Posts Tagged ‘Internet Business’

The Slow as Molasses Techniques to Increase on Line Traffic to your Website

Monday, January 25th, 2010

How many people are online? According to Internet World Stats, the figure is well over 1 billion. And all you need to be successful with your internet business is for a small fraction of these people to visit your pages and check out your offer. No matter how many posts you will see in the various internet marketing forums, every few days (if that) someone will pose the same question. “How do I increase traffic to my website”? .

This can seem like a difficult task considering how many other web sites are out there. In July 2007 survey, Netcraft received responses from over one hundred and twenty five million websites; that was a one month increase of over three and a half million new web sites. While these numbers are daunting, keep in mind you are not competing with every site on the internet.

There are many ways to increase on line traffic. Three in particular have proven to be extremely effective. The only problem is they are not going to bring you more web site traffic overnight or the next night or even the night after that but they do work 1. Directory link Submission

There are thousands of web directories online. You can always find a company that will make directory link submissions for you at a fair price but even these places will not cover them all. If however you decide to do it yourself then you have got a long, tedious job ahead of you.

So why do it? Back links. Web directories are an effective way to get tons of incoming links to your site. This in turn leads to a higher page rank from the search engines. Keep in mind also that search engines are suspicious of any website that experiences a sudden spike in its traffic. Directory link submission allows you to increase web traffic more naturally which is more to their liking and your benefit.

2. Web Site Traffic Exchange

You sit there surfing and clicking until you feel as if you were born with carpal tunnel syndrome. You have also heard that a web site traffic exchange is useless so what is the point? The point is they are only useless to those people who do not know what they are doing. Do not use a web site traffic exchange to sell your product. Instead use them to capture leads for building your mailing list. Once people sign up to your opt in mailing list, then you can start sending them emails with snippets of information and a link pointing toward your website. This maybe a round about way for you to increase web traffic but in the process you are also building a responsive email marketing list. You may have to do a lot of clicking when you are just starting out but down the road it can pay off quite handsomely.

3. Reciprocal linking

Ugh. First you need to do a search to find a website in your niche. Than you have to make sure the site is not in direct competition with you. After that compose a personalized email to the webmaster requesting a link exchange, then wait for a response. Rinse and repeat. It is not worth the effort right? Wrong. Search engines take reciprocal links into consideration when determining your page rank. Yes back links are more valuable but a good from a high ranking website is still important. If you decide to go the reciprocal link route then try to at least trade with websites that are within your niche.

No these methods will not win any awards for speed, but that is the whole point. You are going to run across many ads that guarantee you overnight traffic. Very few if any can keep that promise. Besides you are building a business for the long haul. Just be patient and consistent in utilizing these techniques and you will get more web site traffic before you know it.

3 Steps to Driving the Right Traffic to Your Website

Thursday, January 14th, 2010

One of the biggest challenges many of my clients have is getting enough visitors to their websites. And not just any visitors, but the right kind of visitors – the ones who are high quality prospects for you.

There are literally hundreds of ways you can drive the right kind of traffic to your website, and usually a combination of several brings the best kind of visitor to your site – the ones who are most likely to take action with you – whether that’s to sign up for your teleseminar, join your bootcamp, buy your info-product or simply sign up for your ezine list.

But once we get into looking at a client’s site, the piece we often find missing is a clearly defined niche. If you don’t know who your target clients and customers are, it makes it really difficult to find them and to let them find you.

Step #1. Who is your target market?

Once you define who it is that you’re most meant to serve, the easier it will be to know where and how to find them.

Once you have a clearly defined niche, you want to be sure that your website is optimized in the sense that it’s ready for the traffic that you’re going to be sending to it. There are two essential pieces that you need to have in place before you start driving that traffic to your site:

~ An Invite Site:

This is a simple one-page website where you direct your target market to sign up for your lisst.

~ A Free Taste:

This is your free offering to entice people to join your list once they arrive at your Invite Site.

I’d like to invite you to take a look at your website and make sure that it’s super-clear what step people should take when they arrive. The first thing that your visitor should see is the sign-up for your Free Taste.

If you’re going to make the effort to get people to your site, you want to make sure you have a way to capture them once they get there to get them on your list and in your marketing & product funnel. Following this model is a foundational piece to building a successful and sustainable business online.

One you have that foundation in place, you need to find ways to access your niche, to get in front of them, so you can drive traffic to your website. There are two key ways to drive traffic to your site:

Step #2. Find Them

The second key to driving traffic to your website is to find out where your target market is hanging out online. Here are some ways you can do that.

> Join Online Networking Groups/Discussion List/Forums/Blogs

Find 3 online networking groups and list your profile and website address that points directly to your sign-up page for your Free Taste. Some great groups can be found on Ryze.com and LinkedIn.com. Search Google Groups or Yahoo Groups for other groups that apply directly to your niche.

