Internet Traffic--How To Drive It To Your Website!

To get a bucket load of internet traffic is the goal of every internet marketer but unfortunately it's easier said than achieved. The question at hand then (especially if you are new to internet marketing) is how do you increase internet traffic to your site?

There are three fundamental ways to get internet traffic to your site. Some of these methods have fairly rapid results, some are more long term and some are free while others will require you dipping into your pocket. Okay here goes...the following are the three main methods to increase internet traffic to your site:

1. Paying For Internet Traffic: In an ideal world it would simply be a case of build it and then they'll come. But as you are well aware this world of ours is far from ideal...so unfortunately you are going to have to sweat a little to get that online traffic! I'm sure like most of us you really don't want to pay for internet traffic (who does?) but the plain fact is, if your site is new, while you are busy struggling to claw your way up the search engine rank pages (SERPs) paid advertising is your quickest route to get internet traffic.

Another reason why (if you're new to online marketing) you should seriously consider using this method is the fact that your site is going to be just another splash in a tidal wave of millions of internet marketing sites. And know what that means? It means the search engines are going to be ever so reluctant to facilitate your climb to the top! Why? Because you aren't offering any new, unique or useful information to the web (well probably not in the beginning at least)--and that by the way is the core of the search engine business--offering useful information to searchers. Further more this is also the reason why people who target niche markets get higher SERP listings and higher page rank so much faster than somebody who targets an already saturated, highly competitive market.

Paying to get internet traffic is what is commonly referred to as Pay-Per-Click or PPC. At its most basic, pay-per-click marketing involves you composing an advert and bidding for a relevant searched-for keyword. Your ad will then be listed on the relevant search engine index pages for that same keyword you bid. The more competitive a keyword is, the higher your bid price will have to be for your ad to appear on either Page 1 or Page 2 of the search engines (the reason why you want to be on the first two search engine pages is that most people rarely go deeper than two pages to view the results of their search query). The advantages of PPC advertising is that it can increase internet traffic to your site within a few minutes to hours. The disadvantage is that it is very competitive and if you aren't careful, it can cost you a mini-fortune with little to show for it. So you'd be well advised to take the time to learn the ropes for PPC marketing before diving headlong. If you are new to the whole PPC concept, go to Google and read up about their PPC model commonly known as Google Adwords.

The following is a list of PPC models you can use to increase internet traffic to your site:

The Big Guns: Google Adwords; Yahoo! Search Marketing.

The Lesser Guns: Kanoodle; Ask Jeeves; Enhance Interactive; 7Search.

2. Free Internet Traffic: Yes there is such a thing as free on-target internet traffic, and the advantages are self-evident...FREE! The flip side however, is that you are going to have to put in a little bit more effort into harnessing this particular brand of internet traffic. So how do you go about getting this free online traffic--simply...by promoting yourself to the online community as an expert in your field. And the way to do this is by writing interesting, informative and useful articles relevant to your target audience. Next thing, submit your article to as many Article Directories as you can. Then Kazaam! Before you know it, people will be snapping up your articles as content for their sites! There are hundreds of article directories out there and almost as many software programs to automate your article submission so finding places to submit your articles to shouldn't be a problem. If your articles are well written and informative a lot of the better directories will even include them on their high-stream RSS (real simple syndication) traffic list.

Not only will writing good articles develop new internet traffic flow to your site, it will also boost your conversion ratio (visitors-to-buyer) because your well written articles (or so we hope) will foster a degree of trust and respect in your visitors...which ultimately translates into a visitor who is more receptive to buy from you. However, equally important is the fact that writing articles is the best way to get highly relevant one-way back-links pointing to your site without spending a dime!

Talking about links, if there is only one thing you should know about links, it is that keyword relevant one-way links are the best links to have. Furthermore, since they are coming from topically related sites those links are really going to be highly rated by the search engines. Well written articles will have an enormous impact on increasing internet traffic to your website through the viral nature of their dissemination...the only drawback is it may take some time. So with this in mind it's best to start your article writing as soon as possible. That way your back-links will be picked up sooner by the search engines!

A final note about article submission...it's better to submit to article directories with high page rank, at least to begin with. How come? Because it's a well known fact that search engine spiders tend to crawl websites with higher page rank much more frequently than sites with low or zero page rank. In essence this means that those back-links pointing to your site will be picked up that much quicker by the search engine crawlers. Also people are much more likely to get content from well respected directories, and such directories naturally tend to have a page rank of 5 and above. However also bear in mind that an article directory that has a low page rank today may well boast a high page rank sometime in the tomorrows to come. So go ahead (if you have the time or software), be a daredevil and submit to them all!

3. Getting Website Traffic Using Good SEO Techniques: Lastly but certainly not least you should apply time proven and tested SEO (search engine optimization) techniques to increase your website traffic. But first things first...are you familiar with the term SEO? If not, here's a very brief explanation (this article is not about search engine optimization and will barely scratch the surface on all there is to talk about SEO. However as things stand, the internet is liberally sprinkled with thousands of excellent articles on SEO so you shouldn't have any difficulty getting up to speed).

At its most basic SEO is the process whereby you structure or design your site in a manner that search engine crawlers (also known as spiders) find highly attractive. The aim of search engine optimization is to get your website ranked as high as possible on the search engine index (results) pages (the pages that show up in your browser, following a search query on any search engine). All things being equal (i.e., you've got original useful content on your site) a well optimized site will rank better on the search engine index pages than one that is not optimized yet (more or less) has the same attributes.

SEO techniques are laborious and time consuming, and furthermore the results from your SEO efforts may take a while to manifest--but what you should understand, is that when applied optimally, in time this method will be your biggest draw of internet traffic!

About The Author-- Ba Kiwanuka is the webmaster of Internet Business Mart provides marketing solutions and tips .More On How To Increase Web Site Traffic

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