Get More Traffic

I was recently asked the question "How can I get more traffic to my website?" and I thought the question might have a wider audience so here is my answer. 

First check to make sure the problem is really traffic (lack of visitors) and not conversion (visitors are not taking the desired action when they visit).


If the problem is indeed traffic, there are three main ways to get more:

1. Work for it (Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Linking and Promotion)

2. Buy it (Google Adsense, or similar programs)

3. Trade it or share it (Joint Ventures)

If your site is new and/or you are new to Internet Marketing, I would suggest concentrating on 1 and 3 as they are either free or not very expensive. Disadvantage is they take work and they take longer to see results. If you need results quickly, have some skills in Internet Marketing, and have a pretty good advertising budget you can try Google Adsense - immediate results, but can be very costly, especially if you don't know what you are doing.

Assuming you would like to try FREE first:

Work for it

SEO - to learn more about SEO go to www.google.com and look for "Webmasters/Site owners help". Don't get caught up in page rankings - concentrate on proper use and placement of keywords, content linked to title and keywords, proper navigation and site map. A good read would be one of the "Dummies" books - "Web Design for Dummies" - if you need more information.

Linking - is getting back links to your site from other (preferably high traffic) websites. Linking is actually also a part of SEO, but it pays to think about it separately as it is one of the most effective ways of getting traffic. Good ways to get links back to your site are by participating in forums and writing articles (check out Ezine Articles and Go Articles as they are two of the best) about the subject or business of your website.

Promotion - more than I can list here, but investigate participation in Twitter, FaceBook, etc. (watch spamming) - Blogging - Writing Articles - participating in forums - teleseminars and/or (my favorite) Blog Talk Radio - and don't forget to think about off-line promotion as well. Perhaps the easiest (but often overlooked) things to do is put the website address on everything you send - or give - out, such as stationary, business cards, email, etc.

Trade it or Share it

Joint Ventures - where you team up with a related (but not directly competing) website to do a joint promotion of some sort. You mail to and get traffic from both lists. I use this technique on teleseminars or Blog Talk Radio where I invite the second party to be a guest on the show. They get to show their expertise and advertise their site while I am doing the same and (hopefully) we get listeners and from both our lists and promotions.

Hope this helps. Good Luck - Here's to you and to your success!