INCREASING TRAFFIC

HOW TO INCREASE YOUR TRAFFIC

This post is a general guide of simplistic tips and programs proven to help sites build traffic.

First above all else is remember that content is the most important thing to building your traffic. If you don't give a new visitor a reason to come back to your site, then your traffic will never increase. So above all else keep your site updated regularly with QUALITY content.
This means you must have something original that only you can provide for the visitor or a unique way of providing said information.

Hence the saying among pro-bloggers "content is king".

Second most important thing in building traffic is SEO (search engine optimization).
It is true there are many blogs that get lots of traffic without quality seo, but this is harder to achieve and not guaranteed. You can start by creating meta tags and a sitemap. Next make sure to submit your site to the search engines so they know you exist. Then consult some seo sites for more detailed information.

Don't pay someone their is plenty of free information on the web on how to make your site search engine optimized.

Third your site needs to have a way for people to find it. If there is no way for a visitor to find your site then how do you expect to get more traffic? I often see sites with no link exchanges, no social media for sharing, and what? No traffic.

How can you change this.

Simple link exchange, submit articles, submit your feeds, and submit your sites address to search engines. You can submit your sites to search engines through many sites and for many directly at the search engine.

Don't over submit, I would recommend submitting your site once or twice a month. You can also use a pinger like totalping to tell search engines when you have updated to index your site faster. Putting a link anywhere you can helps whether it be in a signature in your email or in your forum posts (especially one way links to your site). Wiki's are also indexed regularly by search engines and are an easy way to get one way links into your site(very important for seo). Create a wiki about yourself with a link to your site and one about your site obviously linking to your site. Yahoo answers is another place to get good links to your site. You can look for questions relating to your topic and write a quick post that has the answer to the question within. Then reply to the question quoting your site as the source.

Surprisingly this works very well. The same concept applies to commenting at sites related to your topic. The best strategy I've found is to do a google search for do follow blogs/sites or better yet do follow directories. Then narrow it down to do follow sites that are in your category and have either page rank or high traffic.

Now your going to want to follow these sites for a couple months making regular comments that are helpful and relevant to the subject matter. By doing this you will get one way links to your site, expose your site to a new community of potential visitors that are related to your field and possibly get to know a webmaster that might be willing to either teach you more about marketing your site in that niche or link exchanging.

Signing your site up for every possible web directory, related top site and rss feed submission site is also a good idea. The more ways someone can find your site the better. One more clever way I've been exposed to is to make short video responses to popular youtube videos and have your url at the end of the video. This is like commenting on a forum but with a great chance of conversion.Fourth a very important step in getting more traffic is to make your site social. What do I mean by social. I'm referring to the social sharing communities such as digg, stumbleupon, facebook, yahoo buzz, reddit and many others.

You can make your site easier for your visitors to help spread the word by adding addthis.com or addtoany.com button to your site or several other sharing widgets. I also suggest you join some of these social communities and take advantage of the floodgates of traffic available. The best shared posts are generally top 10 posts, emotional posts, controversial opinion posts, or a highly knowledgeable and resourceful post.The fifth way to gain more traffic is to use traffic building programs and exchanges.

There are several forms of these exchanges. The most common are surf exchanges, banner exchanges, and text link exchanges. I will list some of the programs I have tried below and come to like.

Link Referral is one of my favorites because you get more targeted visitors to your site who may become actual visitors that will come back. Every visitor clicks on your site and can see the short description you write, they are not forced to come like other traffic exchanges. The way it works is you set up your page for their directory filling out a accurate description and categorize it. Your site is then put in the directory.

Listings are ordered based on tiered scale, involving how involved you are, how good the reviews you give, and how many referrals you have. To increase your ratings and move you up higher in your category you simply visit up to thirty sites a day and give up to 5 reviews a day(though reviews are optional). If you write a really good review someone may choose to post it on their site with your link. The longer you are a member and more referrals you get the higher you are naturally ranked.

Signing in daily boosts your ranking also.

Link Referral also has a search field that people can search using keywords. I get several visitors every week just on the keywords I set up, which isn't based on ranking. Any user can expect 20 to 70 (and growing as new members join) visits a day for 20 minutes or less of participation.

Link Referral also has a wonderful forum which users can use to get tips on several fields and also increases their ranking in the directory. Finally add in the fact that you can upgrade anytime in the future for a one time fee to make money off every referral future or past is the final selling point.