9 Easy Ways To Build Traffic To Your Website

So, you have just created a wonderful site and now you need some targeted traffic so what are your options apart from the standard, usually expensive marketing channels available offline?

Internet Marketing is relatively cheap in comparison to TV, newspaper/printed or radio advertising and pretty much anything you can think of is now sold through the internet. So for this reason I’m going to explain some of the most effective internet marketing traffic channels that are available to you.

1. SEO and Link Building – Search Engine Optimization ensures that your website can be found in search engines for words and phrases relevant to what the site and its content are offering. Usually the higher a site ranks in a search engine for a specific word results in more visitors to your site for that keyword. Link building is equally as important and good links are vital but don’t sacrifice quality for quantity. 20 – 30 links from high ranking quality relevant sites to your page will have a much bigger influence on how your page ranks than thousands of low scammy links as sold by many SEO companies.Seek a professional company and meet in person if possible to discuss your plans. Unique site content with regular updates with good links are one of the main ingredients to successful rankings with second-guessing Google’s algorithm being akin to finding out the secret recipe of Coca-Cola or Colonel Harland Sanders secret KFC chicken recipe.

2. PPC Management – Pay Per Click advertising is offered by the main search engines where the advertiser pays each time their add is clicked on and the user is taken to the site. Advertisers bid on their specified keywords and then when someone searches the search engines place matching ads on the results page hopefully containing your ad. The difficulty is that with competitive sectors such as finance, advertisers are chasing the same keywords and so click pricing can be relatively high so it is imperative that your website is optimised to maximise conversions.

3. Affiliate Management/Network – The advertiser wants to sell a product or service online and affiliates have the tools to promote them such as website placement, email marketing, social media tools and many more traffic sources. The advertiser pays the affiliate for each time they pass a sale, lead or whatever specified action it may be. The advertiser also pays the affiliate network a fee which is mainly for acting as the connecting partner between the publisher and the advertiser this providing support to both parties. The network stores all the content for the affiliates to use and tracks the process from start to finish.

4. Banner Advertising – This involves placing a ‘clickworthy’ image on a partner’s site in a bid to entice users to click on the banner and be directed to your website. To get banners placed on high traffic volume sites with well-known brands can be expensive and so banner placement is often seen mainly as a brand exposure channel.

5. Free and Paid Directories site submissions for listing the site in relevant categories. Directories can be particularly effective for local advertising or advertising within a specific niche (e.g legal, medical, etc).

6. Online Magazines – Online magazines can offer significant traffic opportunities and provide an excellent opportunity to have your website shoved under the nose of potential customers and industry influencers alike.

7. Social Media – Since the explosion in popularity of social networking, websites like Facebook offer a great way to increase site and brand exposure by allowing your users to ‘like’ your Facebook business page with the possibility that the popularity of your page will lead to viral spread through other Facebook’s users with similar interests or requirements.

Also, social bookmarking websites like Digg and Reddit can offer excellent traffic potential providing you have interesting content that people want to read or see.

8. Blogs – A blog that’s informative, helpful and offers resources and tips will generate natural interest from internet users who may become regular visitors and even then link back to your website. A successful blog is reliant on quality content and is a great tool to enhance your website’s content, connect with potential customers and attract visitors to search other pages on your site.

9. Email Marketing – Building an email list of people who have visited your website in the past should be recommended for all websites. This allows you to market new products, promotions and news and give them a reason for visiting you again.

So, there you have it. If you can learn to master each of these disciplines of internet marketing you will get traffic! The only issue after (or actually, we recommend before ) that is to ensure that your website is able to convert visitors to completed the desired action.