200 traffic generating ideas

The more traffic you generate, the greater your income.

 

It's as simple as that. But unfortunately, generating the traffic can be a challenge. If you need help attracting more visitors to your site, try these techniques:

 

- Submit regular press releases to relevant media outlets.  Don't think it takes knowing the right people to get publicity for your business. By distributing regular press releases that are well written, targeted and interesting the media will be glad to publish them. Do you have an exciting new product? Do you have an event going on? Come up with something newsworthy and start writing! To get your press release into the right hands there are several online services. Check out the free wire service PRWeb.com or use the pay per contact service offered by imediafax.com.

 

- Do cross promotions or cross endorsements. Find another product or service that you really like and offer to endorse it in exchange for the creator endorsing your product. This is an effective technique because you both have a relationship with the people on your lists and they trust you - therefore the endorsement carries more weight than an ad would. If you don�t currently have a list you can ask for endorsements simply based on the fact that the list owner will earn a commission on all sales to their list. The key is to have them use your product first and then endorse it in their own words.

 

- Distribute a brandable ebook or special report. A brandable ebook or report is one that a website or list owner can change to include a reference to their website. This doesn�t mean that it looks like they are the publisher, it�s just a way for them to include information on where the ebook was downloaded from and (if applicable) to include their affiliate link for your products and services. By allowing others to freely distribute your ebook you�ll receive a steady stream of traffic. A great tool for easily creating brandable .pdf files is Viral PDF (http://www.viralpdf.com).

 

- Run weekly or monthly polls on your site. People love to voice their opinions, so encourage them to do so by running weekly or monthly polls. If you choose topics that are controversial or have a wide appeal, visitors will also be interested in seeing the results. This can be a great way to keep people coming back � especially if you combine it with a method of reminding them when a new poll has been posted and letting them browse through previous poll results.

 

- Start a niche focused forum. A popular forum is an excellent source of traffic. Although it can be a lot of work to get one started, if you choose a narrowly focused niche topic you�ll find that word of mouth advertising will help it take off. Two of the most popular scripts for adding a forum to your site are phpBB and Snitz Forums. Both are free!

 

- Give to charity. On a regular basis give to a deserving charity and distribute a press release about it. There�s no rule on how much you should give for it to be newsworthy but it�s a good idea to be as generous as you can. The more creative you are � and the more high profile the charity is � the more publicity you will get.

 

- Pull a stunt that gets people talking! The media loves stories about people doing crazy things. Whether you do it online or offline if you make a big splash people will start talking about you. Just make sure it�s somehow related to your website so that your URL gets exposure.

 

- Make it a habit to ask visitors how they found your site. Although you should be tracking all of your site traffic it�s also a good idea to add a field to your order form asking people how they found your site. You may be surprised by the answers! This is another way to get a detailed picture of the best places to get targeted traffic from.

 

- Approach eBay sellers about advertising your products and services when they ship an item. Every day, thousands of eBay sellers ship packages to the winners of their auctions. Use this fact to generate traffic for your site by approaching sellers offering items that your target audience are buying. Offer them a percentage of sales if they include a note in each shipment encouraging people to check out your website. The more that this note endorses your product, the better! Since the people receiving the notes will have to type in your URL make it easy for them while still tracking sales properly by making the URL they are sent to something such as �http://www.yourdomain.com/ebaysellerid� which is a redirect to the affiliate URL assigned to them by your affiliate software. To create redirects for your URLs check out the free online tool Profit Protector Affiliate Link Cloaker at http://www.measuring-up.com/html-tools/profit-protector.html.

 

- Interview famous people that your visitors want to know more about. People can�t seem to get enough of interviews. Use this to your advantage by conducting interviews and publishing them on your site as an article or audio clip. To get started create a list of people that you would like to interview. Email each of them a nice letter explaining what you would like to do, how much of their time is involved and what you will do with the resulting content. You�ll be surprised how many say yes! To conduct the interview you can email them the questions and allow them to type their responses or phone them and record it using a telephone recorder available at stores such as Radio Shack. Make sure visitors know you�ll be adding interviews on a regular basis and have them join your mailing list to receive announcements when a new one is ready.

 

- Avoid having to pay for multiple exposures in one newsletter by working out an arrangement with the list owner to combine your paid ad with other forms of promotion. For example, run a paid ad in one newsletter, in the next one have them run an article written by you and in the third an endorsement for an upcoming teleseminar you�re hosting. This repeated exposure will get you noticed and increase your traffic yet you only have to pay for one ad. Not all publishers will be willing to make this sort of arrangement but if you offer them a commission on all sales you may find a few who will take you up on your offer.

 

- Join networking sites to build your personal network. Networking sites are designed to make it easy for people to meet others in their industry and to advertise their products and service. Similar to offline networking events where lots of people come together for the sole purpose of meeting people, online networking sites work the same way. A couple of great ones to look in to are Ryze.com and Ecademy.com.

 

- Write articles that showcase your expertise. Articles are an excellent way to generate free, targeted traffic for your website. If you don�t enjoy writing don�t worry, there are alternatives that require less work but are still very effective. Instead you can do an email interview with someone your target market is interested in, create a �top 10� list, write a quick series of tips, review a product, book or website, pose and answer the questions you are most often asked about your industry or conduct a survey and write a synopsis of your findings. Whatever option you choose make sure your article is free of errors, informative and of interest to your ideal customer. A good trick for encouraging list owners to publish your article is to offer a generous affiliate program and allow them to change the URL in your resource box to their affiliate URL. That way they get great content and the potential to earn some money at the same time!

