How to Increase Website Traffic to Your Online Business

Everybody involved in internet marketing has a need to increase website traffic to their website or blog. Apart from these two online platforms, there are also Squidoo lenses and social networking sites, and in order to achieve online success, it is essential that each gets as much traffic as possible.

However, given that the same principles apply to each, the information below applies to all of them. The first question, then, is what you must do to drive traffic to your site? While many find it easy to increase the traffic to their websites, others find promoting website traffic a mystery, and what we will try to do here is to introduce you to some of the less popular or little known traffic-generation techniques that can get you ahead of the bunch in terms of traffic to your site and product sales.

Here are some methods of promoting your website in order to increase website traffic and improve your sales figures. One fact is very easily understood: increased traffic = increased sales.  So here’s how to get increased traffic:

1.  Article Marketing

Write articles and submit them to article directories.  Pay particular attention to the best known directories such as Ezine Articles and Go Articles, the highest Google Page Ranked, such as Buzzle and also those that syndicate your articles out to other directories with which they have an association such as iSnare and Article Rich.  The latter two have an associated submission cost. Article marketing is now a common marketing technique, and is effective at getting you traffic in a number of different ways although these are beyond the scope of this article.

2.  Smart Pages

You can legally redirect traffic that has been attracted by a certain keyword to a website offering information related to that keyword. Thus, you can write a number of short articles as the content of web pages, each based on long-tail keywords related to your main website/product. Visitors that click on listings of these can then be redirected to your main website.

Listings of relatively unpopular keyword strings can easily get high up in the Google indices, and even though each may only get 20 – 30 visits each month or less, add up the traffic from 100 or more of such sites and it becomes significant. You can purchase software to do this: to direct traffic using one keyword to a general landing page. This is legal and not a ‘black hat’ technique.

3. Offline Advertising

If you are selling products related to a niche such as swimming, golfing or knitting, you can have a poster displayed on the notice board at your local swimming club, golf club or knitting club that displays your products and your website URL – or your telephone number. This type of advertising can be very effective and easily increase website traffic.

4.  Yahoo Answers

Check out Yahoo Answers and start answering questions on your niche.  Use your URL in your signature. Eventually you will be regarded as an expert in your niche and you will earn an increasing flow of traffic to your website. If there are no questions on your niche, then start a thread yourself.

5.  Google Images

Find some good images for your website and wait for them to be found by Google Images. This can also be a very lucrative way of attracting interested and targeted traffic to your website or blog. If you are great at photography or designing graphics, then this could be profitable for you.

6.  Facebook Fan Club

Gets your own Facebook fan club going – there are ways to arrange this, and a simple home-made video using your webcam can work wonders. Simply record yourself explaining your niche on video, and why you are instituting this Facebook page to offer help and advice to people interested in your niche.  This can frequently be the start of something big!

7.  Use your Imagination

Wherever or whenever you see or hear things being advertised, figure out how it might help you to do the same. How about local radio?  You can advertise your business on local radio if you have a service to offer – it’s not as expensive as you think.  Or scrutinize one or two of the online press releases. Use a Squidoo lens to support your niche.

All it takes it a bit of lateral thinking, and you will be liable to come up with an idea that will help you increase website traffic to your online business. Let people know your site exists and they will visit out of curiosity. Once they get there – well, that is up to you, but your first step should be to get their name and email address so if they leave the website you can contact them later with a fabulous offer.  Few make a sale on the first visit so make sure you can force them to make a second – or third, or . . .

Summary:  If you need to increase website traffic to your site or blog, then there are many well-known methods of doing this.  However, for you to lead the pack you must latch onto the less well-known traffic generation techniques that others will be unlikely to use, and hence get your nose ahead in the traffic stakes and practically guarantee your success.