There are many ways to increase your website traffic. Although everyone would like to use methods that are both highly successful and free…that’s just not the reality we live in. Once you have maximized the best free traffic generators..you might want to add some ppc to the mix to effectively compete with your competition.

By Jennifer Horowitz
Driving traffic to your site is one of the first requirements to a successful online business. Without website traffic, your site may as well not exist. There are numerous ways you can drive traffic, so let’s take a look at some of them and evaluate them. Keep in mind, this isn’t a comprehensive list, but it is some of the more successful ways. I invite you to share any other ideas that have worked for you.

• PPC
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Affiliate Programs
• Article Syndication
• Press Releases
• Blogging Banner ads
• Joint ventures
• Offline campaigns (that drive traffic to your site)
• Advertising (on other sites, ad networks and industry publications)

Let’s look at the pros and cons of a few of the methods, to help you
determine what methods are viable for your business. Stay tuned for
parts 2 and 3, as we work our way through the list above and determine
the pros and cons.

PPC

Pros:

You can drive traffic quickly — that’s a good thing!

Your traffic is targeted if you select the right keywords — also a good thing!

You can use PPC to test things (headlines, landing page copy) —
great way to use PPC, in addition to just driving traffic for sales. Be
willing to sacrifice some profits and use PPC to test ideas before you
fully role them out.

You control the settings and can turn it on and off any time — control is good.

Cons:

There is a lot of research and set up required (unless your
outsource it) — not necessarily a bad thing, unless you don’t have the
time to learn and implement or the budget to outsource. Your best bet
is outsourcing, if your budget allows it. You should be running your
business not becoming a PPC expert.

The cost per click can be very expensive on some words — in some
industries and on some words it is prohibitively high. In other cases
it’s just annoyingly high. You have to determine where your keywords
would fall and if you can afford it. How much is a lead worth to you?
How much is a sale worth to you? You should figure this all out before
your start.

You have to worry about click fraud — bummer! There is software out there to help.

Once you’ve reached your daily spend (the amount you are willing to
pay each day) your ads are turned off and your exposure disappears —
that’s just how it works. It means there is often a good part of the
day where your ad isn’t showing, unless you have a large budget.

SEO

Pros:

• Organic search listings have a higher click through rate than PPC
  listings. — Getting the most clicks out of any listing is a good thing.
  Major pro!
• Traffic from the organic results converts at a higher rate than PPC
  traffic. — Another major pro! Conversion is what it is all about, so
  getting traffic that is more likely to convert is your ultimate goal.
• Your traffic is targeted if you select the right keywords. — That’s a good thing.
• It is more cost effective than PPC (usually, depending on the cost
  of your keywords) — Just run the numbers and determine if that is true
  for you. In many, many cases, $300 of SEO will bring in more traffic
  than $300 of PPC.
• Your listing appears 24/7 and doesn’t turn off after you’ve reached
  a certain limit (like in PPC). — Constant exposure is definitely what
  you are striving for.
• Search engines are the prime source for finding information and
  websites, with more than 8 out of 10 people using them to find
  products, services and information. — Makes it a no-brainer. If you
  aren’t ranked in the top of the engines, you are losing out on traffic.
• You can get content, videos, images and news indexed. — Cool!

You can read more of the informative article about ways to increase website traffic by continuing to read more of the article by Jennifer Horowitz

About the author: Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing and co-owner of EcomBuffet. Since 1998, her expertise in online marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue and achieve their business goals. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on Search Engine Optimization and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications.

By warner44 Visit his hubpage at: More Free Traffic

This is stuff I do for my blog 
I have a wordpress blog as my main site and I research keywords I want to get searched on. I find keywords that are connected to what I write about.

Whenever I can, I use these and closely related keywords in the title and in the body of the post. Posting often helps a lot because The search engines love origional content like women love shoes.

Tracking which keywords people find you with is important. Are they finding you with the words that you want, the ones that relate to your main topics? You take the keywords that work best and use them more.

Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools are free tools you can use for this.

I also social bookmark my posts and ask friends do this for me too. I use this free site/tool to make it easier SocialMarker . It is a little time consuming to set up because you have to create accounts in the bookmarking sites but after that it is pretty quick. I use delicious a lot and you can download all your saved links and put them in the other bookmarking accounts. Who knows some of these sites may not be there one day.

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If you have a website, then its lifeblood is traffic. If you are selling your own product, you need more website traffic to turn a percentage of visitors into buyers. If you are selling someone else’s product as an affiliate, you need to constantly increase website traffic to offset dwindling conversions as the product cools off. And if you have created a high quality content site in order to display Adsense, Chitika or other context sensitive advertising units, then the more website traffic, the more clicks on your ads.

Here are five surefire tips to increase your website traffic:

1. Writing articles is a win-win-win situation. The ezine editor gets content, the reader gets valuable information and you get backlinks. And it’s not hard, just tedious. Go through everything you’ve written down as part of creating your website and, if applicable, producing your product. This is your area of expertise and others will benefit from it. And it’s original. Highlight separate topics and bring like topics together. Associate relevant keywords with each topic. Pick a keyword and write a headline based on it. Use three to five relevant topics as your content. Finish off with a resource box like mine at the end of this article. Rinse and repeat until you’ve got several articles. To get more website traffic, submit them to the high Google PR, low Alexa Rank article directories listed at: Traffic Flood Gate.com

2. Create an account at Trail Fire.com. Find four other sites, blogs or articles on the same or a similar topic as yours, but who are not direct competitors, and link them and your site together in a “trail.” Include your best keywords in each review. Google loves these “fire trails” and with luck will rank yours highly for your chosen keywords.

