Methods to increase website traffic are being spun, packaged, wrapped up in e-literature, and sold for a price. Some of these methods work. Unfortunately, a number of them are also known as "black hat" or are borderline black hat and will only work for a short period of time. They'll probably stop working right about the time you buy the ebook, or get around to reading it and implement it. Since I'm sure you're taking a long term approach to your website, you'll want to dedicate your time and effort to creating a less risky, and more lasting traffic strategy.
Instead of talking about sneaky methods and tricks, I'd like to cover a few of the "white hat" techniques that can bring lasting traffic. These aren't particularly flashy, but they produce results. The best thing about these techniques is that they'll keep producing traffic over many months and years.
Article marketing -- Using article marketing to increase website traffic offers several major benefits. The article marketing sites themselves often have high authority with Google and offer excellent backlinks, which can drive up your search engine rankings. In addition, because of the authority that these sites have, your posted articles will often rank high in the engines.
The article directories can send you direct traffic. This traffic is normally very targeted delivering visitors who already trust you and are often warm to becoming loyal visitors and customers. Once your article is published, other websites will republish your article with your backlink. Your job is done as soon as you publish, yet the viral effect created by republishing can live on for years. You can continue to get new backlinks without any further effort.
Bookmarking the social way -- By placing icons on your site with links to popular social bookmarking sites, you can encourage your visitors to social bookmark your pages. Try adding the code for addthis.com or sharethis.com to your site. With minimal effort, you can significantly increase your backlinks using Getbookmark.com. Don't overlook the value of bookmarking your link partners. If you bookmark sites that link to yours, you can increase their exposure, and improve your search engine ranking at the same time.
Building content -- When in doubt, build more content. More pages on your site equate to more PageRank, more opportunities for adding in keywords that the search engines will pick up on, more pages to link to, and more information for your visitors. All of this adds up to increasing website traffic. I own a domain name because someone built an online store at the same time I was building a content site on the same subject, with almost the same name. The store is gone, my content site is still there, and I own that former online store's domain name.
Social media sites -- Placing your content on other sites is what I call a web-centric approach to success. Many people know about using Digg and Reddit to drive large amounts of traffic, but this is very hit or miss. Others are using Facebook but that is tricky as well. I'm not saying not to use those sites, but a better way to spend the majority of your time might be to use the user generated content sites. Looking at some of the most popular ones, Squidoo, Buzzle, and Hubpages come to mind. There are also a number of up and coming niche related community sites published on the Ning platform and others. All of these let you create valuable backlinks to your site in some way.
These are not the only effective white hat methods to increase website traffic, but they certainly work to produce lasting results with no risk. Individually they work well, and in combination they're even more powerful. So forget about those short-lived techniques that might get you banned, and increase your visitor count with these long term strategies.
Instead of talking about sneaky methods and tricks, I'd like to cover a few of the "white hat" techniques that can bring lasting traffic. These aren't particularly flashy, but they produce results. The best thing about these techniques is that they'll keep producing traffic over many months and years.
Article marketing -- Using article marketing to increase website traffic offers several major benefits. The article marketing sites themselves often have high authority with Google and offer excellent backlinks, which can drive up your search engine rankings. In addition, because of the authority that these sites have, your posted articles will often rank high in the engines.
The article directories can send you direct traffic. This traffic is normally very targeted delivering visitors who already trust you and are often warm to becoming loyal visitors and customers. Once your article is published, other websites will republish your article with your backlink. Your job is done as soon as you publish, yet the viral effect created by republishing can live on for years. You can continue to get new backlinks without any further effort.
Bookmarking the social way -- By placing icons on your site with links to popular social bookmarking sites, you can encourage your visitors to social bookmark your pages. Try adding the code for addthis.com or sharethis.com to your site. With minimal effort, you can significantly increase your backlinks using Getbookmark.com. Don't overlook the value of bookmarking your link partners. If you bookmark sites that link to yours, you can increase their exposure, and improve your search engine ranking at the same time.
Building content -- When in doubt, build more content. More pages on your site equate to more PageRank, more opportunities for adding in keywords that the search engines will pick up on, more pages to link to, and more information for your visitors. All of this adds up to increasing website traffic. I own a domain name because someone built an online store at the same time I was building a content site on the same subject, with almost the same name. The store is gone, my content site is still there, and I own that former online store's domain name.
Social media sites -- Placing your content on other sites is what I call a web-centric approach to success. Many people know about using Digg and Reddit to drive large amounts of traffic, but this is very hit or miss. Others are using Facebook but that is tricky as well. I'm not saying not to use those sites, but a better way to spend the majority of your time might be to use the user generated content sites. Looking at some of the most popular ones, Squidoo, Buzzle, and Hubpages come to mind. There are also a number of up and coming niche related community sites published on the Ning platform and others. All of these let you create valuable backlinks to your site in some way.
These are not the only effective white hat methods to increase website traffic, but they certainly work to produce lasting results with no risk. Individually they work well, and in combination they're even more powerful. So forget about those short-lived techniques that might get you banned, and increase your visitor count with these long term strategies.
About the Author:
Author Kurt Schmitt publishes several Web properties serving thousand of visitors a month, and writes about the benefits of social bookmarking, article marketing and other Web promotion strategies. See his website for at least 3 more ways to increase website traffic .
No comments:
Post a Comment