Attracting Traffic to Your Website.

I am often asked, “what is the best way to drive traffic to my website". There are so many ways to market your website and get results some take a lot of time to cultivate, and some can produce traffic right off the bat.

In order to drive traffic you need to know the options available – and then plan your strategy.

There are free ways – you don’t have to pay money, but you do have to spend time to get where you want to go.

Those of you on a shoe string budget may not have the cash to advertise or use Pay-Per-Click methods.

Remember even the best designed websites will not produce an income, unless there is traffic directed to it…

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Free traffic, as the term suggests, implies that you drive traffic to your website free of charge. If you have more time than money, then this is more than worth you’re while.

The most common method of obtaining traffic involves using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. This is considered on-site SEO and should be used with other methods. When you optimize your website, search engines view your site as being useful and relevant. This in turn, leads to increase in rankings for your keywords, key phrases.

SEO methods are great for obtaining free traffic in the long term, but it might take as long as six months to a year to see full results.

Blogs

Search Engines love blogs – the fresh content that is placed in the pages will cause the search engines to pay attention, and it will allow you to gain more exposure for your website. Every business knows the best kind of traffic is targeted visitors – that is exactly what you will get from people who visit your blog and go on to access your website...

I would host the blog with your website - it just makes more sense and will bring you up on the search engines. If you use a blog that is hosted away from your website - like blogger make sure you link back to your website and give plenty of links in your article to redirect traffic.

Article Marketing

When you develop a blog, those same articles can be used for article marketing.  It only makes sense to get them published on article directory sites that have high volumes of traffic. This works to bring in organic search engine traffic within a week (targeted the best kind).

Once you quit uploading articles to those directories, your traffic is likely to taper off in two to three weeks.

Writing and publishing articles once a week should keep free traffic to your site from dropping off.

Top 9 Article Submission Sites

1. Ezine Articles

2. Article Alley

3. Go Articles

4. Article Dash board

5. Wryte Stuff

6. Buzzle

7. Article Base

8. Article City

9. Idea Marketers

Social Media Sites

When you do it right Facebook, Twitter and other social media websites can give your blog and website a lot of exposure. You need to post your links, give helpful advice and don’t be afraid to be a giver.

This gives you back links to your website – advertises your business and builds business relationships.

One of the great things you can do to help with time management is to set up your blog article to feed into your social media sites. This shows others (through your articles) that you are a professional it gives you credibility.

Back-links

Having highly positioned sites link to your website will cause Google and other search engines to pull you up higher on the search engine pages – and give greater exposure to your business.

Banner Exchanges

There are also banner exchanges that allow you to post your banner advertisement on others websites when you post one of them on your website. I personally don’t want banners on my website, but if I had a niche site or blog’s that I was using for an affiliate commission I would take advantage of this tactic. You must be careful about this however, Google has started to take notice and may frown upon to many ads above the fold of your website.

Forums

Don’t under estimate what joining the appropriate forums can do, when you join forums that are of interest to your business.

In order to fully take advantage of a forum you must have a signature file – it is important to place a link in your signature file.

Make sure and fully engage with the forum. Ask questions, answer questions – watch posts and engage the people who frequent the forum. This goes for others blog’s as well. Post your comments and they usually always link back to your website.

Contact me - I can help you with all you with all your online (business) needs!

Pamela Jacob - Artista Design