself, you could outsource article
writing for around as little as $5 per article (depending on the topic, length,
and quality of the article desired, of course). Better yet, try writing your own
content. Just sit down and start writing an article. You may be impressed when
you're done!
- Improve your search engine ranking by focusing your content on keywords related to
your topic. This is called search engine optimization and will help people find
your website when they're searching the Web. But don't overdo it. If you overstuff
the content with keywords, say good bye to your search engine ranking. Make sure
the keywords flow naturally with the text.
- Start an e-zine for your web site. When people read each issue they'll be reminded
to revisit your web site. Submit it to all the free e-zine directories on the
internet.
- Submit your articles to e-zines, web sites and magazines that accept article
submissions. Include your business information and web address at the end of the
article. This is a good way to create one-way backlinks to your website. This is
the most effective way to get listed on any search engine. Usually, the more
relevant links you have pointing to your site the higher you will rank.
- Give away an electronic freebie (like an eBook) with your ad on it. Allow your
visitors to also give the freebie away. This'll increase your ad exposure and
increase web traffic to your web site at the same time.
- Exchange links. Trading links with other web sites that are closely related to the
subject of your web site can bring you more web site traffic. These are two-way
links because you must provide a link to them, too, and linking to low-quality
websites can threaten the credibility of yours. Only link to sites that are DEAD
ON topic, and truly help your visitors. Instead of trading links, you could also
trade banner ads, half page ads, classified ads, etc.
- Participate on message boards. Post answers to other people's questions, ask
questions and post appropriate information. Include your signature file containing
your website's URL at the end of all your postings.
- Start your own online discussion community. It could be an online message board, e-
mail discussion list or chat room. When people get involved in your community,
they will regularly return to communicate with others.
- Hold free online classes or seminars. They could be held in your web site's chat
room. The idea of "live" information will definitely entice people to visit your
web site. You will become known as an expert on the topic.
- Use your car, especially if your website is area-specific (e.g. a website
detailing local events or selling local services). Get some vinyl decals or bumper
stickers created and turn your car into a moving advertisement, literally driving
traffic to your web site!
- Use word of mouth. Tell everyone you know about your website, give out business
cards to passers-by in the street, and so on. You might even want to run a
guerrilla marketing program!
- Give visitors a free entry into your contest or sweepstakes. The prizes should be
something of interest or value to your visitors. Most people who enter will
continually revisit your web site to get the results.
- Let visitors download free software such as freeware, shareware, demos etc. You
could even turn part of your site into a free software directory. If you created
the software, include your ad inside and let other people give it away.
- Offer free online services or utilities from your website. For instance, they
could be search engine submitting, copy writing proofreading etc. The service or
utility should be helpful to your target audience.
- Give free consulting to people who visit your web site. You could offer your
knowledge via e-mail or by telephone. People will consider this a huge value
because consulting fees can be very expensive.
- put key words and phrases in bold or italics, if you don't know what key words and
phrases are look it up!
Tips
- Start right here on wikiHow. Read up on how to publicize your website on wikiHow
without breaking the rules. If you can provide quality content, you can create a
win-win relationship where you share knowledge and get publicity in return.
- Be patient; understand that search engines need a lot of time to index a new web
site and domain. They need time to index all your content
Warnings
- Never, ever spam. Your credibility will be gone before you know it, and with it
will go your traffic.
- Don't get caught up with web site generators and internet tricks. All these "black
hat" tricks will only work temporarily. Your business needs to be setup for the
long term.
- Do not be fooled by those traffic sellers promising thousands of hits an hour.
What they really do is load up your URL in a program, along with a list of
proxies. Then they run the program for a few hours. It looks like someone is on
your site because your logs show visitors from thousands of different IPs. What
happens in reality is your website is just pinged by the proxy, no one really sees
your site. It is a waste of money.
