Friday, February 15, 2008

Three Strategies to Increase Website Traffic

Three Strategies to Increase Website Traffic
No matter what your real purpose is for having a website,
the fact remains that you want traffic to it. Perhaps you
put up a website to establish an online venue for your
friends and family to get together and share messages,
photographs, and whatnot. Or perhaps you're an online
entrepreneur looking to market your business' products or
services to Internet users. Whatever its purpose, a
website needs traffic - the more traffic, the better.

But a perennial problem remains: how do you increase
website traffic? Aside from shelling out money for those
"traffic building" packages or paying for links (which is
getting to be really hazardous to your website's page
rankings and overall standing with Google), there are still
several strategies for driving traffic to your website -
and keeping them there. I'm going to present you with a
few good ones:

Keyword Searches - There are several keyword tools on the
Internet that can help you increase web site traffic, if
you know how to use them properly. I'm talking about tools
like Yahoo!'s KW Selector Tool, Wordtracker, KWDiscovery,
and Google's KW Tool, to name a few. Using these tools,
you can search for high-traffic keywords or phrases that
have some relevance to your business or website, but with
very little or no advertisers using them at all. These
keywords will help you develop your business' brand and
your website's exposure to search engines.

Just be sure to provide your visitors with the kind of
content they're looking for - whether in the form of listed
resources, articles, multimedia, or the like. Doing so
will help your site get the best kind of publicity there is
in the form of viral marketing - where word of mouth about
the quality of your site spreads like wildfire, bringing
more traffic to your website and keeping them there.

Controversy is the Key - Sometimes emotions get the better
of people, especially when they see, hear, or read about
something that they strongly feel about. In this case, why
not channel these emotions into traffic for your website?
Your main targets will be impassioned and (sometimes)
overzealous Internet users who harbor strong feelings about
a particular topic. Just generate controversial content
using articles, blog posts, videos, or statistical reports
(whichever method is applicable).

After generating this content, you must be ready to defend
your position through blog posts, comments, forums, and
anything else that could be useful or appropriate. If done
effectively, this method will increase web site traffic for
you through various sources, but most of it may come
directly from the individual or organization you
challenged. Make sure that you handle all feedback and
discussions in a professional manner, though. Doing so
will allow you to develop a respectable persona online,
even with those whom you are disagreeing with.

Cover Important Events - Of course, the type of event
varies according to your particular interests and the niche
of your website. Gaming expos, tech shows, the like - all
can be taken advantage of to bring great and updated
content to your website, and droves of traffic along with
it. Try to cover the event as much as possible by taking
pictures, shooting some videos, making new friends and
acquaintances, and taking detailed notes all the while.

Of course, make sure that everyone knows you're going to
feature all this stuff on your site within the next few
days (the sooner the better). You can really increase
website traffic through this method, and the amount of
traffic you can get may vary from hundreds to thousands,
and maybe even tens of thousands. It all depends on the
popularity and size of the event itself. As an additional
tip, underground or exclusive events make for better
coverage - but be sure to get permission first.

There are a lot more excellent strategies to increase
website traffic, and I'm pretty sure you know a few others
already. Effective use of these methods will allow you to
see a boost to your website traffic for a long time to come.


----------------------------------------------------
Richard Legg is a web traffic expert and generates over 1.5
Million visitors a year to just one of his websites.
Discover how you can instantly increase website traffic for
free at http://www.MyInstantTraffic.com

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