 7 Methods
the Pros Use to Increase Website Traffic
By Paul Coulter Copyright © 2008-2010
It is no accident that the highest value businesses on the Web are not
necessarily the ones with the highest annual profits, but rather the ones
with the most website traffic. This is because consistent website traffic
presents unlimited opportunities for conversion into profits. Businesses
that have the capital to do so concentrate for years on building website
traffic before they even try to make a profit. However, those of us in the
real world with small online businesses need to be more balanced. We need
to increase website traffic and make a profit early on in our business pursuits.
This article is an overview of the key methods the pros use to increase website
traffic without breaking their budgets. After reading this, you should either
have some new ideas about how to increase website traffic or have reinforced
your drive to use these ideas to increase your website traffic.
If you are like most of the small businesses on the Web, you're scratching
and clawing for every site visitor you can get. The Web is the most competitive
environment in the world because everyone with an Internet connection can
do business on the Web. However, the Web is also the greatest business
opportunity in the world because there are about a billion people surfing
around. What other marketplace can match that? Of course, none of those people
do you any good unless you find a way to drive them to your website.
So, enough talk about the obvious importance of finding ways to increase
website traffic. Below is a list of 7 important methods the pros use to increase
website traffic without breaking their budgets:
1. Take part in online communities and forums. You can establish expertise,
credibility, goodwill, and friendships with potential customers when you
provide help to others in these communities and forums. You can also learn
more about your customers and the needs people have that you can fill. You
will increase website traffic for the long-term by being helpful in forums
in many cases because these forum postings could be available on the Web
for many years and help many people.
2. Offer a helpful or interesting newsletter related to the content of your
business website. This is another way of gaining credibility with potential
customers. If you make your newsletter very interesting, it will also provide
a regular advertising medium to those with an interest in your products.
So you will be increasing website traffic from those likely to buy from
you.
3. Write articles related to the content of your business website that you
can publish and/or make available for other sites and newsletters to publish.
You will gain credibility as an expert for the contents of your articles
and from the willingness of others to recognize your expertise by publishing
your articles. You will also gain exposure, as your name and website will
appear at the bottom everywhere your articles are used.
4. Swap links with websites related to your business website. This will help
establish credibility for you because you are cited by other websites. More
importantly, it will increase website traffic from people interested in your
type of website. A further benefit will be that search engines will recognize
links to your sites as an endorsement of your credibility on the topic and
thus put you higher in search results.
5. Make sure the content on your website uses more nouns than pronouns. Search
engines don't know what objects pronouns refer to when they see pronouns.
And, the people doing searches use the noun objects themselves for their
searches. So your websites should include the nouns for which they are searching.
And you thought learning objects, nouns, and pronouns in school was
useless?
6. Consider spending most of your advertising budget on search engine
advertising. This advertising not only will increase website traffic, but
you only have to pay for website traffic from people doing a search for words
describing what you offer. This increases your chance of closing sales directly
off your advertising budget.
7. Offer things to your customers for free that improve your brand image
or contain advertisements that your customers will pass around to others,
increasing your exposure. This is often referred to as viral marketing because
the marketing spreads from one person to the next instead of from you to
each customer. The best way to achieve this is to offer something unique
that is either extremely useful or entertaining. It is a definite plus if
what you offer appeals specifically to your target market so that you will
increase website traffic from buying customers.
About the Author:
| Paul Coulter
owns and operates a Toronto web design company that provides custom website
development and Internet marketing services. For more Internet marketing
information, please visit http://www.ekonline.com |
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