 

- If you sell physical products, include a coupon for related items in every package you ship. This is a great way to encourage existing customers to visit your site again. And as we all know repeat customers are the most profitable ones because they cost you practically nothing to find and they already trust you . There�s also a good chance that if they�re not interested they�ll give the coupon to a friend and encourage them to visit your site.

 

- Run a contest. People love the prospect of winning something � that�s why a contest for the right target audience can be a great traffic generator. Form a JV with several other webmasters and together offer the prizes. The key is to choose the prize(s) to attract people from your target audience. If you make the grand prize a new laptop you�ll get entries from everyone who would like to win a new laptop (which is basically every computer user in the world!). Get more targeted traffic by choosing something that your target audience is interested in but wouldn�t mean much to other people. To start promoting your contest do a search in Google for �Contest Directories� and you�ll find lots of places to list your contest for free.

 

- Make sure your listings in the search engines are something that people will want to click on. You could have the #1 ranking but if the title and description of your website don�t make people want to click, you�ll never see any traffic. Every search engine uses a different combination for your description that may include your page title, the first few lines of text from your site or the first section of text that includes the terms that are being searched for. Poodle Predictor (http://www.gritechnologies.com/tools/spider.go) will let you see how Google will display your webpage descriptions.

 

- Give a free teleseminar. These have become very popular lately and are inexpensive to do with the free bridge lines that are now available such as FreeConferenceCall.com. Get more bang for your buck by making it a Joint Venture and having other webmasters or list owners promote it in exchange for a portion of any backend sales. Or, make it a group teleseminar in which several people speak or are interviewed. The participants will most likely mention the event to their lists and encourage them to listen in. Be sure to record the call to be used later as a bonus product or to be given free as a lead generator.

 

- Exchange links with other websites. Exchanging links with other websites can bring a substantial amount of traffic if you choose your link partners wisely. Remember, you�re better to have 10 links from sites that are prominently displaying your URL and driving traffic to it � than 100 who just put your link on a page with hundreds of other links. In fact having links on your site to pages that include hundreds of links can hurt your search engine rankings, so be sure you�re only linking to sites that are relevant to yours and that you honestly endorse. If you don�t have time to spend looking for link partners consider hiring someone. For around $1.50 a link you can outsource this task.

 

- Stay in contact with potential customers. Ask visitors to subscribe to your ezine, request a special report or download a free ebook. This will give you a reason to ask for their first name and email address. You can then send them your newsletter or include them in your autoresponder series and follow up with them on a regular basis. When they start receiving emails from you they�ll visit your site again � and they�ll be a lot more likely to buy on the second visit!

 

- Start a blog. If you�re not familiar with blogs, you soon will be. They�re taking the online world by storm! Basically a blog is a series of regular posts to a webpage that readers can look over and even subscribe to anonymously if they�re interested. Their appeal is that they become a compilation of interesting and informative posts that people can read through at their leisure. For webmasters they�re easier than publishing a newsletter because posts can be done when you feel like it and can be as long or as short as you�d like. There are also no formatting issues or spam filters to worry about! John Reese, one of the net�s most successful marketers was recently quoted as saying �If you don't have a Blog for your niche market you're NUTS!" Get started with your own blog using the free blogger.com hosted solution or for a more robust solution check out Wordpress.com or Movable Type. For added exposure list your blog at GetBlogs.com, Blogarama.com, Blogwise.com and the BlogSearchEngine.com.

 

- Write articles and submit them to newsletter publishers and article directories. There are thousands of newsletters (also called ezines) published online. Writing good quality articles and submitting them to the publishers for inclusion in these ezines is still one of the best ways to get free, targeted traffic. Start by creating a list of ezine publishers who accept article submissions using a reliable directory such as the Directory of Ezines (http://www.directoryofezines.com). Once you have this list compiled it will be easy to mail them your new articles on a regular basis. Another great way to get your articles published is to submit them to article directories.

 

- Co-Author a report or ebook and jointly promote it. Let�s say for example that you run a website that sells jewellery and you find a website that sells purses and shoes. Get together with the other website owner and create a special report titled  �The Hottest Accessory Trends This Year!� In the report mention both of your websites. You can then jointly promote the report by distributing it on your websites, sending it to the media, submitting it to online directories, mentioning it in the forums, including it in your email signatures, mailing it to your customer lists� and any other way you can think of!

 

- Include an exit popover on important pages. In addition to selling your products and services, the goal of your website should be to capture contact information for as many visitors as possible. This allows you to follow up with them later and hopefully turn them in to a paying customer. When a customer clicks the Back button or closes their browser without buying or joining your mailing list you�ve lost them, and they may never return. Don�t let this happen! Include an exit popover on your site that only appears when someone is leaving.

 

- Put together an online survey that collects information of value to webmasters. Once you�ve completed the survey approach webmasters of sites targeted at your ideal customer and ask them to send some traffic to your survey in exchange for a copy of the results. If you choose a topic that is of great interest you should be able to generate some substantial traffic. Perhaps you can even work out a deal to run several surveys per year to keep an ongoing link on their site. Another way to use your survey is to collect responses by posting a link to it in the forums. Many forums will allow you to do this as long as it collects information and is not a sales pitch.
- Ask your visitors for referrals with a "Tell A Friend" feature. It really is true that �birds of a feather flock together�. In other words, most people know a lot of other people just like themselves. Use this to your advantage by making it easy for visitors to refer your site to their friends and colleagues with a �Tell A Friend� feature. This is a small script that allows others to enter the contact information of people they think would be interested in your site and have an email automatically sent to them with your URL. Since word of mouth is by far the best type of advertising, this technique can be very effective for bringing in targeted traffic. Add this functionality to your site using TellDog (http://www.telldog.com). Usually just asking for the referral is all it takes but if you want to get even more referrals offer people a bonus such as an ebook or special report if they use your form to refer their friends. Some websites even offer a free product or service to anyone who refers three or more friends. An easy to use script for handling this type of incentive program is Tell-A-Friend Pro (http://www.tafpro.com).

