For most people, building a web site is easy. Even a 10 year old can add all the bells and whistles. But for some reason, getting people to visit your site often proves to be a little more difficult. In fact, it’s not at all unusual for a web site owner to never recieve a single visitor and soon give up any plans to have a successful site.
So how can you boost your web site’s traffic? According to Internet Marketing Consultant Gaston Collins at http://www.GastonCollins.com - there are a few quick ways to get traffic for a very minimal cost, but one of the first things you should do is setup a web site stats system that will allow you to track where your visitors come from. “It’s important to know what pages your visitors will be coming from to visit your site. Otherwise you won’t know what wotks and what doesn’t,” Gaston says.
So with that out of the way for now, let’s look at some ways to get traffic. First of all, you can use the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) method. Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing are the most popular PPC search engines.
Second, you can get free traffic by marketing your site through organic search engines. The major players are Google, Yahoo, and MSN - in that order.
The third way to get traffic to your site is through various methods of posting links to your site around the internet. The top methods of choice for this is contributing useful information to message boards and writing articles.
Finally we’ll discuss an often over-looked method of traffic generation, which is Ebay. You can look all day long, but you may not find a larger, more laser-targeted source of traffic at such a low price.
This article is continued at http://www.GonzoWebHosting.com/articles/web-site-traffic.htm
Gaston Collins has consulted many small businesses and website owners on developing a successful marketing plan. Visit his site at www.GastonCollins.com
Max Cornell is a web hosting expert and has been a regular contributor to the Internet since 2001. Learn more about Web Hosting and other webmaster tools at www.GonzoWebHosting.com
As you probably know, building your link popularity is the
best way to get good search engine placement and free
traffic for life for your websites.
A lot of people have trouble with this, so I decided to make
a small list with the methods I use to get tons of quality
one way links to my sites.
1. The first and best way to do this is to write articles
related to your site. Now this technique may not be new to
many of you out there but I can assure you that a lot of
people don’t know how to take advantage of this great
opportunity. Your articles should be somewhere between 300 -
500 words with your resource box attached at the end. This
should contain a small 3rd person description of yourself,
something like: “John Doe is a well respected senior writer
and owner of the site http://…..“
After you have your article written all you need to do is go
to http://www.google.com and do a search for “article
directory”. At the time of this writing there are
374.000.000 results for this search. You should send your
articles to as many article directories as possible. The
more you send the more traffic you get. The more traffic you
make, the more sales you have. The more sales you have, the
more money you make. Get the picture?
Consider sending your articles to the first 2 pages of
results on your first day, then do the next 2 pages the
following day, and so on.
2. After you start writing articles, you should start a blog
about your business and make regular posts to it. You can
start one here: http://www.wordpress.com
After each post go to http://www.pingomatic.com or
http://www.pingoat.com and ping your blog so that it will be
picked up by the search engines.
If you make constant posts to it, then the search engine
spiders will know to regularly come back to your site.
After you have your blog, you can go to
http://www.google.com and do a search for “blog directory”.
At the time of this writing there are 224.000.000 results
for this search so this should keep you busy for a while.
Use the same strategy as for the articles and send your blog
to the first 2 pages the first day, then the next 2 pages and
so on…You should stop only after you send your blog to at
least 100 directories. It may take some time, but the
traffic will be worth it.
3. Another good way to get one way links to your sites is to
post comments on other people’s blogs. Again, use Google to
do a search for ” (your business) blog “. Then do comments
on the high PR blogs, as you can attach a link back to your
site under your comment.
4. Give testimonials to programs you have bought or liked
and include an active link back to your site. Don’t just
write a 2-3 line testimonial because it probably won’t get
picked for the home page. Instead, try writing an
interesting useful one, not too long, but not too short
either and you’ll have a bigger shot.
5. Try making posts on forums regularly. The best way to get
noticed out there is to help others, as they will appreciate
and trust you and your recommendations. You can have a sig
file with your link back to your site after every post you
make. The more posts, the more exposure for you and your
business.
So these are the top ways of getting free one way links back
to your sites. Use this info wisely and your business will
flourish.
