Top 5 ways to attract traffic

[skyjoe76]

Top 5 Ways To Generate Low Cost Website Traffic


There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and these results to the sites demise. It takes money to maintain an income generating site; it also takes money to make money.

BUT, it doesn’t take a whole caboodle of cash to generate website traffic for your site.

Ever wonder how does big hit sites drive traffic top their site? Most of them are spending tons of money to drive the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and gimmickries. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now, high earning, big hitting websites.

You don’t have to do this if you don’t really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don’t have or can’t afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their shirt over it.

Here I present to you the Top five ways to generate low cost website traffic that could help your site a whole lot. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in to client ratio it still works especially if you get a high number of website traffic.

Exchange Links

This is a sure and proven method. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You’ll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic in your website without the high costs.

Traffic Exchange

This is like exchanging links but on a different higher level. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links but could be made cheaper because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when viewing others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are the viewing of another’s site or page. This is done vice versa where a site can use your sites contents and so can you to his or her site. You both benefit from each others efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. Once again the public awareness of your sites existence is boosted.

Write and Submit Articles

There are many e-zines and online encyclopedias in the internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can do the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money, it is wise to do those articles yourself.

Write articles that are themed along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site has.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.

Make a Newsletter.

This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in on your newsletter. This will also provide free advertising for them as well.

As your newsletter gets pass around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list that can regularly visit your site.

Join Online Communities and Forums

This only requires your time and nothing else. You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities as well as your website. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site.

Share your two cents and let them see how knowledgeable you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

[mbm]

Originally Posted by skyjoe76

Exchange Links
...
A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic...

Although, this is one of the basic rules, I always wonder about the competition aspect in exchanging links with other web sites in the same niche. Is not it almost like "You can't find what you are looking for on our site?! Go visit our competitor then."

I do agree everything written above about the link exchange, but just wondering how the other web masters and web site owners feel about the competition aspect.

[cbscreative]

Originally Posted by mbm

Although, this is one of the basic rules, I always wonder about the competition aspect in exchanging links with other web sites in the same niche. Is not it almost like "You can't find what you are looking for on our site?! Go visit our competitor then."

I do agree everything written above about the link exchange, but just wondering how the other web masters and web site owners feel about the competition aspect.

The solution here is to be related, not competing. If you sell coffee, link to donuts (and maybe police associations). Seriously though, you may not need to seek out a lot of links. One way links are better anyway. If you have useful content, the links will come after you do other things right.

Also, the above post does not emphasize building a good site with useful content. That is the most important starting point, it serves as the foundation for all your other efforts.

Traffic exchanges can be dangerous. If you provide bandwidth sucking traffic that is not targeted to your site, you get a busy traffic jam with no sales. You pay for this bandwidth whether you sell or not. Promising huge swarms of traffic is a defining characteristic of many scams. Not only are they a waste of money, you could risk getting blacklisted by search engines.

[TinkBD]

I work with independent retailers in a couple of personality driven nano niches.

At this point, we are finding that a blog (WordPress on a domain ...not hosted by WP) works VERY well.

Most of my clients are pretty clueless about SEO, web sites etc, but they do understand that they should be doing SOMETHING!

They do have the marketing edge in that these niches are already *personality driven* and so blogging is a perfect match.

The functionality of WP and the ability to post in advance means that they can do this, even when time is tight. I have helped them tweak WP to improve SEO and I try to guide them to plan out their bloggging to tie in with what is going on in their shops and within their industries.

I am just now starting to organize some experiments going outside of the industry niches, but targeting the demographics displayed by their customers and engaging other interests their customers have which tie-in with large online search categories.

So far, things are looking encouraging.

So... my seemingly endless point is, in the right circumstances, blogging can be another effective way to generate low cost (free) traffic! LOL

Tink

[eborg9]

Different methods work for different companies, and different industries.

The best point made is, many people search high and wide, and spend lots of money to find that method which is going to work for them, and most of the time it's useless because, what they really lack is a good product.

Product development and content are the first of many steps to any successfull venture.

If your product is not that great, nothing will help it.
On the other hand, I have seen great products fail, because of lack of leadership.
It all is part of the big picture. You have to tweak it constantly.
The largest companies in the world are constantly in a stage of development to figure out what people want, and need, and the best way to sell it to them.

[jdaik]

Originally Posted by skyjoe76

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results.

Although it's always hard to prove most SEO methods, from what I''ve read over the past year is that link exchanges, even if they're related, carry very little weight now in Google due to abuse. Of coarse they work great for traffic...

Your point of having related inbound and outbound links is a good one, but for SEO purposes, it's best for them to be non-reciprocal.

[rootzero]

I think another good point to make is that it's not just about gaining traffic to a site but gaining targeted traffic. I would rather have 50 people interested in my products then a 1000 people uninterested. Besides the SEO factors having a link from a webpage with relevant content is going to increase the chance anyone landing on your link will be interested. With social media sites and bookmarking services popping up left and right it's never been easier to submit your content. The question is do you have the right content to bring in the crowd.

[vangogh]

Andrew is exactly right in that it's targeted traffic you want and not just traffic. Would you rather have 10 people visit your site with one of them buying or 1000 visitors with one of them buying.

I'll go for the 10 visitors.

jdaik is also right in saying that link exchanges aren't going to carry as much weight as they once did. At least with Google most irrelevant exchanges are just seen as a way to maipulate search ranking and won't count for anything. If you do too much link exchanges with unrelated sites it can also cause Google to spider your site less often and even cause your pages to go into the supplemental index.

If you're going to exchange links with another site just think whether the people visiting that site would have interest in yours. If they would then the exchange is probably fine, but if they wouldn't then it's not worth the time.

Also if you have the typical 'links' page on your site with links to lots of sites that have nothing to do with yours you may as well get rid of it now. It's quite possibly doing more harm than good.

[Sparky1]

I have recently heard about Social bookmarking. supposedly it works like a hot damn but is kinda on the black hat side. any comments???

[vangogh]

Well for one social bookmarking is not at all a black hat kind of thing. I'm not at all sure where you got that. It's also not something that's a quick fix cure all.

The idea is that you create good content on your site and people who like it bookmark it at sites like del.icio.us or Digg it or save it in some way at any of these sites.

You do your part by making it easy for them to bookmark your pages. You add the links and buttons that are becoming common at a lot of blogs.

You can also participate on those sites by bookmarking and digging useful pages, not just your own. No different than being on a forum you want to really participate in the community and not just push your own pages. If you do create a profile and do bookmark pages that others are finding valuable then when you do bookmark one of your better pages they'll likely check it out.

More though is creating the content that others would want to share and making it easy for your content to travel.

Here's a post I wrote on Social Media Optimization (SMO) with links to a lot of the orignal ideas on the subject. Like I said though it's not another quick fix idea. Like everything in seo and marketing your site it takes hard work.