 

- Swap ads with other site/list owners. An alternative to swapping articles is to swap ads. This can include newsletter or website ads, or a combination of the two.

 

- Try Traffic Swarm. Some very high profile marketers have reported excellent results with this service. Basically how it works is everyone earns credits for visiting the sites of other members. Although some similar traffic exchange services have been overrated, Traffic Swarm has real potential. You can get started with the free version and if you see good results it�s affordable to upgrade to the pro version. Check it out at http://trafficswarm.com. Or see what other traffic exchanges there are at TrafficHoopla.com.

 

- Publish your website address everywhere that people may see it. The more people who see your website address, the more traffic your site will get. Get your address out there by printing it on t-shirts and hats and wearing them to large events, putting a decal on your car and including it on the return address labels you use on all outgoing snail mail. The possibilities are endless � get creative!

 

- Get together with 8 - 10 other webmasters and create an online scavenger hunt. This can be a great way to introduce people to related but non-competing websites. How it works is people visit each of the sites and look for a certain clue (be sure to make it something that will require them to look around a bit and read some of your sales copy). Once they�ve completed the scavenger hunt have them email their results to you. Randomly draw a winner and give them a grand prize that is contributed jointly by all of the webmasters. Be sure to maximize the exposure this gets your site by creating a buzz on the forums, submitting press releases and even writing a special report about your experience after it�s over.

 

- Submit your site for awards. There are several sites that offer awards and an easy way to get some exposure is to nominate your site. Of course in order to win you have to meet their criteria � so take the time to research what they�re looking for and if possible modify your site. Do a search in Google to find lots of awards sites.

 

- Make your site friendly to the search engine spiders. To get ranked well by the major search engines, your site has to be easily accessed by their robots. Some things to avoid when designing your site:

 

a. Frames � The search engines do not do well with frames. What often happens is that the search engines find content pages, but when displayed they are missing the navigation. So potential customers are unable to move around your site as intended.

 

b. Flash and Javascript Navigation Buttons - Although they look great, search engines can't follow flash or javascript menus. As a result the spiders don�t make it to the inside pages of your site. If you do use them, supplement them with regular HTML links somewhere else on the page. That way you know that hyperlinks exist that can get search engines spiders from the front page to every page in your site. A sitemap with links to all of your pages can help as well.

 

c. URLs with Question Marks - Some shopping carts and content management systems created dynamic URLs. You can spot them by seeing whether your URLs have questions marks in them. If they do, then you have dynamic URLs. Although not as big of a problem as they used to be, some search engines spiders still cannot handle more than 3 variables in dynamic URLs. If you find the search engines aren't indexing your interior pages this may be the reason.

 

d. Flash Intro Pages � Not only do visitors find them annoying, but they also make the first page of your site devoid of any useful content (at least to the search engine spiders).

 

- Find the people who have the top PPC listings for keywords you�re interested in and contact them to see if they would like to offset their PPC costs. Work out an arrangement to sell your product in an exit popover. The visitors are already leaving their site at that point so they may as well make an offer for your product or service and make a few extra bucks. If the prospect of earning a commission isn�t enough for the webmaster, you can also offer a per click amount. Either way be sure to use a popover to display your offer, rather than a popup, so that it doesn�t break the rules that many PPCs have in place about popups.

 

- Give a way your product or service to influential people. In every target market there is a group of people who are the �influencers�. They�re the ones who like to try new products and are very outspoken when they find something they like. The best way to reach these people is to start a word of mouth advertising campaign. Do this by giving away early versions of your product or service to the influencers in your industry and encourage them to spread the word to everyone they know.

 

- Maintain a calendar for your industry. This can include trade shows, online events, offline events or whatever else your target audience may want to keep track of. If people begin referring to it on a regular basis and linking to your site you�ll soon see a big increase in traffic.

 

- Don�t waste your time submitting to FFAs and safelists. Although some people have had success with these methods in the past, they�re effectiveness has dwindled. To get any response at all requires A LOT of work and even then you rarely attract paying customers. If you�re on a tight budget you�re better to focus on other free traffic generation techniques such as writing articles, optimizing for the search engines and finding Joint Venture partners. To determine whether a free advertising method is worthwhile consider the amount you�re making for every hour you put in. For example if it takes you 8 hours per week to manage your safelist submissions and that earns you $50 per week in extra sales you�re only making $6.25 an hour. Your time is worth a lot more than that!

 

- Create search engine friendly pages that don�t interfere with your main sales page. The problem with optimizing pages for the search engines is that often marketers undo the elements that have made their site convert visitors into buyers. You can get loads of traffic but if the people aren�t buying you won�t be making any more money. Avoid this problem by creating multiple pages that are specifically designed to rank well in the search engines and that funnel traffic back to the page that is set up to sell. This can be done by simply including enough information on the page to get their attention and then putting a link at the bottom to your main site where they can get more information. The search engines will rank your pages well because they use specific keywords and include useful content and you can still have a site that converts well.

