Six Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Website

"How can I increase traffic to my website" has got to be the
biggest question of the new Internet age. Whether yours is a one
man/ woman show or a large corporate website, traffic is the need
of the day.

Most websites fail for lack of adequate traffic, but you can
avoid this fate if you follow sound Internet marketing methods.
Here are five methods that you can use to increase traffic to
your website.

1. Optimize your existing site. If your site is already up and
running and you are not getting any traffic, one of the possible
reasons for this is that your site is not adequately optimized.
In order to get a good search engine ranking in queries related
to your site, your web pages must be focused on your target
keywords, and these keywords need to be placed strategically in
the meta tags (title, description and keywords), in the headlines
of your page, in the opening paragraph of text, in the anchor
text of links on your page and even in file names. Thorough and
proper placement of key words and phrases is what optimization is
all about.

However, one thing to remember, if you target the wrong keywords
you may not get any traffic. Do some keyword research and find
out how people actually search when looking for products or
services such as yours. What words or word combinations do they
use? Your pages should be optimized to highlight these proper
combinations. You can see which key words and key word
combinations are used by visiting Overture's Search Term
Suggestion tool located at:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

2. Add more content to your website – This is the method of
increasing traffic that is most ignored by website owners. Many
people don't realize that each of the inner pages of any website
functions like a mini-website, in that they are doorways through
which the site will be found in search engines and through which
people will enter. If you add more pages with optimized content
you will increase the chances of being found in search engines
for a wide variety of search terms, and this will result in an
increase in traffic.

3. Increase the number of inbound links to your site – If other
sites around the Internet link to your site this will increase
traffic to you directly and indirectly. The direct boost is given
because surfers who see your links may click through and visit
your site. The indirect traffic boost given by link popularity is
that your site will get a higher search engine ranking in search
engines which measure link popularity as an index of a website's
value. The search results in Google are based in a large part o­n
this factor. You can increase the amount of inbound links by
engaging in reciprocal links campaigns or by looking for
directories where you can add your url, usually through a form o­n
the site.

4. Publish your content on other websites with a link back to
your site. This method also works in a direct and an indirect
way. Whenever an article by you is published somewhere, with a
link back to your site, you can expect that some people will
click through and visit your site. Many webmasters and ezine
publishers are hungry for good content and if you provide it,
then you have a good chance of being published.

Suppose you have a website promoting your ebook entitled "A Step
by Step Guide to Internet Marketing". If you write a 600 word
article on "The Basics of Search Engine Optimization" and get it
published in high volume ezines or on a well visited website,
then you will get a stream of targeted traffic, people who are
already predisposed towards buying your product.

This method also helps indirectly in that it builds up the amount
of incoming links, and boosts search engine ranking. You can get
your material disseminated to other webmasters and ezine editors
by posting your articles at http://www.articlecity.com,
http://www.ideamarketers.com or through the many free article
groups at Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/)

5. Don't forget Offline Advertising: Most people still spend
most of their time offline. Put your url in your print
advertising, TV advertising, on your stationary and in your
brochures, on your vehicles, in your shop window, on T-shirts and
other apparel and any other place where it will be seen. When it
comes to offline advertising, an easy-to- remember url is an
advantage.

6. Try Pay Per Click Advertising: Search engine optimization,
reciprocal linking, content creation, and publishing all take
time to deliver traffic to your site. If the main sections of
your site are ready for public viewing and you want to see how
well you can do, then buy some traffic. The most popular and
probably most effective pay per click advertising program is
Google's Adwords. It only takes a few minutes to set up an
Adwords account and you will get traffic immediately. But
remember, your site has to be good enough to convert this traffic
into orders if you want to recover the cost of the advertising.

So, roll up your sleeves and start working. Choose the website
promotion methods that are most appropriate for you and you will
be well on your way to providing the answer to your own question
about how to increase website traffic.

By Donald Nelson Copyright 2005

Donald Nelson is an editor, social worker and web developer. He
has been working o­n the Internet since 1995 and is currently the
director of A1-Optimization (www.a1-optimization.com) a firm that
provides affordable search engine optimization, website
copywriting and other promotional services.