Website traffic is the life blood of every website. But hold on
a minute-what I meant to say is that "targeted website traffic" is
what we all want. So lets talk about How To
Generate Website Traffic.It fascinates me when I talk to prospective clients about
building them a website. Most business owners, and people for that
matter, never give a second thought about website traffic. They don't ask
about how people will discover their website at all.
Most people are only concerned about price. So they say...
"How much?"
Of course internet marketers are well aware of the importance of
traffic, and it's usually foremost in their minds; aside from the construction
of their site. But the general public totally misses this.
The general belief, it appears, is that if "I have a
website I'll just get plenty of visitors." Sadly, this is not the
case. There are millions of websites online that get very little, or no website
traffic at all.
There are many ways to generate traffic, and in the promotion
section of my highly recommended course at
http://fiverr.com/mariadavid
course I walk you through how I do it. But for now, lets talk about ways you
can increase your web traffic starting today.
Various Types of website traffic
There are two types of website traffic:
§ Free
Traffic-Organic
§ Paid
Traffic-Pay Per Click (PPC)
Buying Clicks
Paid traffic, in the most common form you always see is called
PPC. These are seen at the top of your page and on the right side when you do a
keyword search. The top listings usually have a color background and the ones
on the side usually don't, depending on your browser and search engine used.
Its called pay per click because you actually pay a fee every
time someone clicks on your listing. You bid against other advertisers
based on your preferred "keyword". Bids can be as little as .10
cents and as high as $10.00 or more, depending on the keyword competition.
So every time someone clicks on your website add they are
re-directed to your website. You pay for the "click", regardless of
whether they buy something or not. This is one of the ways Google is making a
ton of money.
PPC works because if you're at the top of the page the likely
hood of someone clicking on your listing is high. The expense can be high
too, and this is why expert PPC is an art.
Organic Traffic
Personally, I prefer free, "organic" traffic and this
is what I teach in the course.
Getting organic traffic may take a little more work but once you
get your website up to the first page of the search engines you've accomplished
your goal. You get a first page ranking and don't have to pay to stay
there over and over again.
Of course the first step to getting your website to the first
page of Google, Bing and Yahoo involves building a solid website which is
optimized right out of the gate. This is what I stress in the course as I
walk you through every minute detail.
You have to build a solid website foundation first-using solid
on-page web building techniques. This means creating a "targeted"
website centered around primary and secondary keywords. Use primiary keywords
for your pages and use secondary keywords for your posts.
Use keywords for your titles, H1, H2 tags, descriptions and
blogroll. Make sure you label your images and use the alt descriptor and
caption box when appropriate. Construct outbound links also. There is a science
to doing this properly but once you get your foundation set you can move on to
off page optimization and promotion.
Promoting
Your Website to Get Visitors
We all want free website traffic and the best way to get it is
to promote your website. I rely primarily on only a few techniques to
generate free traffic.
Social Media
My two favorites are YouTube and Facebook; twitter of course is
another alley you should consider if you like to tweet-I don't tweet.
If you have not already created a YouTube channel you are
missing out on loads of free traffic. I actually stumbled across this by
accident, after creating a video which has brought me tons of traffic.
Create an account and upload videos specific to your product and
service. This is essential for self promotion and it works. Everybody looks to
YouTube for information and answers-provide answers and solutions on YouTube
and watch your web traffic grow.
The same holds true for Facebook, right? Create a Fanpage
around your product, service or brand. This one should be a no-brainer.
We all know the power of Facebook-use it!
Back-linking
Back links are in-coming links from other websites which point
to your website. I have a list of out-bound links on the sidebar of this
website. Those links are pointing to other websites so, for me they are
out-bound, but for those websites they are in-bound;or back links.
Having back inks is important because when other websites
"point" to your website it makes your website more
"relevant" in the eyes of the search engines. If other websites
are in essence, recommending, your website then your website must be important,
right?
Not all back links are created equally and there is a such thing
as a good back link and not so good back link. But that's another discussion.
Generally, I like to acquire back links via article marketing.
The best way to do this is to write articles about your product or service and
submit it to article directories. I like to use Ezines, Goarticles and Snipsly
for my article marketing.
Getting targeted website traffic is art and takes a bit of
skill, as well as trial and error, but it can be done. Start with a solid
foundation first however, because it makes the rest of the process a whole lot
easier.
If you have a specific question about website traffic or how to
get ranked on the first page of the search engines please leave a comment.