 

- Carefully track all of your traffic. To get a complete picture of your website traffic it�s a good idea to use both unique tracking URLs and a website statistics package. Unique tracking URLs will give you exact clickthroughs for every URL you publish. For example if you write an article and include your URL in the resource box you can create a unique tracking URL and know exactly how many people clicked through to your site. Use a different tracking code for every marketing initiative. A great option for creating tracking URLs is ezTrackZ.com. For the big picture you�ll need a website statistics package. This will tell you more general information about the number of visitors, how long they stayed on the site, what pages they viewed and the page they exited the site from. A great option for website statistics is Clickalyzer.com. Not only does it do everything mentioned here but it also tells you how far down each page the visitor read. Invaluable information when working on your site�s conversion rate!

 

- Buy expired domains that already have traffic going to them. It happens more than you might think that someone creates a website and drives traffic to it through search engines and link exchanges only to let it expire. Usually it�s because they never found a way to make money from that traffic. Well their loss can be your gain! If you purchase one of these domains and point it to your site you will get that lost traffic. Some of these domains are even listed in Yahoo so it�s a great way to get a free Yahoo listing. Search in Google or Yahoo for �expired domain services� to learn more.

 

- Include a useful script on your site. There are many programs available which can be used as traffic generators by giving visitors a reason to return to your site over and over again. Tools such as classified ad sites, free-for-all link pages, message boards, chat rooms, ecard sites, and other can all contribute to your traffic building plan. The good news is that most of these programs can be added to your website for little or no cost. For a directory of CGI scripts visit http://cgi.resourceindex.com and for PHP scripts visit http://php.resourceindex.com. Most scripts are not difficult to install but if you�re uncomfortable with making changes to your website, there are places that remotely host scripts. For a list check out http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Remotely_Hosted/. That means that they install everything on their servers and you simply place a link to the service on your site to allow your visitors to use it.

 

- Remind visitors to bookmark your site. Increase the chances that visitors will return by reminding them to bookmark your site. If you give them a good reason to visit again  � such as to read new articles, participate in the forum, read your blog or even play your new advergames � they will want to create a bookmark so they don�t forget to come back. Increase the chances of a repeat visit even more by making a custom �favicon�. This is the graphic that is displayed beside the name of the site in the bookmarks menu. If you choose something that grabs their attention they�ll see it every time they browse through their bookmarks list. Create a favicon using any image with the free Favicon Generator Tool (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/) or learn more with the tutorial at http://www.axialis.com/tutorials/tutorial-iw004.html.

 

- Hold free seminars. Not everyone is comfortable with speaking in front of large groups of people � but if you are it can be an excellent way to get the word out about your site. Get started by offering to do a talk at local meetings for organizations such as the Chamber of Commerce or industry Associations. Or rent a hotel boardroom and advertise your free seminar locally to fill the seats. At the end of your talk offer to send a free report to anyone who gives you their business card. Not only can you add all of these people to your list but they�ll also be likely to mention the seminar (and in turn your site) to their friends, colleagues and customers.

 

- Get better quality visitors by including negative qualifiers in your ads. There are a lot of people who are �freebie seekers� and will never be paying customers. Avoid wasting money on these people by including what are known as �negative qualifiers� in your PPC ads. The most common one is including the price of the product or service you�re selling (or a range of prices if you offer multiple products or services). This limits the people who click to only those who are willing to pay.

 

- Offer a book for sale at Amazon.com. The thought of this may sound ridiculous, but it�s not as difficult as you think! You can have books printed on demand at cafepress.com, Lulu.com or you can even print and bind them yourself at your local copy shop. To generate traffic with this idea make the title of your book a URL (including .com at the end). When people see the title they�ll be interested in learning more and visit your site. This doesn�t have to be your main site, it can be a different URL that you use to capture traffic and then feed it to your main site. Just make sure you give people a good reason to continue on to your main site!

 

- Co-create an advergame with several other websites. By co-creating an advergame you can offset the initial cost of developing it as well as have multiple channels for promoting it. If there are 5 other sites involved that will be 5 times the amount of traffic it generates!

 

- Swap articles with other site/list owners. One of the best ways to get traffic is to write informative articles and allow others to publish them in their newsletters and on their sites. Take this one step further and combine it with a joint venture. After all, most list owners also publish articles and want exposure just like you. Offer to promote their articles in exchange for them doing the same.

 

- Make your ezine ads even more powerful using a viral lead generator. Instead of advertising something for sale in your ads, use them to give away an ebook, special report or free software application as a way of generating leads.  If it�s something that prospects can pass around to their friends you�ll create a viral effect that will continue to produce traffic long after the ad is forgotten!

 

- When targeting publications for your articles, or for paid advertisements, look for ones that maintain online archives. Doing so will mean you�ll get continued exposure when people read through the past issues. And it�s another link to your site, which the search engines love!

 

- Create an advergame specific to your site. Advergames are small online games designed to drive traffic to your site based on their entertainment value. As their name suggests their purpose is to advertise your website, product or service in a fun way. If you design one that becomes popular it can create a substantial amount of traffic to your site. Make the most of this by requiring people to give their name and email address before they can play so that you can follow up with them later. The best part is if your game is fun and unique people will tell everyone they know. What a great viral technique!

