1. Main problem is that most websites are “Under Construction”, so when a visitor visits that website, they will waste no time leaving. So, FIRST, you must keep your website out of too much “construction.” And, you may use an e-mail notifier to announce to your members or customers that your website construction is complete and they can come back.

2. Second, ADS; I see too many ads on one website, and because of that, i don’t want to stay there for long. The best web host yo ucan get is HostUltra. They offer unlimited disk space, ad-free, but the reason this host is the best… it’s FREE! I hosted one of my websites there and loved it.

3. If you have content on your website that can be found in other places, most likely your visitors will leave. so, it’s wise to use your own content or anyo other content that can’t be found on any other website. But if you use content from someone else, be sure to get their permission first.

4. Add-ons. If you anything like an email service or a message board or forum, that can be acessed on your website, your visitors will hafe something to come back to. With an email service, your visitors can register or login to check their mail. People like me, check their mail everyday, so this is a great idea to consider. You can get a free email service at http://www.zzn.com/. And with a message board, yor members can talk to you or each other.

5. Another great way to increase your traffic is by a Tell a Friend form or button that you can put on your website. With this, your visitors can invite their friends and their friends, on and on. So, your traffic will keep flowing if this happens. But do not force yor visitors to invite their friends, just remind them.

6. Short URLs are also importantif you want your visitors to have an easy and quick way to acess your website. One of the best is FreeDomain.co.nr; CJB.net is good too.

7. Affiliation. With affiliates, you can get alot more traffic. When you affiliate with someone, try to partner up with a popular website that has content related to yours.

8. Advertise. You can advertise your website at www.trafficexchange.com, which is a great traffic exchange program for anyone to use. When you advertise on a large website like TrafficExchange, millions of web users could find your website and keep returning to it.

9. Service or product support. If you have a service or product, your customers would like to have a place on your website that they can get support, otherwise they will find a better place. You can go to Bravenet to get a free chat service ar you can just search Google for one.

10. If you have a business where you offer products online for residents in your area, sponsoring a car, purchasing a billboard or anything else you can advertise on is a good idea.

I hope this article was helpful to you.

About the Author:

I am a web designer that currently is in high School and writes articles and soon, Ebooks to help others learn and get tips for web design and development. I have also had a web service network that died down when two and the rest of the staff moved over 1 1/2 hours away from our location.

River City Designs is my current project and soon, a small business. http://www.freewebs.com/rivercitydesigns/

The more traditional approach is to build a link directory with relevant, quality sites that agree to link back. It comes with a secret bonus – it provides your site visitors a list of resources that you have spent some time checking out and think are worthwhile. This approach follows the proven path of the Yahoo founders. They built the Yahoo directory, essentially a large link directory, one link at a time. That was the best possible way to ensure quality search results in the pre-Google days. I have noticed that several search engine optimization consultants promote the second approach. They are speaking to internet newcomers who are eager to get to the top of the search engines. When you’re running a small business and you have launched a new site, branding is not your goal. You can’t afford to mass market in hopes of gradually being recognized. You realize that building a brand is a big businesses strategy. You are never going to be a household word.

Getting visitors is your main concern. The search engines appear to offer free traffic to anybody that gets listed. Your on the right track, they are important. But you can’t let your interest in traffic make you overreact, loose touch, and waste time pursuing gimmicks to beat the search engines. Unfortunately, going over to the dark side requires just as much time and money and the “tricks” often do not work. My opinion – you guessed it, I like to wear a white hat – and I know that the traditional approach produces results. Attracting search engines is a great way of generating sustained, targeted traffic. However, it will drive you crazy if you try to understand how the engines work. Spend your energy developing the content that searchers are looking for. After all, the search engines are simply trying to find the most relevant site in response to a search phrase – and guess what, that could be you.

In addition to your content, most engines pay attention to your link popularity – how many inbound links you have. Google also seems to judge the quality of your site by looking at your Page Rank and your link partner’s Page Rank. But search engines are complicated beasts and very unpredictable, especially for new sites.

You have to listen to the teachings of the “SEO experts” when building your site. They have experience in building content that works for customers as well as search engines. However, once your search engine friendly site is built, forget that the search engines exist and concentrate on you customers and their experience.

