Increase Website Traffic - More Simple Tips
To increase website traffic, you need to let the search engines know that you exist by submitting your sitemap file to the major SE’s, like Google, Yahoo, Live Search (formerly MSN ) and Ask.
Once the SE’s have your sitemap file, they send “spiders” to check it out every time you make changes to your site. Google created the protocol that all the major search engines use for this function but sometimes it doesn’t work so well on Yahoo and Ask.
Google webmaster tools
has simple instructions on how to do it.
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Keyword Research
Keyword research
will help you choose the right keywords and phrases that will help the search engines know what your page is all about. Make sure these keywords are sprinkled liberally throughout your page but don’t saturate your page with them because the search engines will think you’re “keyword stuffing” which is a trick people used to use in the old days.
Blog Marketing
Search engines love blogs. As a result, many people have adopted the strategy of
blog marketing
to increase website traffic. They just set up a blog on Blogger, Wordpress or any other number of hosting services and then link to their websites from their blog. Search engines index blogs quickly but they can also be time-consuming because you have to update them frequently to keep your position. There are ways to automate this with some blog sites so it's not a big deal but it's something to consider when you use this strategy. Blogs have become so effective that some internet marketers don't even bother with a web site; they just use their blog to promote their services and products.
Link Exchanges
Reciprocal link exchanges can be a good way to increase your page rank and site rank. Getting a link from an authority site (one that has high page rank) is great but just make sure that the site your linking from or linking to has valuable content that is useful to your visitor. In other words, it would be a bad idea to link to a site about cell phones if you have a site about basketball. You also don’t want to link to a site that is your competitor, for obvious reasons.
Traffic Exchanges
Traffic exchange sites can increase website traffic but are controversial because the quality of traffic they bring to your site is usually very low. Still, I believe that you should try everything once so here are my reviews of the three I've tried.
Traffic Swarm
is one of the most well-known traffic exchange sites and one of the oldest. When you sign up, you'll have a start page with 5 or 6 website ads. You click on the ones that interest you and you get credits to run your own ad. Other people click on your ad, too. The problem with using this type of traffic exchange to increase website traffic is that it's not targeted and in my experience, most of the sites were "Get Rich Quick" type of sites. You have to stay on the site for at least 20 seconds so it's kind of a time-waster. Many of the sites are repeated on the same page so you could end up on the same page more than once. Another traffic exchange site that holds some promise is
Link Referral.
This is a directory of sites where you are placed within a category that you choose. You earn credit for your site to show up in the directory by visiting and reviewing sites. This works to increase website traffic slightly better than other traffic exchanges because people have to actually look through your site to write a decent review. You'll also benefit indirectly through search engine traffic that comes through to your site from the
Link referral
forum.
LeadsLeap
is a new traffic exchange system with a twist. It's a newsletter that's emailed to you and on the right-side margin of the newsletter, there are advertisements targeted to the information that's in the newsletter. If you become part of
LeadsLeap
, your ad will also appear according to how many credits you have logged by clicking on others' ads.
LeadsLeap
is such a superior traffic exchange system because you are targeting a specific market and you're getting good information out of the newsletter. There's also free rebrandable software, ebooks and special reports that you can pass on to your list. I've not seen this viral marketing feature in any other traffic exchange site I've been involved with.
Newsletters
Distributing your own online newsletter is a great way to get repeat visitors back to your site. It doesn’t have to be very long. Just little tidbits of information that will ultimately get your visitor to come back to your site.
Offering a free newsletter is a tool for you to increase website traffic and "build your list" while you're at it. That's where the money is...the list. These are people who've "opted-in" to receive information from you because they trust you. They will listen to your recommendations when they are ready to buy. There are lots of newsletter services that set up the sign up process for you by providing a form for you to put on your site. They will even provide templates you can use for the actual newsletter.
Site Build It
has their own "mailout manager" included in their subscription price. You can see an example of how it's done on my own
newsletter sign up page.
Newsletters can "overdeliver" to your visitors and make them loyal customers over time.
Social Bookmarking
This is a growing avenue that many internet marketers are using to increase website traffic. It includes MySpace, Facebook, StumbleUpon, and now Twitter among many others. Social bookmarking revolves around establishing and being part of a community of like-minded people who are likely to visit the same sites you visit.
We've already established that the world wide web is a big place. Social Bookmarking helps you navigate it when you are part of a community of people that can lead you to what you need and want to see on the internet.
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