 

- Put together a package. Customers like to purchase packages, especially if they�re getting a deal. Use this your advantage by putting together a joint venture that provides customers with a package consisting of multiple products and services. For example you could have a �complete ebook creation package� which includes partners that offer information on writing an ebook, a website template and an ebook cover designed by a professional. Have all of the partners promote the main sales page, which includes links to all of the participating sites. This will provide a revenue stream as well traffic to your site. If you�re the one organizing the joint venture you can get added exposure by hosting the pages at your domain. A lot of people will check out your main site once they arrive at the package page out of curiosity.

 

- Get the most out of paid ezine ads by using them to gather email leads � rather than sell your products and services. If you offer something for free in exchange for a prospects name and email address, you�ll be able to follow up with that person indefinitely. Rather than seeing your ad only once they�ll see it repeatedly. To make this strategy work give something away that is of value and use your follow up emails to build a relationship with these prospective customers - not give them a hard sell. Once they trust you and see you as an authority in your industry, the sales will come.

 

- When running an ad make sure you run it more than once. No ad has ever been so spectacular that it brought in a flood of visitors the first time it ran. With all forms of advertising you need REPETITION to be successful. People see your ad the first time and barely notice it, the second time they may actually read it, by the third time they think it looks familiar and if you�re lucky by the fourth time they�re considering buying. In fact studies show that it takes 7 - 9 views of your ad before a customer makes a purchase. If you�re only going to run an ad once don�t bother � you�ll be wasting your money. Instead budget to advertise to a smaller number of people in a different way for a minimum of 3 times.

 

- Ask visitors to fill out an online survey or questionnaire. The better you understand your target customers, the better you�ll be able to predict their actions and profit from them. Get a better idea of why people visit your site by asking them! A short survey or questionnaire can be quick to create and will give you invaluable insight into why people are visiting your site, what they like about it and what can be improved. SurveyMonkey.com offers a great free option or get more features by upgrading to a pro account for a reasonable monthly fee.

 

- Focus your pages on no more than 3 keyword phrases. SEO experts recommend that you have no more than 3 keyword phrases for each page of your site. Why? Because keeping a tight focus will get you better ranked in the search engines, which will bring more targeted traffic. Check out what your competitors are doing and you�ll probably find that they are still building general pages that they�re trying to optimize for 10 or more phrases. By narrowing the focus of each of your pages you�ll have an advantage over other sites in your industry.

 

- Know where your time is best spent. There is no such thing as �free� traffic generation methods. Nothing is free. Although you may not have to pay with money, you will pay with your time. If the time you put in produces results then great. If not, spend your time on something else instead. To determine what traffic generation techniques had the best return on your time keep a spreadsheet that logs all of your hours, the traffic generated and the resulting sales. This will let you determine how much money you made per hour of work and is a good benchmark when deciding where to spend your time.

 

- Write testimonials for products that you like. If you do a good job your testimonial will most likely be published on the product sales page along with your website address. That could mean a steady stream of visitors to your site for every testimonial you get published.

 

- Get traffic using your competitors URL. Did you know that many people when searching for a specific URL actually type it into a search engine? For example they would type in Google �ebay.com� instead of using the address bar. Use this to your advantage by creating a comparison table between you and your competitors. This allows you to legitimately use their name on your site. You can then bid in the PPCs on their domain. This won�t be applicable to all sites but it�s great if there are large companies in your industry that people know by name.

 

- Also in your logs, find out the top keywords. These are what people typed in to reach your site so they�re the words potential customers use to describe your product or service. Use this information to optimize your pages for the search engines and purchase PPC ads. This will ensure that your site is attracting more targeted traffic.

 

- Load your site with a variety of content and update it regularly. Content is king on the Internet. For the most part people aren�t surfing around looking to buy products; they�re looking for information. Give them what they want and your site will quickly become a reference for your visitors. Not only will this keep them coming back but it will also have linking to your site so others can read your content. The ideal is to create your own content and make it available exclusively on your site. If that isn�t possible choose the best content from others to include. A great way to keep your content fresh is to include information that is updated often such as news (which you can syndicate from elsewhere or write yourself), a blog or a forum.

 

- Get your site listed in directories. Search in Google for keywords related to your site and you�ll likely find several directories, small search engines and other websites where you can list your site. Let�s say you�re looking for links from sites related to pets. Try searching for "add url pets�, "add site pets", "pets directory" and other variations. There are hundreds of possibilities so spend some time on this to create a comprehensive list. Some good directories to start with are DMOZ.org, JoeAnt.com, GoGuides.com, Gimpsy.com, Business.com and About.com.

 

- Keep your HTML code clean. To get a good search engine ranking you need the robots that spider your site to quickly and easily get to your content. Help them do this by keeping your HTML code clean and removing any unnecessary information. Get started by:

 

a. Placing all JavaScript & Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in a separate file
b. Eliminating any extra and unnecessary HTML tags
c. Ensuring your HTML is valid and up to standards

 

If these terms are foreign to you it would be worthwhile to hire a professional website designer to take a look at your site.

 

- Review books for the online bookstores. Choose books that would be of interest to your target market (and that you�ve read of course!) and write reviews for the major online bookstores including Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and Chapters.Indigo.ca. If you include your domain name or email address as the Reviewer Name it will be added along with your comments. If your domain doesn�t give people an idea of what they�ll find at your site considering including a descriptive word before your name and the URL after. For example �Coach Jennifer (www.mysmallbizcoach.com)�.