The key to utilizing this tool is to build that relationship with your target market, not to sell anything. Every list has it’s own set of rules, but most lists will allow you an email signature where you have your URL listed that points to your Free Taste on your website. Many lists also have Promo days where you can point people to your website as well.

> Offer Free Teleseminars

Another way to get in front of your target market is to offer free teleseminars for groups and associations that are made up of your target market. You invite people to visit your site during the teleseminars, and/or when they register – depending on how the association wants it set up. Associations are always looking for speakers, so put together an offer to speak and send these out.

> Do Internet Radio or Podcast Interviews

Offer to be interviewed for a Internet radio or podcast show whose audience is your target market. Make sure you are able to give the URL of where you want people to sign up for your Free Taste. To find an appropriate show, Google “your niche + podcast” or “your niche + radio shows.”

Step #3. Let them find you

The third key is to leave clues for people to find you online.

If your niche isn’t clear in the sense that they’re not necessarily hanging out together, this is sort of a sideways way to reach them.

> Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Google Adwords or Yahoo Overture are the two biggest players in the pay-per-click arena. You can create a PPC campaign for a very small investment, and because you have complete control over your budget, you can set it for whatever amount you feel comfortable with. It’s very difficult to get to the top of the “organic” search results (on the left side of the search results page) but can be very easy to get on the first page of results with a PPC, bringing targeted traffic to you. And, the best part is you only pay when someone clicks your ad that takes them to your website.

Use the PPC’s research tool to help find the best keywords for your target market (keywords are just search terms that help people find you online), and then use them in your articles to help the search engines drive traffic to your site.

> Write & Submit Articles

There are several reasons why you want to implement this strategy. One is to educate your target market about you and what you do. Another is that it helps to position you as an expert. And another reason is that your articles give people a taste of your style, what it is that you offer, and it gives them an opportunity to get to know you a bit without risking anything.

When someone enters your keywords in the search form, your article will pop up and that will drive traffic to your site.

> Optimize Your Website for the Search Engines

You’d have to be a fulltime search engine optimization expert to keep up with all the changes the major search engines make, but there are a few basic things you can do to help your site come up for relevant searches. Here are some to get you started:

a. Define your keywords – this is how people will find your business online. The trick is to find keywords that are highly relevant to what you offer and popular enough that they will attract decent traffic to your site, but not so competitive that you can’t rank well using them. Use your keywords in your web page copy.

b. Create your metatags – this is how the search engines “read” your site. Put your keywords in your metatags on each page of your website.

c. Submit your site to the search engines:

Why wait for the search engines’ robots or spiders to find you? Submit your website (it’s best if you submit every page individually) to at least these three major search engines manually. It’s easy and only takes a minute.

The Free Ways to Generate Traffic to your Website

Friday, December 25th, 2009

The internet is flooded with zillions of websites and millions of internet surfers are looking for information and products online. Everyday a few hundred thousands of internet marketers are generating huge profits by diverting partial of these internet traffics to their websites. But, the common issue faced by most internet marketers especially who are new in this field is how to effectively generate steady and constant traffic to their website.

You can choose to generate instant traffic to you website by using paid advertisement such as Pay-per-click or paid inclusion to popular high ranking websites and directories. However, there are a few ways to generate free internet traffic to your website without spending a penny. Here are a few tips to get you website flooded with free traffic:

1. Submit To Award Sites

Everyday, thousands of internet surfers visited the award sites to search for websites that they can trust if they want to purchase physical goods, buy information products or to enroll into the membership where they can learn in their area of interest. If you website wins awards from popular award winning sites, your website will be surged with traffic.

So, whenever you see that popular websites give award certain awards, make sure that you apply for them. You can easily search for award sites from search engines by typing “web site awards”, you should get a list of websites that offering awards to other website.

2. Article Submission

Articles are always the number one traffic magnet. You do not need to be an expert to write an article for a certain topic, what you can to do is putting information or news that you read from somewhere else into a short 400 to 600 words articles with your own words. Then, submit these articles to popular and high ranking article directories. Internet surfers who read your article from these article directories or blogs which use your article can follow the author link at the bottom of article and land on your website. Besides, opening traffic stream to your website, article submission is one of the best ways to generate incoming link from high ranking sites.

3. Link From Social Networking Sites

MySpace, YouTube, Friendster and FaceBook are among the social networking sites loved by online users. The sites allow online users to share ideas, entertainment, news and making friends among each others. Beside that, these sites can provide the best exposure to drive tons of free traffic to your website. Hence, you should not miss this important traffic driving techniques. Join these social networking sites, develop your network within the sites and divert the traffic from these sites to your website.

