1.Write and submit articles . It is a classic, but it works. This will be indefinite traffic stuck in the search engines for you. Write quality unique articles, not articles that are rehashed or provide no insight to readers, which is a huge problem these days.

2.Write and submit press releases, think prweb after you do one.

3.Write and ping blog entries. Always make sure to link back to your website with your blog posts. Try making multiple blogs and have them all link back to one main site.

4.Make sure your website is listed in DMOZ: http://dmoz.org/.

5.Advertise your website in the appropriate categories at Craigslist. Try posting your ads in the most populated cities in the world.

6.If a niche related forum that you frequently visit allows signatures, then make sure to add your website url in there.

7.Make sure to view related products on Amazon.com. You can try and take some customers from your competitors here by providing your own url if the product is similar.

8.Review websites in your niche on Alexa to try to take some of their traffic by including a reference back to your site.

9.Review some related products on epinion.

10.If you purchase a product that you actually like, then feel free to give an individual respect when respect is due and leave a testimonial. You should be able to get some traffic from that website if your testimonial is left with a url.

11.Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website url as a signature.

12.Keep updating content on your websites/blogs… try at least once per week.

13.Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites, especially at http://del.icio.us/.

14.Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords.

15.Tag blog photos at Flickr.

16.Politely ask your readers to subscribe to your rss feeds.

17.Try coining your own term. Might want to trademark it if you smell that it will become popular.

18.Encourage readers to comment on your blogs.

19.Include translation for your websites/blogs, especially in Chinese.

20.Do not be boring, write about something that a wide select of people would want to know about.

21.Make sure to edit your writing (unlike what im doing ).

22.Comment on other related blogs.

23.Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.

24.Sponsor a charity, most charities will link back to your website, and you are also doing a good deed .

25.Sell an item on ebay as a charity auction. Most charities will link back to both your auction and your main website.

26.Start a publicity campaign, do something that individuals in your niche will take note of.

27.Brand your website with a logo and a slogan/catch phrase. Think IBM.

28.Hold a crazy contest that people in your niche will talk about. This will equal more links and traffic to your website.

29.Build a tool that individuals in your niche will love and enjoy. Then give it away for free. If the tool is helpful, then you will get quality one-way links to your website.

30.Contact small newsletters sources offline and submit articles to them.

31.Become friends with editors of an offline publication.

32.Give speeches offline. Start small and local. Also, do not forget to participate in toastmasters meetings in your area.

33.Have a GREAT product. All of the marketing/advertising in the world will do you NO good if your product is sub par.

34.Make something innovative. If you are selling information, what makes your content something you cannot get from the local bookstore, Barnes and noble or even eBay for that matter?

35.Is your product groundbreaking? Will you leave individuals with no choice but to talk about your product or service?

36.Are you selling something that wide groups of people want to know about but there is limited/scarce knowledge?

37.Write good content, if your writing is good then people will share it with their friends. In addition, webmasters will use it as content on their website with a reference back to your article, or at least they should.

38.Spark emotions. If you get people emotional about something then they will most likely talk about it.

39.Get a custom t-shirt made with your website url on it, and wear it often.

40.Build a list of subscribers. Your list is like a golden asset to you if utilized correctly.

41.Write tip articles, such as “Ten easy tips to blank-blank-blank.”

42.Buy traffic from the search engines by utilizing one of their PPC campaigns.

43.Open up a myspace account and find targeted friends so that you can promote your services to them. Do not spam people, myspace is cracking down on spammers and are starting to sue people.

44.Solicit a link from your local chamber of commerce.

45.Have an easy to remember domain name. If your domain name is too long or not memorable then people may forget your site.

46.Add a bookmark option to your website/blogs.

47.Purchase the misspelled versions of your domain name and have it redirect to your main one.

48.Use keywords in your image alt tags. For example,

49.Make sure to include appropriate keywords in your title tag, search engines show more prominence or importance to keywords here.

50.Place appropriate keywords in your anchor text when linking.

