Ok, so, I think we all know where you want to be, or at least where you want your webpage to be, and that is within the first ten results on page one of Google search. Page two and page three may not be too bad because people will sometimes click to view these pages, but the number of visitors to sites below position ten in the Google serps drops off dramatically due to the results not being on page one.
Of course, you can always play the advertising game. There is nothing to stop you going and paying various organisations heaps of money, both online and offline to get the traffic to your website. You could use pay per click advertising such as Google Adwords, but nothing, absolutely nothing compares to getting traffic for free from the search engines because your site makes it to page one on the results pages.
The problem comes in achieving that position and staying there. Just how is it possible to be in the first ten results from a keyword search that may yield millions of results overall?
One tried and tested way is through link building. This is fairly straight forward, although it is laborious (although you could pay someone to do it for you). All you need to do is use that very same search engine and search for websites which have content related to yours. Then, you need to email the webmaster of that site and ask them to link back to you. It helps if you have already placed a link from your site to theirs to show your sincerity. This is called reciprocal linking and helps Google and the other search engines gauge the popularity of your website. The more links you have pointing towards your site, in theory, the higher up the search engine results pages your site will go.
Another proven method of increasing the likelihood that your site will be visited is to write an article related to the subject of your site and post it to the many free articles sites that are out there. You will need to place a link to your site somewhere within the article. The idea is that your articles will be freely available to download for anyone wanting content for their site or blog. When they use your article they have to leave the links intact, so as they get traffic to their sites and their visitors view your article, some of them will click on the link and visit your site too. This method also increases the number of links back to your site and so, you guessed it, further up the search results your site goes.
There are a number of other simple things to remember though when trying to drive more traffic to your websites, and I have included some of them here:
1: Hard work. You are running a business and so you need to work at it. The work I am talking about comes from your marketing efforts but also from developing good quality content for your site. There is no point driving traffic to your site if there is nothing of substance for them to engage with when they arrive. Your visitors will simply leave, having bought nothing and having not clicked on any of your Adsense ads (because the boring nature of your site will be reflected in the boring nature of the Adsense ads served on it).
2: Learn all you can. There are lots of free resources which will tell you everything you need to know (I will tell you about another at the end of this article) to be successful online. There is no need to pay for anything. All the info you need is out there. You just need to know where to look. Beware, if a traffic generation method looks like it is too good to be true, then it probably is. Significant increases in traffic will not materialise overnight, you have to work at it. So, if you are being asked to hand over $97 for the ultimate traffic generation system that promises you will be a millionaire within seven days, I can almost guarantee that it will be a waste of money and that the information contained within the product is out there waiting for you to discover it, for nothing.
3: Find sites that are related to yours and pay particular attention to those which show up on the first two or three pages of the search results for your chosen keywords or search phrase. They are obviously doing something right. Look how the pages are constructed. Look how the articles are constructed. Don’t copy them directly, and especially not the content, but make mental notes regarding how you could do things better with your sites.
4: Decide on a strategy for driving traffic to your site and then work hard to achieve it. If you think the best strategy for your site would be to write lots of useful articles which you will give away, then get on and write the articles. Don’t dawdle – just do it! Also, don’t discount article writing if you think you don’t know how to write, there are plenty of people out there who will do this for you for pocket money. Try your local college. Students always need beer money in their pockets. If you can’t find a student then look online, try somewhere like Elance.com.
5: Set realistic goals and work hard to achieve them. Don’t set yourself too high a target. You will only get demoralised when you don’t achieve it.
In point 2 above I said I would tell you about a free resource which will help you with your online marketing efforts. Well, here it is. There is a guy by the name of Harvey Segal and he has done some of the work I talk about above for you by gathering together lots of useful information and re-producing it in e-book form. Some of the information contained within this e-book is simply stunning and if you use it, it will work. What’s more this e-book which is called Ultimate Supertips is absolutely free to download and use as much as you want. You don’t have to pay a penny. Download Harvey Segal’s Ultimate Supertips now! Quick before he decides to charge money for it!