Top Ten Ways To Market Your Web Site: Get The Traffic You Need

Millions of people are online, and all those people mean you've got hundreds of thousands of potential customers who are looking for your products and services. Your site should get around 500 visitors a day without spending a cent on advertising. However, the number one question I get from Web site owners is: how do I get more traffic?

Here are the top ten ways to market your Web site. I guarantee you, if you use all these tactics you'll get at least 500 visitors a day within a couple of weeks. From there, if you keep implementing the tactics, your traffic will grow into a flood, and you'll have more business than you can handle.

1. Send out press releases

Word for word, press releases give unbelievable value -- more value than any other tactic you could use to promote your business. And yet, many business owners don't use press releases. One owner told me: "It makes me look as if I'm begging for attention..."

I've been a tech journalist for years, and as a journalist, I scan news releases eagerly. I want a story! I need news, and I need it every day. If you send me a news release, I'm grateful. I might not use your story, but the next time I hear your business's name, I'll remember it. If you keep sending me story ideas, sooner or later I will get in touch, either to interview you for a story I'm writing, or to do a story on your business.

Sites like PRWeb will publish your news release free. Use this incredible publicity resource.

2. Write articles

Articles are content, and the Web thrives on content. If you write an article a week, and publish it on several of the many article directories online, you'll drive traffic to your business.

3. Network -- use your friends, family and colleagues and THEIR friends etc

Got friends? Of course you have. You've got friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. Use your address book. Send out a message which says: "Hey -- have you seen my new site? I'm trying to get the news out about it, and would appreciate it if you'd visit, and would let your friends know about the site too. Thanks."

See? Easy.

4. Classified ads in newspapers

Take out a weekly classified ad in your local newspaper with your site's name and URL, and a one-sentence description of the site.

5. Get more content onto your site: blog

The search engines are indexing software. They need words to index. Google especially loves blogs. So start a blog on your site, and blog several times a week. Think of your blog as a "News" page for your site.

6. Run a contest

Everyone loves contests. Run a contest on your site, with an Apple iPod as the prize, and you'll get lots of traffic.

7. Use the social networking sites

There are dozens of social networking sites online. The best known is MySpace, but there are many others, like Gather and Ryze. Join one of these sites. Network.

8. Word Of Mouth (WOM)

There's a saying that you can't buy WOM. Well, guess what? You can. Develop a process in which you reward WOM. You could offer ten per cent off your services to anyone who introduces three friends. Or ten per cent off a product, if the buyer buys a gift token too. There are many ways you can encourage people to spread the word about your site.

9. Join barter networks

Barter networks are deservedly popular. Join a business barter network, and barter products and services for what you need. You're doing it not as much for the benefits of saving money, you're doing it to spread the word about your business and Web site.

10. Barter advertising

There are many business networks which barter advertising through the network. You can run banner advertising on others' sites, and run banners for them on your own.

"Banner exchanges" were all the rage five years ago, and people went mad with them. This led to banners becoming ineffective. Don't join a large network. Join a small network, or start a small network yourself. Don't run more than one banner on any page.

There you have it. Ten ways to get traffic to your site. These methods work. Please try them, and become a business owner who has no trouble generating traffic.

Copyright 2006 Angela Booth

Read More

Twenty simple ways to get massive web traffic

How To Get Massive Traffic To Your Web Site? Twenty Simple Ways.

Do you think that embarking on an Internet marketing campaign is difficult, tricky, or complicated? Successful Internet marketing campaign doesn't have to be difficult, tricky, or complicated. Here are twenty simple ways that you can easily implement to get tons of traffic to your site right now.


1) Social bookmark

You must drain to the last drop what you give any social bookmark site. You can bookmark each page of your site and each blog entry you post. While this might seem wearisome, it's worth it. You'll see a strong increase in traffic if you social bookmark each page on your site and each of your blog entries.


2) Write articles

Believe it or not this is an incredible tool for driving traffic to your site. Relevant, well-written articles can net quite a bit of activity to your web place. Off course - don't forget to add your URL in your byline. Articles should be 500 to 2,000 words in length. You can send articles to sites like: Ezine Articles, GoArticles, Submit Your Articles and Article City.



3) And speaking of your email signature line

If you don't, create one. Believe it or not, people do follow these links. You'll be amaze how many users read email signature lines. I have one and change it several times a year, depending on what we are doing or promoting.