51.If you have a profile anywhere online, always include appropriate keywords and link back to your website.

52.Try to get links from websites within your niche with a high pr (pagerank). Some The more one-way links (inbound links/backlinks) you have to your website, the higher your pr will become. Pagerank is important because websites with higher prs tend to have a higher search results in Google. It is a no brainier that if you can get number one for a competitive keyword then you will have enough traffic that you can handle… oh by the way its all free targeted traffic to remind you.

53.Outsource grunt work. Time is in essence money…. you can hire individuals at freelance services to send emails, request JV proposals, or to answer questions from prospective or current customers.

54.Offer something for FREE. Abracadabra is not the magic word, FREE is. It is like a worm on a pole for a fish in the water…. its bait! Offer a free mini course or free ebook to help collect more subscribers. You can always offer a backend to monetize on this opportunity, such as an affiliate product for example.

55.After someone orders from you offer a one-time offer that compliments your product. For example, if I offered a traffic ebook, then after the individual purchase it would make sense for me to offer a traffic conversion bonus for a limited time only.

56.Become the virus within your niche. Make yourself the bug and have people talking about your product. When people talk about your product then you can induce the viral effect. However, you must give people a reason to talk about you, and being like everyone else is not one.

If you own a website for your business, attracting website traffic and more importantly sustaining it will be one of your top priorities if you want to succeed in your home business. Needless to say, there are many ways to increase website traffic. You do need to find the best strategies of learning how to tap this traffic, hopefully a growing one at that, perhaps self-replicating stream and preferably free.

This article provides some ideas to increase online traffic.

(1) Search Engine Optimization

It would benefit your business to ensure that your website is search engine friendly as this will certainly help grow your website traffic. Ensure all the meta and alt tags are completed and there is a H1 header, optimizing the text for your chosen keywords. There are a number of sites which provide a “spider simulation” which shows you what your site looks like to a spider and what you can do to improve its search engine ranking. A report on the quality of your website is generated for your view and to take necessary steps for improvements.

(2) Directories

Directories are website listings and there are many to choose from. A good method to choose a reputable one would be to look for directories that have a good traffic rating, one that receives significant high volumes of website traffic (use Alexa). A few good examples to start this would be Yahoo and DMOZ.

(3) Traffic Exchanges

Every website you view in a traffic exchange generates credits which are exchanged for views of your own site. Most Traffic Exchanges are free to join and they generate traffic for you almost instantly. There are basically two types of exchanges, manual surf and auto surf. The manual surf exchanges are preferred as they require the person to view and click the sites. The more sites you view the more people visit your website and the more your website traffic grows. To increase web traffic even further, join a few of them so as to generate more visitors, which can help in your page ranking too.

(4) Article Writing

One of the most time consuming but effective methods of increasing search engine traffic. Most of these article directories offer this service free. Ensure that your article is optimized for keywords and that you include your website url bio line at the bottom of the article before you submit. Ezines, Magazines, Business Blogs, and webmasters are always on the lookout for good content to include in their articles as they are also in the quest for better search engine rankings. This method is very effective in getting one-way back links to your site.

(5) Blogs

There are more than 10 blog platforms to choose from. High on this list are word press and blogspot. Ensure your blog is located on your site, and check that it links to your key pages and that you ping each time your blog is updated. Search engines favor sites with frequently changing, unique content so you will need to provide regular updates to your blog. A regularly updated blog will attract readers which in turn builds and increases website traffic.

(6) Forum Marketing

Join a few good forums so that you can leave your URL in them. This will increase traffic in two ways. Firstly, people who read your posts are likely to click the link to checkout your site. Secondly search engines will generally accept the link which adds up to your link popularity. Another benefit of joining these forums is also to learn from other experienced and successful marketers. You’ll be surprised at their willingness to share their knowledge with you.

(7) Viral Advertising

If you have an idea and you tell 10 people and they each tell 10 people and so on, by the time the idea goes through 10 levels it has been passed on to a million people.