To find the best internet marketing ideas and
opportunities so you can work at home visit:
Learn Internet Marketing Blog Home Page
Writing for your business is unavoidable. Unless you have a staff to do it for you, you’ll have to answer customer email, and write sales letters, as well as promotional materials.
If you sell affiliate programs, you can avoid a lot of the customer service tasks involved, but in order to be successful with affiliate programs, you need to differentiate yourself from the other affiliates in a program. This means writing articles, product reviews, press releases, and other forms of communication that provide value to your potential customers.
There are ways to market though, and they’re all free, that can cut the amount of writing that you do, build your credibility, help you find ideas for products, and help your potential customers find what they’re looking for.
Below are four:
1. Networking
Networking is a way to connect with business associates, and sometimes, your potential customers. This is normally done through sites that allow you to do searches for those you want to meet.
Normally networking sites allow you to exchange messages, blog, exchange messages on forums or groups, and start conversations with others who are interested in your area of expertise.
This is the easiest way for you to find joint venture partners that can help you sell your products and services.
Examples of networks are:
http://www.myspace.com
http://www.ecademy.com
http://www.ryze.com
2. Forums
Forums are very similar to network sites. However, unlike networking sites, where you’re looking for business partners, or to sell business to business, with forums, you’re looking directly for your market. You can find out what others are shopping for by reading about what they’re actually talking about.
Studying the forums is what finally made me decide to create a blog on how to market on the internet for free. I kept seeing the same question over and over: “I’ve just built a website, but I don’t have any money. How do I market it?”
Forums will allow you to answer the questions of others and build your credibility in your aread of expertise. You can also find product ideas from what others are discussing.
To promote yourself, you can answer questions. If you’re passionate about your topic, and you consider yourself an expert, you should be able to easily answer questions. Give the potential customer enough information to be helpful, but give him/her a reason to visit your site.
If you don’t know what to say, ask questions. This will allow you to build links and learn your area of expertise better. It will also help you build relationships.
To find forums on your topic, do a search in a search engine and combine your topic with the word forums.
3. Free Classifieds
Although classified advertising isn’t as popular as it used to be, and most don’t use these sites, classified advertising can still be effective.
What you want to look for in free classified advertising are sites that rank high and get a lot of traffic.
Sites like Yahoo, MSN, and Google have groups where you can exchange messages and promote your products and services.
Unlike a lot of free classified ad sites, the messages on these groups do get read.
If you want to easily learn how to write good classifieds, study the small ads in magazines and newspapers. The ads you see repeated are making money. If they weren’t, the ad writer wouldn’t continue to run the same ads over and over.
4. Search Engine Optimization
If you market online, search engine optimization is a task you can’t afford to ignore. It’s amazing the number of sites on the internet that aren’t even in the search engines.
You’ll have a tough time being found online if you don’t optimize and then submit your site.
The easiest way to do this is to get a tool that will tell you how to optimize your site. Software like Web CEO, http://www.webceo.com, will help take you through the process of optimizing your site by helping you find keywords, as well as analyze your site to tell you how you can improve your search engine optimization to raise your rankings.
With search engine optimization, you optimize each page for a specific set of keywords. What’s important here is to know what keywords you want to be found for, who your competition is, as well as how much competition you have. Optimize your site and then make sure that you submit it to the search engines.
Although you may not like to write, and most people don’t, you can cut your writing tasks down by choosing marketing methods that don’t require you to do a lot of writing. Write in a conversational tone and help your site visitors and potential customers find the solutions to their problems. This will increase your sales and website conversions.
Jinger Jarrett is the “Internet Marketing for Free” lady. She will show you how to market your business on the internet and do it for free. You’ll get thousands of dollars in free internet marketing tools when you visit her blog at Internet Marketing for Free.
