Great website! You have done your work, now how to get traffic
flowing to your site. A stampede of visitors sounds very good
doesn’t it? A beautiful site without traffic is dead. A little
secret I have learnt on my journey is that some poorly developed
sites get great traffic and you ask how they do it?
Traffic comes from various sources, the main one being the
search engines. We can examine the ways to get traffic and the
inherent drawback if it is not done properly.
1. Search engines
These are the major way to get traffic. By submitting your site
to Google and yahoo, you have set the ball rolling to getting
great traffic. But often times ( and this is the part the SEO
fail to tell you) , submitting your site means just that
submitting.
First, it make takes weeks and months to get your site indexed
by the major engines. So in the meanwhile get busy submitting to
all the other engines you can , you stand a greater chance of
being indexed and listed.
When you do get indexed by the major engines unless you are a
niche marketer and or your site is well optimized and able to
keep up with the ever changing algorithmic rules of the engine,
you will not rank too highly.
Not ranking highly affects how many traffic you get. After all,
how many people search through results to #3,876,456, and trust
me that is a real page rank number. So maybe its time to look at
other options if the search engines fail you the first time
around.
2. Linking
Who’s linking to you. Linking plays an important role in
determining your page rank. How important is still the subject
of debate. The fact is there are two types of link techniques
considered by the engines. One way back links and reciprocal
links. Now which one is better is also a hot topic, but it might
just be that one way incoming links to your site has more
weight. At least with the search engines current logarithms.
That does not mean reciprocal linking does not work, and in fact
since it is easier to get, might be your initial starting point
with links.
Whichever method you choose, ensure that you link to reputable
sites and avoid site with a lower pr value than yours. Make sure
the content on the site is relevant to yours as it gives added
boosts to your sites ratings.
One quick way to get links is from link partners wherein an
automated system is set up to link subscribers. There are
monthly fees, and be advised that to pay large amounts of money
to persons who will just use a link farm to produce your links
makes no sense. If you are going to use it make sure you keep
your monthly cost down.
While this methods of garnering links works well, there is talk
that the engines are not looking favourable on it. But then
again there is always talk. The trick is to keep you eyes and
ears open for new developments with the search engines.
At the end of it all, can you get traffic from the link method
you will choose?. If so, then choose what works for you. If
there was one magic and correct way, then there would not be so
many self help books on SEO and search engine algorithms. They
are many sites who do not rank high on the search algorithms but
do quite well because they get their traffic from link partners.
3. Buy Traffic
When all else fails or like many in addition to, you can
purchase traffic. Simply enter web traffic into Google and see
the results. There are both free and paid traffic hosts.
The free ones are quite good if you have the time to view
someone else’s’ site, and I have personally used some and have
tracked the stats. But sometimes it takes viewing up to 5 sites
to get one visitor to you. Another drawback can be that the
person only want enough credits so that they can get their own
visitors, so they do not really visit your site as so as to
check your merchandise, they simply load your page. This does
not help you sell.
Traffic sites sell traffic to you as country specific, global,
targeted and untargeted. The more targeted the visitor the more
likely your chance to convert into a purchasing customer. The
cost of the traffic package will vary depending on the type of
traffic bought. Do not spend unnecessarily high amounts on
traffic that may very well be an automated system ‘visiting’
your site. Do your research of these sites carefully before
buying plans. Keep the amount low and if necessary spend it
around different traffic sites. it is less like that you will
lose all your money that way, and if one is ripping you off,
chances are(we hope!) not all of them will.