You can use this similar principle as your business marketing strategy too. If you produced a free report or ebook filled with links back to your site and gave it away, the chances are those you gave it away to would do the same thing. Your links would then multiply significantly over the Internet giving a viral effect and your website traffic will grow.

(8) Reciprocal Links

They are also called link exchange and link swapping. Webmasters hope that people will click on their link in other websites thereby generating website traffic. However, be selective in who you do reciprocal links with. Always ensure that your link partner is relevant to your business niche and preferably has good Page Ranking. This strategy is one of the very best ways of generating free, targeted website traffic. It also is highly rated by search engines

(9) Classified Ads

Before the web came along, if you wanted to advertise you would turn to the newspaper “classified” section. Classified ads didn’t die with the web, they just went online. One of the most popular classified sites is Craigslist.com. This can be a powerful tool for getting search engines to notice your site and send you traffic.

(10) PPC Marketing

PPC stands for “Pay Per Click” and is one good way to increase traffic into the website you are promoting. Google’s Adwords program is one of the most successful PPC engines. You buy ads from Google by writing an ad and bidding on keywords to determine how much you will pay when someone clicks your ad. This is a powerful tool to advertise your product or webpage to millions of people who access the Internet at very low bid.

It’s a common problem: your website has cost you time and money, and now its just sitting there in cyberspace looking pretty and doing nothing much else. You need more website traffic! So what can you do to turn things around and not only make your site pay for itself, but get it to give your business a decent boost?

There are a lot of ways to get more website traffic, but the very first thing you need to do with an under-performing site is to check that the basics are in place. If you’re building a brand new site you can do it right from the start.

First, are you using the best keywords? Keyword research is the very foundation of getting more website traffic. It will give you a whole list of phrases people are using to find sites just like yours. You’ll see how many searches there are for each keyword or key phrase, and how many other sites you’re competing against for that phrase. Ideally you’re looking for phrases with a high number of searches and low competition.

Do a related terms search as well, to find search terms that are related to your seed word, but that don’t contain it. For example, a related terms search on “concrete” may turn up “cement” and “render”. You’ll probably find some jewels that you can do a vertical search on and find a whole lot more relevant key phrases.

The more keywords you uncover, the more chance you have of finding those elusive ones with low competition but high demand that you can rank highly for.

I recommend using a subscription keyword tool for the best results (you do seriously want more website traffic don’t you?) but if you’ve never used a keyword tool before try out a free one first.

Fundamental number two is to write useful content. When you search the web you’re looking for information, right? So are your potential customers. Give them that information and give them plenty of it. You’ll find it much easier to get a high search engine ranking and more website traffic, and the visitors you get will be more likely to deal with you.

You’ll know what to write about from your keyword research, and from your own industry knowledge. What are the questions your customers always ask you?

Fundamental number three is to optimize your page for the search engines. Each page should be focused on one keyword, and you need to put “hooks” throughout your page so that the search engines know what it is about.

The keyword should be used in the page filename, title, the meta description, the page heading, and sprinkled through the text. Most experts say the keyword should be around 1-3% of the content. Try to use it in a text link as well.

Don’t go overboard with the use of the keyword or the search engines may see it as spam and actually lower your page rank.

Incoming links, usually called back links, are another essential part of getting a high ranking and more website traffic. Search engines see quality back links as a vote for your site. The more votes you have, the higher your ranking. Not all back links are created equal though. The best link is a one way link from a related authority site, and from a page with not many other links on it. The worst is a reciprocal link from an unrelated low quality site, with the link to your site buried on a page with hundreds of others.

When your site has about twenty pages of good content, start submitting it to relevant directories for a good one way link, and join a quality link exchange program for good reciprocal links. Don’t join link farms or exchange links with trashy sites.

Having a high search engine ranking is not much good if no-one clicks through to your site. By writing an appealing title and meta description you can double or triple your click through rate. They should both contain your keyword, and they should also be written as an ad for your page.