Online marketing is an area where you can find a LOT of hype. Make a quick search at Google for ‘buy hits’, ‘ad blaster’ or ‘email blaster’ and you’ll have an idea how wide those big void promises of getting ‘automatic’ traffic to your website. But it’s not a real traffic…
By real traffic I refer to traffic that has a great potential to convert to either sales, joining the business opportunity you promote, joining your newsletter or any other purpose you might have. This IS the bottom line of your business…
As an online business owner, especially of you are building it on a part time basis, you would be very tempted to ’skyrocket’ your business easily and ‘without efforts’ as those ads implies. Just know this:
YES… you will submit your ad to thousands of websites. And YES… you would get plenty of hits, however, your conversion ratio (how many sales or signups you would gain out of this traffic) will be on a severe diet!
Let’s look at some examples to clarify why this kind of marketing is NOT worth your time or your money:
1. Ad Blasters
First, most of the people visiting free classified sites are doing so just to place their ad, and not to view others ads.
Secondly, those ad blasters made many of those sites absolutely useless!
Think about it for a second: Let’s say there are ten people (only) using that database of 10,000 or so classified sites (and I’m sure they share the same sites even if they are using different ad blasters). Each makes an automatic submission of 10 or more copies of the same ad to a single category (that’s one of the so called ‘features’ in those blasters - multiple submission of your ad copy to each category). What do you think will happen?
The classified site becomes overloaded with the same ad, over and over again in every category, AND, those blasters will ‘compete’ to knock the ads of each other down the list! It would be also useless for anyone who wants to manually submit ads to those sites.
2. Email Blasters
Email marketing is a great way to promote your products or your business opportunity. With that said, email marketing is all about building a relationship with your mailing list, and NOT sending emails to people who didn’t request information from you!
First, I would doubt if anyone has a legal mailing list of 50 or so million people that have asked for more information.
Secondly, sending email to millions who did NOT ask YOU for more information is considered spamming, and it will ruin your credibility, which is a very important key for a successful online business.
3. Automatic ‘Traffic For Clicks’ Software
Traffic for clicks are deals where you get traffic for every website or ad that you view. The more websites you browse, the more credit you’ll get, which means the more your own website will be displayed to others using the same service.
I have noticed an ad for a software that automatically browses others websites, so you would get the credit without having to do anything… I laughed out loud after giving it some thought, here’s why…
Let’s assume you buy such software, you activate it and go to sleep. The software starts browsing others websites, and you get a HUGE credit. Meanwhile, someone else is using a similar software, and HIS software is browsing YOUR website, and vice versa!
So you get tons of hits, your web statistics will show an amazing rate of visitors. However, the ‘people’ visiting your website, are actually a small ‘piece’ of software 
I could go on and give more examples. The saying “it sounds too good to be true” applies here! While some of those tools might have worked for some (probably the first guys who laid their hand on them), they do NOT build a solid base for a successful online business.
To avoid any of those hypes, just use your common sense, ask your self a simple question: If you knew a quick way to drive millions to your websites instantly and without some efforts, would you give that secret away?!
Hamad Kadmany helps real people succeed online with his free newsletter and his website. His business provides you with a real online business opportunity and the proper tools, training and support for a successful online business. Discover why so many have found their ideal business with Hamad today at OnlineBizKnowHow.com
For those of you who don’t know the definition: Link Exchanges are 2 links back and forth between 2 individual companies that have linked to each other. What is the purpose? To build “link popularity” within Search Engines!
What is the purpose?
To build “link popularity” within Search Engines!
How Does That Work?
Well when someone types in your business within search engines, you will get 2 types of results.
1) Your optimized site & related topics listed by you into the search engines.
2) All the links back to you from other sites listed within the search engines.
Number 2 is the important one for this subject: If your site is NOT “optimized” for great search results, a popular link could do just the same.
“Optimized” - Look for articles on “Optimizing your site for search engines”
Martin, PLEASE TELL ME MORE!!!
Well, let’s say that 80% of your visitors come from search engines. And let’s say that the search engine just all of a sudden deleted you out of the engine! You will still get people coming to your site and searching your site with great link popularity. All the links back to you will STILL be listed in the search engines!
Many professionals believe that you should only link to companies that have related discussions or information as your own! Me, always being the impartial one, I still try promoting link exchanges from all walks of life! You never know who will see your link and where!
It’s not only good for search engines! Huh?