4) List your web site in the best web directories

You'll have to pay for this but since most people don't do this (since everyone is looking for a freebie) you could really enhance your traffic by getting a listing: botw dot org and many, dir dot yahoo dot com, business dot org other good directories.


5) Get yourself listed at: DMOZ dot org

It's not easy - to get link at DMOZ, but worth the effort.


6) Create a "recommended by" list on your Delicious page

You can do this by logging on and creating an account and there and then tagging articles, blogs and other content you think is important to your readership. Then offer this page as a resource site. You can add a link to this page in your email signature line or on your web site.


7) Offer a freebie on Craig's List

You'll be surprised at how much traffic you get from a single Craig's List ad. The key here is to send users to a page on your site and make sure they have to sign up for something (like your email newsletter) before they can grab their freebie. That way you're not just getting traffic, you're also building your list.


8) Review:

If you can review hot new products or books within your market, head on over to Amazon and start positioning yourself as an expert. In order to do this effectively you'll want to create an Amazon profile and make sure and sign each review with a reference to your URL (your web site). You can also go to Epinions and Revoo to review products as well.


9) Lend a helping hand:

You can be an answer person at Yahoo Answers – you don't have to spend hours on there, but maybe a 15 to 30 minutes a week and include a link back to your site following your answers.


10) Set up a social networking site using Facebook, LinkedIn, or Squidoo

It's free and easy, just don't forget the all-important link back to your site!

Read More

Web Traffic - Is Your Content Making Your Web Site Invisible?

We Web content writers lead quiet lives peering at a computer monitor and tapping a keyboard. I even eat lunch at the keyboard, because it means that I can do some relaxing Web surfing without feeling guilty.

So drama was the last thing I expected on a cold winter's day when I bit into my peanut butter, raisin, and celery sandwich, and grabbed the ringing phone with my other hand.

A woman I didn't know sobbed into my ear: "My boss says our Web site's a disaster. We're not getting any visitors at all.... and I'm going to be fired."

I tried to tell her that it couldn't be that bad, and even if it was, we'd fix it, but it took ten minutes for her to calm down enough to tell me what the URL (Web address) was. When I looked at the site, I had a pretty good idea why her boss was mad.

It was a real estate site. Very nice. Tasteful -- elegant even. But clicking around the site, I could see that while artistically the site was fine, as a commercial Web site, it had big challenges.

No wonder the site wasn't getting any traffic. The site was almost invisible to the search engines.

At a guess, the site would be lucky to get five visitors a day, unless the real estate company bought traffic via Pay Per Click or other advertising.

Unfortunately, it turns out that they'd already spent too much on the site. Unless the sobbing lady got the site to do what had been promised by the developers -- get at least a thousand visitors a day and FAST -- her job was history.

Here's what I found on the site:

1. A Flash intro to the site

Flash animation was popular several years ago, but its popularity died when site owners realized that most Flash is just annoying. When someone comes to your site, they want information, and they want it right away.

2. Big images on every page

The images looked lovely, gorgeous homes, but only a few words of text. From a search engine standpoint, there was nothing to index on the pages.

3. Almost no text

Again, with very little text, there was nothing for search engines to index, and therefore no chance that the site would get traffic from the site search engines.

4. NO "real estate"-related keywords

The site was called (not the real name, this name is fictitious) "Thomas Fedeck Green and Smythe Incorporated". This name was on every page. I'm sure that the name was well known to the real estate buyers in the company's home city, but it meant nothing to most Web surfers, and worse -- there was nothing connecting "Thomas Fedeck Green and Smythe Incorporated" with the keywords "real estate".

Worse yet, someone had decided to create images of each property's listing so that a very fancy font could be used. Again, nothing for the Web search engines to index.

5. Flash movies

Every listing on the site was accompanied by a Flash movie of the property, with an agent showing off the features of each property.

6. My recommendation: get some text onto each and every page

"The site's fine," I assured my caller, whose sobs had calmed down. "You just need material for the Web search engines to index. The engines aren't psychic. They don't know what your site is about. You have to tell them in words. Get some words onto the site -- words about real estate, and you'll get traffic in no time."

7. The happy ending: a rapid uptick in traffic

I developed a Web content plan for the site, and within a few weeks the site got an excellent uptick in traffic. The traffic's been steadily growing.

My caller wasn't fired. When I heard from her just a few days ago, she'd been made a partner. A happy ending all around -- and a site that was made visible at last.

Copyright 2006 Angela Booth

Read More