4. Submit to Free E-Book Sites

Free stuffs always get the best response from online users. Internet surfers who are looking for products or information on the net will definitely look for information from free resources first. Free E-Book is one of the best examples. There are many websites provide downloadable e-books for their visitors. You can use these sites to gain exposure for your website. You either write your own e-book or buy re-brand e-books and include your website URL. Then, submit the e-books to those free e-Book sites.

Summary

A website only can survive if there is traffic. You always have two options to drive traffic to your website, free or paid. The best option of driving traffic is always the free traffic from search engines. There are many ways to drive free traffic to your website, what you need to do is learn these techniques and implement to generate the free traffic stream.

Web Traffic: your Online Business’s Key to Success

Saturday, December 19th, 2009

Increasing numbers of online businesses makes it difficult for everyone to be successful in this field. Online businesses need a sufficient amount of targeted web traffic in order to sell their products more effectively.
To have increased amounts of web traffic you have to advertise, advertising creates targeted traffic and targeted traffic means more sales.
Here are a few ways to get interested people in your website.
• Write an article about the product you are selling and post it to an article website. This is a great way to promote your product and inviting them to visit your website.
In addition, it is usually free to get your articles in a website. All you have to do is write about your product and submit it for posting.
However, to be successful in this form of advertising, you have to write articles that are both entertaining and informative to get interested readers hooked on reading it.
To find out if your article is worth reading, ask your family or friends to read it and get their opinions before posting it to websites.
Also, do not forget to include your website’s URL in the end of your article.
• The visitors in your website themselves is a great source of advertising, they usually recommend their friends to visit your website and spreads from there, resulting in higher targeted traffic. For this to happen, your website should also be “attention grabbing”.
A website should at least grab your visitor’s attention the moment they enter your site. For this, you need something to keep your visitors in your website.
So what is this “something” you need to grab people’s attention? Consider the title of your webpage. Try something that would interest your visitors into staying. Do not put in the name of your company, it would be too formal or boring.
Try something fun related to the product you are selling followed by an article. Keep in mind to keep your site as user-friendly as possible.
• You can also advertise on websites that sells the same product as you are. Ask the webmaster of the site to exchange advertising link with you.
This can bring targeted traffic to your website. You might think that advertising for your competitor is not a good way to do business, but keep in mind that the competitor is also advertising for you and brings in targeted traffic the same, as you are bringing traffic for them.
Think of it as a partnership. Keep in mind to advertise in only quality websites.
• Another effective way to invite targeted traffic to your website is buying advertising space on websites that discuss topics about your product. You can be sure that the people visiting your website are interested and may possibly buy your product.
• Participating in discussion groups that have topics about the product you are selling is also a great way to increase traffic in your website.
Try to answer people’s questions about the product, and always remember to include your website’s URL after every post. This would get them to think you are knowledgeable about the subject and would consider visiting your site.
Answering their questions accurately but limitedly will get them curious. Add lines like: “for more information visit my website at www.mywebsite.com”.
• Get listed on popular search engines such as Google or Yahoo. Getting traffic from popular search engines are not often free but can really improve traffic to your website. Make sure that your website is finished and fully functional before you get your website listed.
Although having high traffic in your website is a good thing, but as people say “too much of a good can also be bad”. This is true in web traffic, too much of it can slow down or prevent users to access your website.
This is because of too much file uploads and downloads request that your server simply cannot handle it. This can be caused by too many people that are trying to access your website at the same time or attacks from viruses.
When this happens, you will be forced to shut down your website and can affect your business negatively.
Because of this be sure to only advertise in websites related to your product to ensure targeted traffic, do not advertise in websites that is irrelevant to your product as it will only bring unwanted traffic.
Also, if you only have a small online business, do not advertise in very popular sites. Big companies advertises in very popular websites because they have better servers that can handle the traffic.