That’s right, many link exchanges come from privately owned businesses, probably like yours. With this into account, once a visitor is satisfied with browsing the site, they may look for other resources! If you have links to your site all over the net, there’s more of a chance some people will see it and visit your site!
Please Note: When giving other companies your description of your link (Company Title) please make sure to be specific on your sites information!
Here’s an example of our text link:
Title: Affordable Web Design & Web Site Marketing Tips
URL: http://smartads.info
Description:
Smartads is here to help you expose your business to the world. SEO Services & Affordable Web Site Design for your online promoting needs. Web Site Marketing Articles to help you get more traffic to your site.
That’s it!
Here are a couple of companies that promote link
exchanges between all kinds of other companies:
- http://www.linkpartners.com/
- http://www.addurlhere.com/
- http://www.marketzone.net/addurl-exchange.asp
- http://www.smartads.info/links
- http://www.reciprocallink.com/
- http://www.link-city.com/
- http://www.go4links.com/Web-Internet.htm
- http://www.plainlinks.com/
These are just some examples.
They are not listed here as the best there is, just some of the many companies out there!
If your searching for companies to exchange links with, here’s a couple of things to look for!
1. Look for buttons or links that say this:
- Links
- Link To Us
- Reciprocal Links
- Link Exchange
- Directory (add your site and link back)
- Resources
2. When looking through other link programs, make sure they say something like this: “Link to us and well link to you” Many sites often only have “Help us promote our site, link to us!” and they don’t even link to you!
Not to say this is a bad thing, but if I’m going to link to you, the least you can do is link to me!
I hope this article has opened your mind about Link Exchanges!
Martin Lemieux
Smartads - President
Affordable Web Design & Web Site Marketing
www.smartads.info & www.smartads.ca
Martins Weekly Marketing Tips: www.smartads.info/newsletter
Daily Web Marketing Tips: web-marketing.smartads.info
Entrepreneur Help Site: mindpower.smartads.info
With an online business, one of the most important tools of every virtual entrepreneur is traffic. Without it, online business owners know that their web site will fall shortly. It will never obtain its value in the market and will never generate massive profit. With traffic, and not just any traffic but good traffic, you will have a higher probability of being successful.
The problem with most people who are just starting on their online business is that they have the tendency to get traffic, without trying to know or identify if the program that they use in order to generate traffic is effective or not.
In this case, they have a propensity to use a program that offers many enticing features but in reality, they are all completely insignificant. In addition, when they eventually fall short and do not earn their desired traffic and profit, they surrender and claim that the income-generating potential of the Internet is just an illusion.
Alternatively, the Internet bequeaths success to those who refused to give up. These people try their very best to learn something from their experiences.
In turn, these people discovered the secret to generating exponential traffic growth. They realized that in order to boost their traffic and obtain success, they understand that it is targeted traffic that they need and not just any kind of traffic.
Targeted traffic is obtained when the visitors that browse on their web sites are interested to know what products or information that you can offer them and not because they were compelled to do so. In this way, they will be more than willing to purchase your product.
But how can you generate targeted traffic? Here is a list of some tips that you need to know:
1. Create indispensable content
It is true that content is king. That has been the claim of the many people who have experienced to generate good traffic just by using content. This refers to the proper utilization of keywords in order to target a good traffic.
If wrong choices of keywords were used, chances are, you will never gain the profit that you have been longing to have. People will never locate your web site; hence, you will never obtain the traffic that you need.
2. Submit articles
Another way of gaining good traffic is to create articles and submit them to places that will best generate good traffic to your web site.
After creating quality articles, you may submit them to article directories or article banks. From here, webmasters who are seeking quality articles to put on their own web sites that may consider your articles. In this way, you will be more assured that your articles will generate targeted traffic to your web site.
3. Make us of affiliate programs
These are the programs that offer to promote your products or services and will only ask for some remuneration if your product has gained recognition or were patronize by the consumers.
One good example is the pay-per-click advertisement wherein you will only pay the affiliate program who promoted your web site when somebody has clicked on your link on their result page. Usually, search engines are the ones who render affiliate programs.