3. An oldie but still a goodie. Create several unique (very important - you will get deleted if they are the same or even too similar - you might even need to create separate accounts) advertisements at Craigslistacross different regions in the Small Business category, using your best keyword as the anchor text linking back to your site. Craigslist has a Google Page Rank of a whopping 8!

4. Every time you create a website, you should add a Wordpress blog to it. If you’re using cPanel, it’s a very simple process. Click on Fantastico, then select Wordpress blog, new installation and follow the simple process through. Do a Google search on Wordpress theme (free if you like) pick one that appeals and follow the instructions to change the theme. If you don’t, your blog will look like a million others. And what to post to your blog? Why, the articles you wrote in Tip 1. Try to post one a week, and watch your traffic go up. You can find more great ways to get increased website traffic by reading more of the story at the link below.

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Generating website traffic for free will take a little time and effort in the beginning to establish funnels to increase website traffic. Without question, paying for traffic will get you instant results, but it is very important you learn how to get free website traffic. Believe me, it is a great feeling when you get tons of traffic to your site, and you know you haven’t paid a penny for it!

By Michael Page

In this list building for beginners article we will examine traffic generation strategies. Traffic is the life blood on any internet business. You can have an oasis in the middle of the desert full of water but if no one knows it’’s there you”re not going to sell any. You need traffic.

As you are reading list building for beginners I”m going to assume that you”re relatively inexperienced. In this case the best place to start building a list is to use free traffic generation methods. It takes a bit longer but is far cheaper. When you have mastered the basics and built up an appropriate income level you can then start to invest in paid for traffic if appropriate.

List Building for Beginners - Free Traffic - Forum Marketing

You can find forums on virtually anything so find them for your niche and sign up. You can then actively post as a member. Answer questions, ask questions, start debates. In your signature file or resource box you can usually include links to your own promotions or website. Once you have become a regular poster you will build trust with the group many of whom will join your list.

List Building for Beginners - Free Traffic - Webmaster Partnerships

This technique is still under utilized and represents an excellent opportunity for building your list. If I wanted to build a list related to golf I would contact the webmasters at the top sites and ask them to work with me in return for a percentage of any profits made. Let’’s say I want to give away a free golf ebook the webmaster promotes it via his site and visitors sign up for my list and receive a one time offer. If they buy the proceeds are split 50:50 with the webmaster. Simply having a link on a top rated website can drive plenty of traffic your way.

List Building for Beginners - Free Traffic - Yahoo Groups

Yahoo has groups on pretty much any subject and many have 1000?’s of members. People exchange tips, advice and stories relevant to the group. One member posts a message and each member gets an email. Sounds to good to be true? Well you need to be very careful to avoid being accused of spamming as this will get you nowhere. Treat it the same as a forum. Once you have been an active member send out a note about a great ebook you are giving away and you will get many subscribers to you list provided it strikes the right chord with them..

List Building for Beginners - Free Traffic - Article Writing

Article writing remains one of the best list building for beginners techniques. I”ve left it till last because it’’s often considered boring. But if you”re reading this isn”t it a testament that the method works. It has a further benefit of generating backlinks to your website which places you higher in the search engine rankings provided you submit to multiple sources - there are services and software that enables you to do this. For more excellent information on this topic do a search for the “bum marketing method” which will show you how to generate an income whilst adding subscribers to your list.

List Building for Beginners - Free Traffic - MySpace

Okay, so I lied there is one more list building for beginners strategy you should consider - Myspace. You can actually include an opt in box on your homepage. Using myspace you can build a profile on your homepage that is relevant to your market, include an opt in, join myspace groups and forums, post links back to your home page, invite people interested in your market to be your friend and the chances of a sign up are high.

And there you have it 5 free list building for beginners techniques that you can immediately apply to grow your list. Of course there are many more but I would choose no more than 5 when first starting out. However, using these 5 techniques alone will be enough for anyone to build a 10,000 subscriber mailing list. You do have to do the work though!

About The Author

Mike is a full time internet marketer. Did you like this article? For more list building techniques visit the Internet Marketing Support Center. You can register for our newsletter and grab a copy of the excellent free report “Automatic Money Machines” that teaches a proven system for generating huge internet profits. It’’s simple, straightforward and it works.

Technorati Tags: website traffic, increase website traffic, list building

Creating and using viral videos on-line. Ten ways to maximize your effectiveness,17 tools and tips,step by step hints for finding viral videos for your own use,24 video resource sites. This is One Virus You NEED to Catch

What was the last business email that you forwarded? If that email kept getting forwarded and forwarded, it could have been the start of a viral marketing campaign for a business.

Viral marketing has become an unstoppable marketing force for businesses both off and online. It is a technique that uses people’s pre-existing networks to promote a company’s or a product’s brand awareness.

The term ‘viral’ comes from the same concept as a virus - it spreads! But, in this case the spreading is a good thing.

One of the most effective viral marketing techniques involves videos, or podcasts. YouTube has revolutionized the podcast phenomenon with over 200 million clicks per day happening on their site! You can leverage this technology as well as several other viral video marketing techniques to grow your business online.

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