 

- Use Google Web Alerts and Google News Alerts. The Google Web Alerts system allows you to monitor Google for any mention of specific words or URLs. Once a day you receive an email that summarizes all web pages that recently added the information you�re monitoring. Similarly Google News Alerts monitors the media. Use these in your business to monitor both your own site and your competitors�.  It will show you when an affiliate adds a URL to their site, where articles are being published and even forum posts. This is a great way to learn more about where your competitors are getting their traffic from. Signup for Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts

 

- NEVER buy visitors. Although services that offer website visitors for a small fee are tempting because of the impressive numbers they promise, the traffic they provide is untargeted and usually results in no sales. How these services work is they form a partnership with a site that gets a lot of traffic and in exchange for a little bit of money the site agrees to display an exit popup showing the advertisers sites. The problem is that a lot of these sites are on a general topic - such as joke sites � and the visitors aren�t looking to buy. All of a sudden there�s a window on the screen with your website in it. You got a hit to your site, but what are the odds that the visitor will actually look around? Slim to none. Don�t waste your money on these services � instead invest in some of the other forms of paid advertising that will be discussed in this section.
  
- Choose the keywords you optimize your site for carefully. If there is a lot of competition for the keyword you�ve chosen then you�ll never achieve a good ranking � on the other hand if it�s a keyword no one searches for there�s no point even trying to get a good ranking for it. Investigate possible keywords by making a list of all words that you can think of which apply to your site. Also check out your competitors� sites for ideas as well as forums to see what words people use when discussing your industry. Then use WordTracker.com, GoodKeywords.com or KeywordDiscovery.com to find the number of competitors for each keyword and alternatives.

 

- Encourage visitors to save a desktop icon that points to your site. Often visitors never return to a site simply because they forget about it. Make it quick and easy to find your site again by giving people a way to add a link to their desktop.  The best tool for doing this is the See you Again Shortcut (http://www.seeyouagainshortcut.com).

 

- Include a powerful signature on all outgoing email. Every time you send a piece of mail you have the potential to get a visitor to your site. Simply create a �signature� that is automatically added to every outgoing message. Use the signature to briefly explain what you do, give your USP or slogan and add a hyperlink to your site. Once it�s set up you don�t have to think about it again!

 

- Ask for a website review on the forums where your target customers spend time. Most moderators have no problem with this as long as you don�t include a big sales pitch along with your request. Simply state the nature of your site and ask politely for comments and feedback from others. Not only will you get more traffic, you�ll also get lots of great advice on how to improve your site.

 

- Work closely with your JV partners and affiliates to make sure they�re doing everything they can to promote your site. This may include providing exclusive articles, reports they can rebrand with their affiliate URL, proven sales copy, banners and any other materials that you KNOW work. How do you know what promotion materials will work? Test, test, test!  Also get feedback from each partner/affiliate about what has historically worked well with their customers and then provide those materials. The more personal attention you can give each affiliate the more likely they�ll be to heavily promote your site and send you lots of traffic!

 

- Use your website logs to identify what sites referred the most visitors. The top referrers usually aren�t a surprise, but watch for unexpected referrers such as sites that mentioned your product or a newsletter that ran one of your articles. If they�ve sent you a lot of traffic contact them about other ways you can reach their customers because they�re obviously interested in what you offer.

 

- Start an ad co-op. An ad co-op involves several websites or list owners getting together and jointly selling advertising space. When someone purchases you all agree to run their ad either in your newsletter or on your site. You will earn a small revenue stream, but more importantly you�ll get traffic because you can run your own ads across the co-op network on a regular basis.

 

- Paid ads in an ezine are a great way to get traffic � but be sure to choose wisely. Don�t make your choices based solely on subscription numbers. Recently a lot list owners with 50,000+ subscribers have asked everyone to resubscribe because of the new spam legislation. Although their lists were cut by 50% or more, they didn�t see a decline in conversion rates. In other words more than half of their list wasn�t even reading. Look for ezines that have a similar theme to yours and that offer good quality content rather than a series of ads. Expect to pay $50 - $100 for a typical classified ad and up to $300 for a top sponsor or solo ad. This may seem like a lot but it can be well worth it!

 

- Create (or have someone create for you) a free software application.  Think of a simple tool that you wish you had � or that people in your target market would like to have. If you�re able to do programming you can create this application yourself. If not, hire a programmer and have them create the tool. Once complete you�ll have a great lead generator. Allow list owners to offer it free to their subscribers, give it away on your site, use it in Joint Ventures, post it on the forums or get it listed in the search engines. If you�re looking for a reasonably priced programmer it�s free to post jobs at Scriptlance.com, Elance.com or RentACoder.com and you�re under not obligation to go ahead with the project. So if you have an idea and you�re unsure whether you can afford to develop, post it and see what bids you get!

 

- Syndicate your content. Content syndication is a simple way for you to distribute your articles to multiple sites. All you have to do is give other webmasters a small piece of code that they insert into the appropriate webpage and every time you publish a new article it will automatically be displayed on their site. Of course in order for people to want to publish your articles you have to make sure they are always well written, informative and on topic. For more information on how to set up syndication read the article �How To Get You Web Site Content Syndicated� at http://www.high-search-engine-ranking.com/How_To_Get_Your_Web_Site_Content_Syndicated.htm or get the software Master Syndicator V4 (http://willmaster.com/master/syndicator/index.shtml).

 

- Set up an eBay account and make your username your URL. Although eBay doesn�t allow URLs as usernames, you can get around this rule by include a �*� at either end. For example �*www.mysmallbizcoach.com*� (without the quotes). You can then create an �About Me� page that includes a link to your site and information on the products and services you sell. Auction off copies of your own products or other items related to your industry and people will begin noticing you and visiting your site.