Look at other titles and descriptions on the search engine results page and see what would get you to click through. Don’t copy, but use them for inspiration. Try a few variations of your own, and you should be able to come up with something that will boost your click through rate and get you more website traffic.

So if your website traffic isn’t where you want it, go back to your site and check the basics. If they’re not right you now know what to do.

Every internet marketer knows how important it is, to create massive amount of back links to the websites or blogs. If you struggle to find a method to get quick results for your business, then I got a quick way to create a simple strategies for getting more back links to your business websites.

So The Strategy in a Nutshell is This…

You have to create what I call “satellite sites” using free web2.0 sites that link back to my money site (money site = the site that earns you money). “Satellite sites” are what I call websites that I create and own and position to link to my main site for the sole purpose of driving traffic and increasing rankings.

Any web 2.0 site that allows you to put up a free page, blog or website and insert content such as text, video, links and images will work for creating these satellite sites. I take advantage of these properties to provide myself relevant 1-way back links that get spidered by google immediately and often. Using this strategy your website will get indexed quickly and spidered often by google.

So now that you know the overall strategy here is a short outline of the steps. We need to make sure the “Satellite sites” that we are going to be creating do not get flagged as spam and pulled down, Therefore we need to build them with some careful thought. We need to add real quality content (this is key to not being flagged as spam) and focus your satellite site around 1 specific topic that is related to your main site (don’t pre-sell your main offer here! That is a sure fire way to get your satellite site flagged and deleted)

I don’t hire writers to create this content since these are not my primary money making sites, I just need the content to be good and passable, not impressive. I use a few different options to find suitable content. For example I will take an article from ezine articles.com and also add 2 videos from you tube + a few links to related content on an authority site like wikipedia, Yahoo or CNN.

Free Content Sources:

1.Yahoo Answers – grab questions and answers to use as content.

2.Wikipedia – The content in wikipedia is free to be copied as long as you state attribution to the source.

3.Private Label Articles (PLR) – you might already have a ton of PLR articles on your hard drive that you can use for this… use them as is or mix and match sentences and paragraphs from multiple articles into a new unique article.

4.Ezinearticles.com – grab articles from here. These articles are free to republish as long as the original authors source box stays in tact.

5.News Stories – grab news stories from RSS feeds.
Youtube.com and expertvillage.com – Video makes great content for these satellite sites!

Paid Content Sources Options:

*Answer Analyst Software – Research topics for articles fast
*Instant Article Wizard – Write articles and research them fast
*Hire a Writer – You can pay any where from $1 – $25 for an article depending on the quality.
*Private label rights Articles (PLR)

Each of the websites below allow you to build a full blog, website, or page on their site for free. So that is what we will do…making sure to provide good, useful, relevant content while helping ourselves to free 1 way links.

Below are just the 6 sites you can use:

Word Press Blog

Hubpages

Weebly Com

Ning Com

Squidoo

Blogger Com

Don’t add the same content to each site. Take the articles that you have acquired in the first step and add 1 or 2 Articles to each blog, website or page that you create. Add images if you can. Put 2-3 links to your website within the article body (use your keywords). Deep link to 1 page on your website (only where applicable). Use different articles and images for each site.

Make it look very good and not spam my or it may get flagged and deleted.
These free pages are not pre-sales pages so don’t make them into a pitch feast for your affiliate offer. Make them more informative. If your blog is about Acai berry and drives traffic to a CPA offer. Don’t make the free web page about Acai Berry too. Make your free web page about Weight loss and include an excerpt about the Acai berry got it? Add 1 or 2 external links to websites other than your own in each blog, website or page that you create (very important). Embed videos, or links to related content on other authority sites. So your new blog page should now have…

*An article
*A link or 2 to your site
*2 or more related links to videos,
*news or articles on other authority sites,
embedded videos and images where possible.

Know What You Are Thinking… “Boy This is a Lot of Work”! And yes it is… getting back links is very tedious work that is why I personally outsource the tasks.