4. Use reprint articles
In order to generate more traffic to your web site, try to use keyword-rich articles and place them on your web site. In this way, search engines will not have a hard time finding you in case somebody is seeking some information, in which, you have it on your web site.
5. Informative freebies
Try to create some freebies that are informative like ebooks and newsletters. In this way, you can use them as drivers that will direct traffic to your web site.
Most people love freebies, and where they can get something for free, they will definitely respond to whatever product or services your web site has to offer.
Indeed, there are no real secrets to generating exponential traffic growth. It has been revealed countless times already.
The only reason why it is not yet widely disseminated is that people do not have the persistence and the determination to learn these things. Thats why they do not realize the potentials that these techniques can bring as far as traffic generation is concerned.
Hence, in order to generate exponential traffic growth, try to incorporate these techniques, and you will surely be amazed what it can do to your business.
Pixel advertising is fast becoming all the rage with new pixel advertising website pages appearing on a daily basis.
So what is pixel advertising and how did it all come about.
The original idea seems to have been started a few months ago by a British student named Alex Tew who was trying to find a way to make an online income and help pay his way through college.
He decided that if you were to divide a web page into a grid formation, consisting of 100 pixels per square, it may be possible to offer advertisers a choice of purchasing any amount of these grid squares and in return they could upload an image or banner and advertise their individual sites.
He set his pricing at $1 per pixel, which equated to $100 per grid square and in total meant that his web page, that consisted of a one million pixel grid, would be worth one million dollars if all available pixels were sold.
Well the idea was innovative and after starting to sell some of his advertising space to friends and colleagues the idea really started to spread and capture the imagination of the Internet world. From this initial start things really started moving fast and traffic to his site began to build at a tremendous pace. It wasn’t long then until the news and media became aware of what had become a phenomena and this news coverage really started the ball rolling.
Approximately three to four months after starting his pixel advertising website he has now sold over $800,000 worth of advertising and has nearly reached his initial goal of producing a one million dollar homepage.
It really does pay to advertise.
For free pixel advertising of your website visit:
This is a brand new pixel website so all the prime positions are still available to the early birds.
Copywrite Terry Till 2005-12-08
Webmasters and ezine owners may use this article provided they leave all content, the resource box and all links in tact and without content alteration
There will be a lot of people unhappy about what I am going to reveal in this article. However, I think it is time somebody spoke out about what is happening on this wonderful medium we have come to know as the internet. What I am talking about are the “sharp” practices engaged in by people offering all sorts of dubious marketing plans.
Confusion, deception, hype and downright dishonesty abound on the world wide web (www). I should know. Like tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of people before me - I’ve been caught. And it is highly probable that so many more will continue to be caught in the future unless something is done to stop it.
The www is the new frontier for those who seek to make money from inexperienced people. It’s quick, it’s easy and it is so impersonal. Specifically, I am talking about the selling of high priced junk information (often referred to as “reports”) to unsuspecting customers.
It’s almost the perfect robbery.
Newbie website owners beware! There are hundreds of con-artists and specious operators lurking out there in cyber space. They are just waiting to pull you into their clutches.
How do they do it?
OK. What is the one thing that every new website owner has to have? Answer - traffic. Pure and simple. If you don’t have traffic, you might as well not even have a website - unless, of course, you just enjoy looking at it yourself.
Your quest for traffic demands that you seek knowledge from those who profess to have it. And that is the root of the problem. It seems that every second website seems to be selling information on how to improve your website. With so many experts, who do you trust?
Oh you can read the sales “blurb” (yeah, I know, my site has “blurb” too. All websites use it) and be wooed by all the so-called “facts” but who is offering the information and does it really work? How do you separate credible information from useless junk? There certainly is plenty of junk out there.
There appears to be an increasing number of self-styled gurus professing to know exactly how to drive that precious traffic right through your site. In fact, if you believe everything they promise, you will need to install a set of traffic lights on your site just to control the massive flow. (Or so they would have you believe!)
Your quest for knowledge can very quickly send your credit card into debt hyper-drive, or, I should say, hyper-dive! Just enter your details and zap - here it comes. It’s the answer to all your www dreams. (You wish!)