Put your energy into quality content and the rest of it into building your link partners. But remember, link directories will help you more if they add value to your site. Don’t bury them. Make them visible and useful.

For small business web sites, I think Link directories are a necessary part of eCommerce. Notice that I didn’t say nice to have; I said necessary.

You will build a better site if you spend a minute judging your link partners before making a link. Ask yourself – will my customer take an interest in what they find there? And – will this site send me traffic? Their links should be placed in a way that actually brings you an occasional customer. Likewise, your link directory should be useful to your customers so it doesn’t detract from your site.

Kingsley Tagbo is a web analyst and the author of Best Kept Secrets of Web Traffic Analysis – “How to Find Gold in Your Web Traffic Data”.


Kingsley writes regularly on Web Analytics and Web Traffic Analysis at http://www.kdkeys.org/blogs/


You can subscribe to his web analytics or web traffic analysis articles by email at FeedBlitz or to his RSS/XML Feed at FeedBurner.


You can also reach Kingsley directly at his blog with any questions you may have on Web Analytics, Web Traffic Analysis, Web Usage Mining or Web Data Mining.

If you think that by building websites one after the other then the traffic will magically appear it just doesn’t work like that as there are millions of other sites competing with you for the same traffic. It is a fierce world on the net, no matter where you look everyone is trying to get traffic to their websites so they can increase there sales.

The one major way to get “Targeted Traffic” is by writing a well researched article which provides valuable information, once you write an article that is well written your articles will be sought after by newsletter publishers, magazines, ezines, and people who want to display your articles on their websites so they can offer their readers valuable content.

Once you have written a quality article you can then submit it to ezine & article directories, (just search Google for them) where people are activity looking for content to offer to their readers. A well written article has the potential to bring in thousands of targeted visitors to any one of your websites.

If you can write quality articles and submit them to the article directories, you will definitely get “Targeted Traffic” to your websites. It is also one of the easiest things to do but can have amazing results, here are some of the things writing articles for targeted traffic can accomplish;

- Brings Targeted Visitors Who Are Looking For What You Have.
– Improves Your Search Engine Rankings.
– Builds Your Credibility.

As you can see writing & submitting articles that are high quality can bring you targeted traffic, improve your search engines rankings and makes you look like an expert.

After you have written an article you get to place a “authors bio” at the bottom of every article you write, all you need to do is write a short 2-4 line description of you & your business and then include your website url. The url will also be picked up by search engines, which will result in getting 1 way links back to your websites, which helps your site rank high, not to mention your offering quality content which the search engines love as well.

Once potential readers have read your article either on your own site or located on other peoples websites, then 9 times out of 10 they will click on your URL to get more information about you, your business, this will results in targeted traffic which is exactly what you want.

Writing articles are not difficult at all, before you consider writing though you need to research your topic so that you actually know what you’re writing about. Writing & submitting just 2 articles a week can bring in hundreds of targeted visitors to your sites.

You can also pay others to write content for you by going to sites like Elance or Scriptlance, basically you put up a short ad saying you want 10 articles written on “web design” people will then bid on doing them for you and you can pay after you have received the articles. There are hundreds of people who have had articles written on all kinds of subjects.

Now all you need to do is either write the articles yourself or get them written by others, and then submit them to the article directories, and watch all the targeted traffic flow in. I would also recommend tracking the URL in the “author’s bio” you can use an ad-tracker for this.

Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links?
“Turn Words Into Traffic” reveals the secrets for using FREE articles to drive Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links… without spending a dime on advertising! Click Here> http://www.graphicsecretsexposed.com/EzineArticles.html

“There Must Be Some Easier Way”

While pay-per-click may be a good business model for your website, there’s nothing like free traffic to lay the foundation. My log furniture site used to get 100 unique visitors per day before it started fetching in 200, and now 300 on an average basis. The personal goal here is 1,000 unique daily visitorsbut 10,000 would also be welcomed!

Following are some of the best ways we have found to grow website traffic:

#1: Website Optimization

A local business magazine recently ran an article calling SEO (search engine optimization) the equivalent of “hocus-pocus”. The author of the article, who apparently worked for an SEO firm, described optimization as a somewhat “shady” activity that’s impossible to get a handle on. I say “Baloney!”

