Web site traffic is essential to having a thriving online business. You cannot have enough web site traffic (visitors) unless it is the wrong traffic or you do not want to continue to build your business. Your chances of selling a product or service is proportional to the level of targeted and qualified web site traffic to your site. It is not an easy task getting the right kind of web site traffic to your site. You do not get this web site traffic without expending your time, energy and sometimes hard-earned money.
There are many different ways to generate traffic to your web site. The various web site traffic generating methods and strategies need to be researched, evaluated and implemented to determine which ones will result in increasing your web site traffic and hopefully the sales of your product or service.
Unfortunately, most web site traffic generators take time to produce a measurable result. The time required depends on the method and approach you take. It is easy to give up when the method or approach you take to generating targeted and qualified web site traffic to your site does not result in success.
Testing the different methods and approaches is essential to getting the illusive traffic to your web site. Whenever a method fails to deliver the results you want, try a different one. Keep trying different methods or approaches to generating web site traffic until you find the one that works for your web site.
Some of the more common methods of generating web site traffic include:
* Search Engine Optimization
It is no secret that search engines are the number one traffic generating method for driving visitors to web sites. Search engines are very useful in helping people find the relevant information they seek on the Internet. The major search engines develop and maintain their own gigantic database of web sites that can be searched by a user typing in a keyword or keyword phrase in the search box.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of studying the search engines in an effort to determine how to get your web site to rank high on user searches. Depending on the statistical information reviewed, search engines account for over 80% of the visitor traffic to web sites.
* Pay-Per-Click
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is when an advertiser pays for each qualified click that sends a search engine user (visitor) to the advertiser's web page. PPC requires the advertiser to bid on key words or key word phrases chosen by the advertiser. There are many PPC advertising services available to choose from. Google AdWords and Overture are probably the two most popular in use today.
The PPC search engine allows you to buy a top position in the search engine results for the particular keyword or phrase you choose. The PPC search engines can deliver targeted and qualified visitors to your web page at an economical advertising cost if you manage the program carefully with a clear objective. PPC provides the advertiser with assurance that their ad is being delivered to the targeted audience.
* Link Popularity
Link popularity is simply the total number of web pages that link to your web page. Link popularity is an extremely important factor that is used by most of the major search engines to rank web pages and web sites. In general, the major search engines consider link popularity a key factor in their algorithms to determine the relevancy of your web page to a particular keyword search query.
Good link popularity is important because it can increase the visitor traffic to your web page. The reputation of your web site (i.e., votes of confidence from other web sites) is a measure of the site's link popularity. Your web page rank (i.e., the position your web page occupies in a search engine's results page) to a particular search query can be improved by increasing the number of relevant and quality web sites that have incoming links to your web page.
* Other
The other strategies and methods that can increase the traffic to your web site include: directory listings, writing articles, newsletters, e-mail advertising, classified advertising and banner advertising. These methods should be considered along with the previous ones.
Which of the above methods are best for you? That's a loaded question and the answer resides in what you are willing to pay, in terms of time, energy and/or money, to get the right kind of traffic. You need to test, test and then test some more.
Copyright (C) F. Terrence Markle ? All Rights Reserved
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About The Author
Copyright (C) 2004 ? F. Terrence Markle has worked for over 20 years with public and private companies. He has an MBA in marketing and finance. He has been involved with Internet-related businesses for over 3 years. His primary focus is the marketing of affiliate programs.
tmarkle@quiksystems.com