Let’s examine some of the things you need to be vigilant about:
The information you pay for might be:
- - widely known among experienced net users - but not by you. If you want to pay for this information it might just be worth it to “fast-track” your education. In other words, you will be paying for fairly basic information but you will learn something from it. In that respect, the information can be good because you can learn from the experience of others. Many “special reports” and “secrets revealed” fall into this category. However, some clearly do not. (PS: What type of credit card do you have?)
- - available FREE all over the www. All you have to do is look. “Seek and ye shall find”. If you are lazy and you need to be spoon fed then there are any number of hunters out there who will line you up in their sights. The information is probably current and will work but why pay for it when it is so abundantly available at zero cost? (PS: What is your credit card number?)
- - “old hat” information. The internet moves at such speed that what worked several years ago or even several months ago now doesn’t work at all. This type of information is totally useless and should be avoided. Often this ancient information will even contain broken hyperlinks. Now that’s a real turn off. It says so much about the quality of the information being provided. In reality, this type of information is just a collection of worthless old junk, like a shoe with a hole in its sole. (PS: When does your credit card expire?)
- - a precursor to spending even more money. This little technique will whet your appetite just enough to entice you to spend lots more money. Some “wealth creation” seminar presenters use this technique. It’s just bait for the “real” information which, of course, is far more expensive. “Caveat emptor” - let the buyer beware! (PS: What are the three ID numbers on the back of that credit card of yours?)
- - Steering you to other sites offering “fixits.” This is something like point 4 above, except the information provider suggests you go to a third party (a “friend” - more on this in Part 2) to purchase more programs or more specific information. Often these recommended sites can offer expensive or time consuming programs. (PS: Now, just press submit.)
- - credible and/or valuable. This is information of the best kind. Usually it will contain “cutting edge” ideas that are currently working on the www. However, your ability to source this information from the many traps above will range from difficult to almost impossible.
The biggest trick used by con-artist “gurus” is their ability to “dress up” the information they are offering to make it look like something new or different. It’s a bit like the old pyramid selling schemes that do the rounds with monotonous regularity (or the letter offering you millions of dollars from Nigeria just for giving them your bank details! Can you imagine anybody doing that? Well, plenty do!) Plenty buy the “dress-ups” too. Same old information, different name.
Another thing you need to be aware of is the amount of “fluff” or packing that surrounds the real subject matter. Often there can be several pages on the main idea and several dozen pages of near useless information to make it appear bigger.
I recently purchased a report of just 19 pages. It contained just one dubious idea that could have been presented adequately on about half an A4 sized page. The rest of it was pure packing and completely useless twaddle. The cost? I hate to admit it - $39.95 US. Ouch!
I have even heard of some training manuals on offer claiming that they contain five hundred pages (plus) of “cutting edge” information. You would think that represents a lot of information. It was certainly advertised as a “definitive” web-building and traffic steering “master” tutorial. I later learned (from another source) that the pages are only printed on about one-third of the available space and that the font size would be very beneficial for extremely sight impaired readers. That makes it a very expensive tutorial. I’m pleased to say that I didn’t buy that one.
You need to be wary of these things.
Part 2 of this article contains further hints which will enable you to detect whether an offer of increased website traffic will be worthy of purchase or not.
If you enjoyed Part 1, don’t miss Part 2.
Part 1 and Part 2 of this article are covered by copyright. However, both parts may be freely used providing there are no changes whatsoever to the content and the following resource box remains intact.
PS: If you think this information might help a friend from falling prey to these dubious practices you can send them a copy of this article (or any related parts) or direct them to the website URL above. Let’s get the word out and put a stop to this.
About the author: Gary Simpson is the author of eight books covering a diverse range of subjects such as self esteem, affirmations, self defense, finance and much more. His articles appear all over the web. Gary’s email address is budo@iinet.net.au. Click here to go to his Motivation & Self Esteem for Success website where you can receive his “Zenspirational Thoughts” plus an immediate FREE copy of his highly acclaimed, life-changing e-book “The Power of Choice.”