SEO is not pseudo-science. It is a very tangible and real way to increase website traffic. If you haven’t taken care of the basicse.g. making sure your website has a relevant title, focuses on the right keywords, avoids practices that are disdained by the search engines, etc., you can be sure that, once found, your website will not rank as highly (or get as much traffic) as it otherwise would. Begin your traffic-garnering efforts by making sure your website is up-to-snuff.

#2: Publish Helpful, Relevant Content

Publishing helpful articles on the Net with a link back to my log furniture website seems to result in traffic spikes nearly every time. Notice the emphasis is on “helpful” articles. There is plenty of useless drivel out there by people who are being paid $5 to write an article. Not to insult anyone, but I spend 2-8 hours on the articles I writedepending on how much research is required and how technical the article isand that costs more than $5.

It doesn’t seem to matter what you write about. My topics so far have included SEO, the simplicity of Amish life, improving your bottom line, and understanding Google operators. The key is to make them relevant, short and helpful.

#3: Add more products to your website

Our experience has been that adding more products to the website helps us to come up in the search engines more often. A person who finds a rustic night stand at our site might notice that we have log bunk beds. Somebody who is shopping for an unfinished pine dresser might not be thinking of rustic furniture at all, stumble across one our products, like the whole site, and end up furnishing their cabin. Each product is like a fishing line cast in the sea. The more well-described bait you have out therethe more “fish” will bite.

#4: Improve your website conversion rate

Five years ago, we used to get one log furniture order for every 100 website visitors. Now it seems like closer to one order for every 300 unique visitors. Part of the reason for this, we believe, is that the web has become more competitive. But we also pay attention to our conversion rate.

We are in the process of making a change right now that might really help. Someone pointed out that when you click on an item to buy it within Miva Merchant’s standard interface, there is no confirmation that the item has been added to your shopping basket. This might lead some customers to believe that the website isn’t working properly. They might not be savvy enough to check the shopping basket. They might even leave the site without ordering (perish the thought!)

These “glitches” can really hurt website sales. We went to the Miva Merchant site for third-party modules and found a script that displays the shopping basket after each item is added. We purchased the script and install, and are watching to see how it affects website sales and conversion rate. Our guess is that this will have a positive impact on sales.

Conclusion

Obviously, there are a lot of other ways to increase website traffic. The four listed above are a great place to start. If you’re not into SEO, find somebody who is. If you are paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars of month for pay-per-click traffic, it may be wise to divert enough of those dollars to ensure that your website is the traffic-snagging, profit-generating machine you intend it to be.

Copyright 2005 Log Cabin Rustics

Cari Haus is a CPA and entrepreneur who has been offering quality log furniture on her website, http://www.logcabinrustics.com/

You feel good about it and you’re ready to make some money!

There’s only one problem, you need some Customers, or Traffic!

There are a few ways to do this, that are free, but will take some time and work.

First you will need to set-up some link pages on you web-site. Then you will need to exchange links with other web-sites that are related to yours. For example, if you have a home business you can visit Google and type in “home business”. Google will then give you a few million related sites that you can start with. You will then visit these sites exchanging links. Most sites will have a “link to us” or “Add URL” page. You will click that link and follow the instructions to submit a link back to your web-site. It is good to start with at least a hundred links or more, (no more than 50 links a page). Exchange links with the first and second pages only, then you will want to type in maybe, “work from home”, “best business ideas”, “home careers”, “computer jobs”, etc. Repeat this procedure until you have enough. Sites on the first two pages of the Google search will have the most traffic, which will increase yours.

The next thing you will want to do is write an article. Writing articles is a great way to market your web-site and increase your traffic. Write a simple article relating to your web-site topic, if you need some help, visit Google and type in the subject your looking for. At the end of your article you will create an author bio or resource box. In it include a brief description of you and your web-site and your web-site URL.This allows everyone who reads your article to learn more about you and your business. Now you will start submitting your article to many article directories by visiting Google and search for “article directories”. By doing this your article will be posted all over the world for people to read, thus creating more traffic for your site.