 

- Track your conversion rate for all sources of traffic. The number that describes the percentage of visitors who make a purchase is your conversion rate. Websites typically have a conversion rate between 1% and 3% - meaning that 1 to 3 out of every 100 visitors becomes a paying customer. Increase this number by tracking your traffic vs. sales for all of your different traffic sources. In other words don�t just determine your overall website conversion rate, take the time to learn what sources of traffic are most likely to buy. This will make it a lot easier to determine where to spend your time and money in the future! For conversion rate tracking check out ezTrackZ.com.

 

- Offer a multi-tier affiliate program. Offering an affiliate program is an excellent way to generate targeted traffic. If you get good quality affiliates they�ll spread the word about your products and services farther and faster then you could ever do on your own. Make your affiliate program even more effective by offering two or three tiers of compensation. This will motivate your affiliates to make sales while at the same time recruiting new affiliates under them. A good affiliate program can provide an exponential growth in traffic!

 

- Avoid email problems and send messages directly to the desktops of people who have requested information from you. There is a new technology that is making waves in the Internet Marketing community. It allows you to avoid cluttered email inboxes and get your message to the people who want it. How it works is both you and your readers download a small application. They then indicate that they are interested in receiving information from you so that when you publish a new announcement or issue of your newsletter it is delivered (through the application) directly to their computer. No spam filters, no lost email, no headaches. Use this technique to generate traffic by giving your readers a compelling reason to visit your site in every message. One way to do this is to publish the first paragraph of a few different articles and have them visit your site to read the rest.

 

- A variation on the �Tell a Friend� feature is to include a way for visitors to refer specific pages to a friend. Go beyond just allowing people to refer your main URL and make it easy to recommend specific page within your site. This could include articles, product comparison charts, special reports or even your newsletter signup page. TellDog (http://www.telldog.com) has the capability of doing this or check out CJ Send Page V1.0 from CJ Website Design (http://www.cj-design.com).

 

- Run offline co-op ads with other site owners. Many webmasters are achieving considerable amounts of website traffic with offline co-op ads. One way to do this is to purchase a postcard in a card deck that goes out to 100,000 people for between $1500 and $2000. Then, you could sell 10 or so ads on it for $149 or $199 and make back the money that you paid out for the ad. Then, your web site ad gets to ride along for FREE. Do a search in Google or Yahoo for �postcard decks� to find companies offering this type of advertising.

 

- Don�t overlook banner ads. Although they�ve gotten a bad name lately, web traffic guru John Reese says banner ads are still an excellent source of cheap, targeted traffic. As with all paid advertising though be sure to research exactly what your money is buying. If your banner will be displayed on a site that is irrelevant to what you offer you won�t generate much interest. Instead choose well-targeted sites that have a reasonable amount of traffic and a �typical visitor� profile that matches your ideal customer.

 

- Join an Association. Almost every industry has at least one association. Although your customers may not be members, other businesses in your industry most likely are. By networking with these people you will find new opportunities for referrals, Joint Ventures and most likely you�ll even learn a few things that will help you grow your business. For a comprehensive list of associations visit the Internet Public Library (http://www.ipl.org/div/aon/).

 

- Never use automated services to submit your site to the search engines. There are less than 20 major search engines � all the rest don�t matter. This makes the services that advertise, �pay to be submitted to 30,000 search engines� a big waste of money. Instead take the time to learn how each search engine prefers to receive listings and then do the work yourself. To learn more about the search engines check out the Bruce Clay Search Engine Relationship Chart (http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm).

 

- Give visitors free promotional merchandise. It can be hats, bumper stickers, mugs, t-shirts, pens, mousepads, notepads or anything else you can think of that you can print your website address on. Not only will you get contact information from everyone interested which you can use later for marketing purposes � but you�ll also have other people promoting your URL for you.

 

- If you sell physical products, consider froogle. This service by Google was created to help consumers find physical products. It�s free for merchants to list their items so you have nothing to lose! For more information visit the Froogle Home Page at http://froogle.google.com/.

 

- Use Google Image Ads to get your site noticed. Google now allows advertisers to display graphical banner ads in different sizes across their AdSense network. Learn more on the Adwords Site (https://adwords.google.com).

 

- Make custom Error pages. If potential customers are looking for a page on your site that has moved, or that they�ve mistyped the URL for, they�ll be frustrated and quickly leave if they encounter an Error page. Avoid this by creating custom Error pages that explain that the URL is invalid and gives them links to explore other areas of your site. For instructions on creating a custom error page read the article �Creating Custom Error Pages� at http://www.outfront.net/tutorials_02/adv_tech/customerrors1.htm.

 

- Create a topic specific dictionary or glossary. This is the type of content that people refer to on a regular basis and that other webmasters are likely to link to as a reference. Get even more leverage from this idea by allowing other sites in your industry to syndicate your dictionary or glossary. This can also be a great way to learn the specific words people are interested in learning more about so that you can better optimize your site and create specific content that will interest them. Get ideas by browsing other dictionaries at http://directory.google.com/Top/Reference/Dictionaries/.

 

- Find out where your competitors� traffic comes from. Google has a handy feature that quickly shows which sites are linked together. To use it go to Google and type in �link:www.domainname.com� (without the quotes). Using this feature you can find out who is linking to your competitors and approach them about a link exchange, joint venture or publishing one of your articles. Another great resource for finding out who has linked to a specific website, check out the Marketleap Link Popularity Check at http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/.