The bottom line for success with any online business is having the ability to attract targeted website traffic. The more targeted traffic that you get, the higher your success rate will be. Many opportunities are available online for a website to get visitors that you need to your sites, however, the visitors that will count the most need to be targeted.

One of the best ways to get the visitors your site needs is by providing quality content. The driving force behind the internet is information and after all, that’s what its original purpose was designed for. All you need to do is follow through with a marketing method that provides good content that will attract the targeted website traffic that you need.

It is important to remember that any content that you provide remains relevant to the theme of your site, this will help to supply you with targeted website traffic. It also doesn’t matter what your content is written for, whether it be your website, blog or articles it all helps in getting promotional coverage for your online business. Also, you can always improve your rate of targeted traffic by writing better content which will help persuade people to visit your site.

One of the best things that will help to get your content noticed is the correct use of keywords. Good keyword placement is vital with any content that is used online. Using good keywords and keyword phrases within the content that you have published online will make it easier for that information to be found.

Keyword research is part of any search engine optimization strategy. Using the proper keywords for your content is not hard, but in order for you to be successful at it; you will need to spend time on keyword research. Finding the right keywords that work for your theme is not something that happens overnight, in fact, keyword research is something that is consistently performed, especially if you want to receive targeted traffic.

The key point that you must focus on with any keyword research is target. Your main emphasis is to concentrate on key phrases that are used by people who are searching for specific information that relates to your offer. These key phrases or keyword phrases are what you will need within your published content that will get you a better placement with the search engines.

Having a stronger search engine results placement with your content will definitely increase targeted website traffic for you. Grabbing the attention of traffic that is targeted is probably the main point or the primary focus of any successful online business.

Using Social Media sites the right way can bring in large amounts of traffic very quickly to your sites. NOT using them correctly can KILL your business.

Today in the world of Web 2.0, Social Media sites are one of the most important sources of traffic for your online business. These are sites that people go to on a regular basis & hang out. People set up profiles & make them personal by adding photos, writing blog entries on their own pages & making comments on their friend’s pages. Examples of these communities are Facebook & MySpace.

What is the right way to use these sites?

The best way to use these types of sites is by signing up & generating a profile, read the TOS (Terms of Service) to find out what can & can’t be done on the site, spend some time in the site watching what others are doing & then do the same.

For example, lets say you sign up to Facebook. What are the others doing? Well they are adding photos, “updating their status”, posting comments on their friends “Walls”. Before you can post on your friends “Walls”, you’ve got to first GET some friends.

Facebook has a way when you’re signing up, that you can import your email address list & find contacts that are part of the Facebook community already. You can then use this to invite people to be your friend. There is also a search function where you can search for friends by name.

After you’ve invited a friend & if they accept your invitation, then you will be able to communicate with them by posting messages on their wall as well as lots of other ways.

If you’re using Facebook to make business contacts, you may be thinking that inviting as many friends as possible is the best way to grow your business. You can get a couple hundred people quickly & then you can start pitching to them. How would you react if you received a friend invite one day, accepted & then got bombarded with offers from this person right away?

You would probably be angry. You might block this person from being able to communicate with you in the future. You might even contact Facebook to complain. If FaceBook believes that you’re spamming, then they will remove you from their site and they have every right to.

So the trick is to spend a small amount of time at these sites, watch & then do what the other members are doing. Then submit some great quality content to these sites slowly.

Now if you’re anything like me, you’ve a lot of tasks to complete on your “to-do” list everyday that will make it difficult to spend all this time in these Social Media sites.

You don’t have to worry about that now because I have found this simple to follow step-by-step video guide called “Social Traffic Explosion” that will save you hours of your valuable time by explaining how to sign up & generate the perfect Facebook & MySpace profile pages.

You will also learn techniques that show you the proper way to use Facebook, MySpace, Twitter & social bookmarking sites to get loads of traffic to your site without looking like a spammer.

http://www.NewSocialTrafficing.com

Generating traffic means getting potential customers to visit your Web site. This obviously is a must if you want to have a successful business on-line.

