Thursday, July 31, 2008

4 Strategies to Slingshot Your Website Traffic

By D. Hatcher


The number one thing most Internet marketers need is traffic. Without traffic how would you make any sales? It doesn't matter how great your website is. You could have the best headline and ad copy in the world, but without a sufficient amount of traffic you will not do very well. This article is going to reveal simple strategies that can be put into effect immediately. These are proven methods for getting targeted traffic flowing to your site.

Write articles. This is a great technique that does more than just bring traffic to you. It puts you in the position to show your expertise and build trust in your prospects' minds. This is very important. People have to trust you if they are going to order. Nobody will buy from you if they don't first feel comfortable with you. Articles are a great way to "break the ice".

Here is what to do. Write a bunch of articles relating to your particular marketa and submit two articles per week to major article sites. Located at the bottom of each article is an area that is cajjed the "resource" area. In the resource area you are allowed to include a signature or "bio". Only in the resource are are you allowed to include links to your website. If you write an article of value, readers will click the link and be taken to your website. This is why it is extremely important to provide useful, high quality information. People will only want to visit your website if you give them something of value first.

Exchange links with popular sites. This method works on several levels. First of all, you will get traffic through your links that are posted on other sites. Also, as additional websites link to yours, your search engine rankings begin to rise. This can be a major source of traffic. Showing up on the first page in major search engines can bring you thousands of visitors per month.

Here is how to get links to your site. Find sites that are very similar in theme to your site. Make a call or send an e-mail to the site owner about the possibility of doing a link exchange. Send them a link to the page that you are displaying on your website that you have already put their link on. Now it is their turn. They will do one of two things, either accept your offer or not. If they refuse to add a link to your site on their website, simply remove their link from your site.

Use Pay Per Click advertising. Pay Per Click costs money but it can be a dynamic way to coral highly targeted traffic to your site. If you are careful to choose the right keywords and make intelligent bidding choices it can prove to be a very cost effective and useful tool. Google Adwords and Overture are the two most popular Pay Per Click companies. However, Yahoo and MSN offer pay per click advertising as well, and often for less cost per click. To get the most out of Pay Per Click you need to be armed with at least a fundamental amount of knowledge. I suggest buying a book or ebook on the subject before starting a campaign.

Submit videos to video sites such as Youtube. Videos are one of the best ways to "get the word out" about your website. They can also be made with no more equipment than a small digital camera with a "movie mode" or an inexpensive webcam. Processing your short movie (adding titles, music and basic editing) can be done using a free video editing program that is part of your Windows operating system.

Here is what to do. Make a video about your product or opportunity. Upload your video to Youtube and give it a catchy title and description based on it's content. There are some things you can do with the title and description to make sure that it is seen by as many people as possible. For instance, make sure to do some keyword research and use those keywords or "tags" that laser target the audience that you want to reach. I could go on about that but that is a subject for another article. For now, learn from others that are already on Youtube. Take a look at the descriptions and tags on highly viewed videos and "learn" from them!

While any one of the traffic generation strategies above can make a major difference, I suggest using all of them combined. This will give you the most traffic possible in the shortest amount of time. The more effort you put into the tactics provided in this article the more they will work for you.

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