Last, you can create your own newsletter. This is more of a long-term strategy, but one that you should start early so that you can get the effects as soon as possible. Everyone that signs-up, 20% may return to your site from the links in your newsletter. This will build over a period of time and add lots of free traffic. A valid newsletter may consist of a single article about the subject of your site, followed by information telling them how to unsubscribe or subscribe. If you don’t have time to write your own article, there are many on the Internet with permission to reprint included, just remember to include the author’s bio or resource box at the end. To find these articles, go to Google and type: ?????? articles reprint.

Just fill in the ?????? with your website topic.

Now you will start submitting your newsletter (ezine) to many ezine directories by visiting Google and search for “ezine directories”. This will help you establish links to your ezine and create more subscribers for your newsletter, thus creating another source of free traffic.

Using these highly effective ways to increase traffic to your web-site will help you market your business and reach a larger consumer base.

This article may be reprinted providing it is published in it’s entirety, including the author’s bio and link to the URL below.

About The Author

The author, John Baker, is the editor of Best-Home-Business-News. A newsletter dedicated to supporting the home business entrepreneur. If you’re looking for some of the best home business opportunities, tools, thoughts, ideas, and support from a dependable source, come by, visit,and grab a FREE subscription today at: http://www.best-home-business-ideas.net

admin@best-home-business-ideas.net

It clearly gives you the “know how” to systematically build a review article which will have you making money without any huge cash output. Although none of us will be able to write a polished article immediately by applying these steps, eventually it will become second nature and will greatly benefit your bottom line.

Every marketing Guru on the internet keeps praising the advantages of writing articles, but how exactly do you do this and why are articles so important? To answer that question, read Jim Edwards “Turn Words into Traffic”, the most informative eBook I’ve found available to give you the pointers you need to know about writing articles. So why should you believe Jim Edwards? Mr. Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the author of several best selling eBooks, CD-ROMs, videos, numerous audio tapes, software packages and a newsletter with thousands of subscribers. He has used these techniques to attract tens of thousands of visitors to his various websites which generated substantial profits.

One of the most valuable points of “Turn Words Into Traffic” is that Jim doesn’t’ just explain how to use articles to boost your web traffic, he shows you in a step-by-step process, exactly how to do it. Instead of just extolling the virtues of writing articles, he immerses you in the technique involved to write professional and meaningful articles. The book not only explains why articles are so important but how to write and structure your article to maximize your web traffic which leads to earning money. Articles give webmasters fresh content to use on their websites, in their ezines or in their newsletters and bring you subtle publicity.

Jim Edwards’s eBook is truly a concise map to writing articles that will not only draw traffic to your websites but will gain you a reputation as an expert in your chosen field. The book logically and easily pulls you through the process of writing an article that will get published.

By no means think that this will instantly make you a master article writer – it will take some practice. I had to read the book through three times before I “got” the entire message.

When I started out writing articles I kept thinking to myself, “This is lot harder than Jim let on” but if you carefully follow his steps it will become second nature to you sooner than you think.

The only thing that I would suggest that could improve this eBook is if Jim would elaborate on ways of setting up a simple article announcement site. I think all of us who are serious about incorporating articles into our marketing plan would benefit from this strategy. Just think, knowing how to set up our article announcement site would be a real plus, since information is the core of your business

As Jim says: “Wouldn’t you rather have thousands of people send you two visitors per day than to depend on two or three sources sending you thousands of visitors per day”?

If you want to quickly learn to funnel new traffic to your websites without spending any cash on advertising, I give “Turn Words Into Traffic” a 9 out of a possible 10.

For more information on Jim Edwards eBook “Turn Words Into Traffic” please visit http://www.TrafficAtNoCost.com

This article may be distributed freely on your website and in your ezines, as long as this entire article, copyright notice, links and this resource box are unchanged. Copyright © Mary Hanna All Rights Reserved.

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About the Author

Mary Hanna writes eBooks, Software Reviews (for people who are technically challenged like her) and Practical Articles on Internet Marketing, Cruising, Gardening and Cooking. Visit her websites at: www.WebMarketingReviews.com, www.FirstCruiseBestCruise.com, www.ContainerGardeningSecrets.com, and www.GourmetChefAtHome.com