Bringing internet traffic your way can pose as quite an intimidating challenge, as you are competing with millions and millions of other Web sites for attention. Moreover, new sites are being launched pretty much every day. Simply creating a nice site and getting it published won’t automatically attract customers. New and smaller sites are always vying for attention with mammoth, internationally known Web sites.

These large, well established sites have the advantage over the new and little guy because of how search engines such as Google, Dogpile and MetaCrawler rank the order of sites listed under any given search term. When people perform searches under terms like: gardening ‚resumes‚ or ‚fishing supplies search engines compile pages of relevant sites and ranks them based on popularity.

Knowing this, you can see how such sites as Wikipedia, ebay or Amazon would appear well before yours. If your site is really small or really new, if may not appear under a search term for dozens of pages, where few if any Web surfers will ever find you.

Relying solely on search engine ranking isn’t the only way to generate traffic to your site, thank goodness. Experiment with different approaches for helping people to find your site. The following are three ways to accomplish that goal:

Engage in link exchanges with other non-competing Web sites: Your search engine ranking improves (you appear on an earlier page under specific search terms) when you have other sites link into yours. Adding their links to your site helps the other site owners, too. Find sites with information or products that go well with yours, and suggest exchanging links. Another way to get your URL on other sites is to initiate a blog on one of the blogging sites (two of which are blogger.com and blogspot.com), including a link to your site in each blog entry.

Write free articles for other sites: Many Web owners seek to keep the content on their sites fresh, or send out e-mail newsletters (known as e-zines) to regular customers that subscribe to them. In exchange for providing them with free material they can use, these site owners will allow you to include your Web site information within or at the end of the article, which can lead people from their site to yours.

Use traditional advertising methods: Tried-and-true ways for getting word out about your Web site include placing television and radio ads, handing out business cards and fliers with your URL on them, or giving away items such as pens, water bottles or refrigerator magnets that include your Web address. These techniques are not for brick and mortar businesses alone.

Redirected Domain Web site Traffic: This choice is the simplest of the group. It requires tiny amounts of work and it really does get your web site unique visitors fast. To sum it up, you don’t need to work real hard to build links, or even lift a finger. If you pick a trusted traffic dealer, you will be seeing real unique visitors showing up at your website. You will be utilizing their websites popularity to get your site visitors, it is a great way for any webmaster to get some real traffic. Please read on for our company recommendations.

In summary, use a variety of tactics to publicize your Web site and its URL. It makes sense that the more traffic you generate to your site, the more potential sales you will generate as well.

Have you ever considered of borrowing traffic from those who already have it to get targeted website traffic? Do you know that you can actually borrow traffic especially from people who already have lists of loyal subscribers or traffic?

In this “borrowing traffic” method, ‘endorsed mailings’ and ‘reciprocal linking’ with other people are the 2 fastest ways to borrow someone else’s traffic. If they already have a list of subscribers, get them to email to their lists asking their subscribers to check out your website. This is known as ‘endorsed mailings’. On the other hand, ‘reciprocal linking’ means asking the other party to place your link on their web pages. The objective is to enable visitors who visit their website to also click on your link. Imagine the traffic you could get if someone with a list of 10,000 loyal subscribers told their people to check out your website.

Now, you may be wonder why would anyone who already have a list of loyal subscribers “lend” their traffic to you. Well, of course, that doesn’t come for free. If you want their favour, you need to offer them something in return. You can either pay these people a commission for lending you the traffic, do a similar mailing for them, provide them a reciprocal link on your website, or better still, offer them a combination of these three in return for the borrowed traffic.

You can also get targeted website traffic by turning a one-time visitor into your regular and repeat visitor. You can do this by getting your website visitors to sign up for your mailing list, newsletter, autoresponder, or mini-program. By keeping their email contacts, you then keep in touch with them with regular emails, articles, reports or information enticing them to visit your or other people’s websites.