3 Proven Ways to Drive Targeted Web Traffic to Your Website

Friday, December 11th, 2009

Targeted web traffic is the most important factor to the success of internet business. If you want to successfully make money online, you need to learn the effective ways to drive targeted web traffic to your website or the destination page where sale is being made. There are many ways to drive these traffics, either free or paid. Free method of driving targeted web traffic requires more works, patience and time while the paid method delivery instant result, but you need to invest some cost. Here are three proven ways to drive targeted web traffic to your website:1. Pay-per-click (PPC) AdvertisingThere are millions of thousands of internet surfers searching for products or services on the internet. If you are selling a product at your website (either our own product or other people product through affiliate marketing), you need to let those internet surfers who are interested with your product know where to find it. Pay-per-click advertising is the fastest way to exposure your product to the online market. Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing are among the most reliable resources for your PPC advertising, but Google AdWords has some advantages over Yahoo Search Marketing, one of these advantages is Google Ads can be lived almost instantly while Yahoo Ads requires a few days of review for approval. But, both will deliver good targeted web traffic to your website provided you have targeted the right keywords.2. Article SubmissionArticle marketing is the number one free and effective way to drive targeted web traffic to any website. Submitting articles to various article directories not only drive targeted web traffic to your website, it does more than that. As you know, search engines is the best source for free traffic, but to get good ranking position for your targeted keywords, your website need to be optimized for search engines while getting good incoming links and anchor text links from the websites that have good ranking will help in your SEO efforts. Article submission to high pagerank article directories such as EzineArticles.com and goarticles.com help generate more incoming links. These article directories allow you to place your author bio at the bottom with website URL and anchor text link to link back to your website which contributes to your website incoming links and help in getting ranking position at search engines.3. RSS Feed SubmissionIf your website has RSS feed, don’t waste the opportunity to get more exposure through RSS feed submission to various RSS feed directories. You could burn your feeds using the popular burner, FeedBurner.com so that you have better manage of your feeds and your feed subscribers. Then, submit it to the top RSS feed directories that you can find online. The more RSS feed submissions you have done, the more exposure you will get for website, and drive more targeted web traffic when your website get visited from those feeds subscribers. Beside the traffic, RSS feed submission is an awesome tactic to increase back-links to your website as well.SummaryThe ability of your website getting targeted web traffic will determine the success of your internet business. You could use the free or paid marketing methods to generate the traffic to your website.

Common Misconceptions About Web Traffic and Search Engines

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Starting and maintaining a website is not just about creating a homepage then some subpages then posting them in the internet. Especially if your planning on having an ecommerce site.
There tens of millions of websites in the internet and chances are high you are not alone with the site you have in mind. The competition can bury you if you don’t do anything to promote your site and let the people know that you are out there. Without any web traffic, your site is as good as non-existent.
Web traffic is a vital component in generating profit and a successful website. It determines the ranking and the rate of websites. If the web designers cannot produce the targeted visitors for the websites, the sale will go down.
In normal ways, the owner and the webmasters of a certain site are the persons in charge to carry the web traffic to a definite search engine.
Search engines are the main ingredient in order for the website to produce traffic and visitors.
Web traffic can be very important as well in terms of advertising. The old way of advertising in the real world is very costly, well not in web traffic. It is also very significant in terms of publishing the products. By means of web traffic business the product can be publicized without spending a lot of money.
Another important matter is, web traffic can generate income to the web owner. The websites must have a high standing in ranking in search engines and reliable information for the visitors.
On the other hand, search engines can maximize the generated target for the web visitors. Unluckily, there are a lot of websites owners and webmasters who do not know the importance of search engine ranking.
Ranking in search engines is very important because it leads to web traffic. Most of the web owners want to have a good-looking website without taking the consideration of the ranking. Remember that belonging on the top rank can take you to the top.
The importance of web traffic must be given a huge concern and attention. Here are the lists of frequent error that the web owner usually committed.
• Most of the web designers do not use the keywords efficiently. Keywords are very effective in terms of web traffic. It is the best way for the search engines to rank the websites. The keywords must be the key for the visitors to locate the site easily.
• Replicating similar keywords. There are webmasters who keeps on repeating the same keywords over and over again. It is called keyword stocking. As a result, the search engine may skip the page or the entire website.
• Raiding the pages and other websites. It is important for the web designer to know how important links are. Most of the time, there are web designers who rob icons from other websites and use it for their own purpose. The web designers should have a unique idea of their own. Search engines are very powerful in detecting the websites that have the same icon content. It is very important in order to prevent the sites from being out listed in the main search engines.
• There are webmasters and designers who use the keywords that are not connected to their websites. One thing that they should do is to maintain websites that have protocol. The unconnected topics and keywords must be removed. Remember search engines are smart, it can consider the page as spam and be automatically eliminated from the list.
• Having stuffed keywords. There are websites that have a multiple graphic description. Stuffed keywords can make the websites layered and appeared awkward to the search engines. If the search engines detected the website parameter that contains massive amount of keywords and graphics, the search engine can consider the site as spam.
• There are websites that relies on the hidden text. The keywords should not be hidden or invisible. There are clever designers who hide keywords by making it appears as the same color with the site background.
• False presumption about search engines. There are web designers who presume that all search engines has the same category that plays the same functions and roles. Make it a point to learn about the appropriate requirements of each search engine.
• As much as possible don’t use free web hosting. One of the basic significance of web hosting is to have a promising increase on search engine ranking.
Web designers must not commit those said mistakes in order to gain high-ranking sites. It will also keep the websites from being banned by the search engines. Keep in mind that if the websites has a lot of visitors it can also promise the web owner a soaring profit.