 

- Try free newsletter classified ads. There are lots of newsletter publishers who give free classified ads to new subscribers. Although these don�t typically bring a huge response, they can generate some traffic if you offer something for free. They�re also a great way to test new ads to see which ones get the best response. Once you�ve found a winner use it in a PPC campaign, make it your new email signature, run it as a top sponsor newsletter ad or use it as your forum signature.

 

- Offer customers a customized toolbar. You�ve most likely seen the toolbars offered by Google, Yahoo and other large sites that stay at the top of your browser window for quick reference. The intention of these toolbars is to keep their brand in front of their customers so they remember them when they need to use their services. Now you can have the same effect by offering your customers a toolbar that is customized for your site. Use it to give people a reference list of your sites and related ones, offer them a multi-part course and even to distribute your newsletter. You could easily add your newsletter to your own customized toolbar along with other useful information. Remember, your toolbar has to provide value to potential customers or they won�t download it.

 

- Submit coupon codes to the many coupon sites. Getting your site listed on the deal finding websites will increase your traffic and allow you to see what your customers really want. For example if you put up 2 coupons - one for 10% off and the other for free shipping � you�ll be able to tell by the response whether your customers prefer a lower price or free shipping. Experiment with the coupons you offer to find the ones that bring you the most traffic (and that convert the most number of those visitors to buyers!)

 

- Pay super affiliates to promote your site. Hand pick webmasters with popular sites or list owners with large, responsive lists and offer them $100 just for signing up for your affiliate program and promoting your link. With this approach you�ll definitely get their attention and ensure that you sign up REAL affiliates who will actively promote your products and services. Even just 3 or 4 of these affiliates can cause a substantial increase in your site�s traffic (and your sales!).

 

- Track offline marketing initiatives such as direct mail campaigns with different website addresses. Be sure to continue rigorous tracking even with your offline marketing campaigns. This can be easily achieved by using different URLs for different initiatives. For example if you send a postcard about your newest product to a group of customers include the URL as �http://www.yourdomain.com/newproduct.html� and track the number of visitors to that page. For other offline advertising use a different web page. Of course some people will go directly to your main site but at least this is better than nothing!

 

- Generate traffic quickly by offering high commissions to partners. A great way to get the attention of people with large lists and busy sites is to offer them a substantial commission (75%+). You can bet this type of offer will be hard for them to turn down! Although you won�t make much on the initial sale, you�ll generate a lot of traffic and build up a list that you can sell to again and again.

 

- Create a membership site and give visitors VIP access in exchange for their contact information. Of course to make this work you have to provide good content inside the members area. If you do then people will return to your site on a regular basis to check out your member�s area. A great free software application for creating a membership site is Account Manager Lite (http://www.mycgiscripts.com/account-manager.html). For more advanced sites they also offer a PRO version at a reasonable price.

 

- Learn what viral marketing techniques others are using and apply their ideas to your business.  Some of the most successful advertising campaigns are the ones that were proven successful in one industry and then applied to another. A few great sources of viral techniques that are working are ViralBank.com, ViralMeister.com and the Lycos Viral Chart.

 

- Use your �thank you pages�. Often the �thank you page� that is displayed after someone makes a purchase or signs up for a newsletter is wasted real estate. Put these pages to work by using them to promote other products and services. After all, if people have already agreed to do one thing that you wanted them to, they�re likely to do something else. A great idea is to form JVs with other webmasters so that you can promote their products and in return they�ll promote yours. You don�t have to have hundreds of sales a day to make this work. Simply contact website owners that are a similar size to you and let them know how many sales per week you receive. Then ask if they�d be willing to exchange �thank you page ads� that include affiliate links so you both have the potential to make money on all referrals. You�ll be surprised how many say yes. Another good use of �thank you pages� is to promote an affiliate program or another related site that you run. Just don�t let this great opportunity to generate more traffic get away!

 

- Submit your free ebook or special report to directories. There are lots of sites dedicated to compiling lists of free information products. Submit your ebooks and special reports for added exposure and traffic. The key is to make sure that what you offer is high quality so that people will be interested in learning about your products and services once they�ve read the free information. If you throw something together in an hour it will show and you�ll lose credibility with potential customers.

 

- Don�t forget to consider the smaller PPC Search Engines. For most keywords you�ll pay less than Google Adwords or Overture and many give you a credit in your account when you sign up. For a list of 600+ search engines visit PayPerClickSearchEngines.com.

 

- Do a direct mail campaign using postcards. Postcards have become a favorite advertising method of online marketers because they�re easy to design, inexpensive and they almost always get read. The added bonus is that not only does the recipient read it but often so do several other people along the way. To get started with a postcard campaign use your current customer list and send them a special offer. Another option is to find someone with a list and ask if you can pay them per postcard to send your offer. Or, find a reputable list company and purchase a list of potential customers. Remember though, like all advertising you can�t send one card and expect a flood of orders. Create a campaign that includes a minimum of 3 cards to get the maximum benefit.

 

- Participate in Newsgroups, Forums, and Mailing Lists. There are hundreds of forums online and you can find one for almost any topic imaginable. Most allow you to include a signature line that will be attached to every message. This is a chance for you to advertise your site. Visiting these forums to post thoughtful questions and offer your expertise will mean your signature is viewed by others and will bring you free, targeted traffic. Of course how much traffic you get depends on how often you post and whether your signature makes people want to visit your site. A good approach is to use an ad you�ve had success with elsewhere as your signature.

 

Hopefully these tips have given you some ideas that you can implement in your own business. Remember, generating traffic is more art than science. It usually requires some trial and error before you find what works best for your site. But if you stick with it, you'll be rewarded with a steady stream of visitors!