One of the main selling points of SEO is that it can drive high amounts of traffic to a website by selecting targeted, high traffic keywords. During keyword research, a tool called Wordtracker (and another one called Keyword Discovery) can be used to find out how many users type in specific keywords each day. When conducting research, you can enter targeted root terms paired with the desired locations, or root terms and locations alone, and Wordtracker brings back results on the terms you typed in, as well as any related terms that have traffic.

When Wordtracker pulls up results, there is a count score and a predict score. The count score represents the number of times the search query was typed into the search engines Wordtracker tracks each day. Wordtracker’s database includes the following search engines:

1. Google
2. Yahoo
3. Msn
4. Aol
5. Ask
6. Altavista
7. Excite
8. Lycos

These search engines represent over 90 percent of searches.

The predict score estimates how many times this search query would be typed into all search engines each day

When we selecting keywords to target on your website, try to select terms that have good amounts of traffic. However, not all keywords have traffic, especially when a business is in a smaller city. For example, “cosmetic surgery carlsbad” does not pull up any results in Wordtracker. But suppose the business wants this location targeted in the website because his/her practice is in Carlsbad. In this case, you can make sure that the location and root term are getting traffic individually and then create a combined keyphrase.

Keep in mind that any keyphrase with an actual traffic score will always be a better term than a combined term. However, you can’t always choose all of the terms that have full keyphrase results.

In the world of online marketing, an enormous amount of attention is given to the subject of “improving” website traffic. This emphasis seems to be put in the right place, considering the central role traffic plays in any online marketing campaign. But despite the popularity of the subject, it would be difficult to find two Internet marketers that share the exact same idea of what it actually means to “improve” website traffic.

Every marketer has a solid feeling for what it means. But by failing to ask, in detail, what it actually means to improve traffic, too many online marketers miss out on the benefits that come form a deeper understanding of effective website-traffic improvement. Effective and lasting traffic improvement has multiple layers. And by looking at what it means to “improve” website traffic at each layer, an overall view of traffic-improvement becomes much clearer.
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At its most basic, “improving” website traffic means bringing more traffic to a site. At this level, it’s a question of numbers and not much more. Bringing more people to a website is an essential part of traffic-improvement – it lays a solid foundation. But even though it’s central to every online marketing campaign, it should not be seen as the final goal.

At a slightly higher level, improving website traffic means making the flow of traffic to a site as regular as possible: Getting new traffic is good. But regularly getting new traffic is even better. Traffic like this shows signs of sustainability and it’s the type of traffic that a business can start to be built upon.

At the next level, improving website traffic means making the regular traffic of a site as targeted as possible. This targeting has a positive effect on traffic because it raises the overall quality of the traffic. Targeted traffic is made up of people that are genuinely interested in what is being offered. They are more likely to respond to offers; and because of this, they improve traffic by improving its responsiveness. Ten highly-targeted leads will always be more profitable than a hundred luke-warm leads.

At its highest level, improving website traffic means reaching traffic at the right stage in the buying cycle. The buying cycle has three main stages: browsing, gathering information, and ready-to-purchase. In the browsing stage, people are looking to see what’s available. In the information-gathering stage, they are weighing the pros and cons of particular options. And in the ready-to-purchase stage, they have already decided what to buy and are looking for the best deal.

It’s important to draw traffic that is at the information-gathering stage because this is the stage where choices are being made. If traffic is reached earlier in the cycle at the browsing stage, it’s difficult to make enough of an impression for the site to be remembered later on. If traffic is reached later, at the ready-to-purchase stage, it’s too late – potential customers have already decided what to buy. Reaching traffic at the right stage in the buying stage is a very effective traffic-improving step that is often overlooked. And it has the potential to greatly increase the performance of a site.

By being aware of what it means to “improve” website traffic at each of the four levels mentioned above, serious online marketers will give themselves a clearer idea of what it really means to improve overall website traffic. They’ll be able to easily judge where they are in the traffic-improving process. And, more importantly, they’ll be able to see in which direction they should head to reach the next level. The long term effects can only be positive.