Increase Website Traffic

Every online entrepreneur I talk to is asking the same question, 'How do I increase my online sales, NOW?'

Online selling is essentially a numbers game. The more visitors to a site, the more sales that site will make. The number of sales made divided by the total number of visitors to a site is called the conversion rate. A typical site will have a conversion rate of between 1 and 2 percent, or 1 to 2 sales per 100 visitors.

It is obvious that if the number of visitors increases, and the conversion rate remains the same, then sales will increase. Traffic is the first variable that most online marketers attempt to influence when they begin their online marketing campaigns.

There are two basic problems with the increase traffic method. The first is that it is expensive to run advertising and improve a site's ranking in the search engines. The second, and subtler issue is that there is no guarantee that the conversion rate will remain constant.

Natural Link Building

internet_marketingIf you have a website, whether it is a blog or a business based, it is crucial to your online success that you know how to increase website traffic. In your search for this knowledge, you will encounter strategies that you either buy, like a PPC campaign, or that are free.

One useful, cost-saving strategy that is common amongst most website enthusiasts is natural link building. Natural link building is an important search engine optimization (SEO) technique that works most effectively when a highly-trafficked site provides an outbound link to another website. The more quality links a website has, the better the chance it has of ranking well in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

While natural link building can be quite laborious, it is one of the absolute best ways to maximize website traffic. The key to saving time and to obtaining successful results when link building is to remember that it is the quality, not the quantity, that really counts. These 5 easy tips will help you create links that can effectively increase traffic to your website.

Social Networking

If the onset of the Web 1.0 movement was characterized by the unprecedented growth of Internet commerce, the prime contribution of the Web 2.0 revolution is its unqualified faith in the Internet user to interact globally with other users in a clearly defined social context. ?
Regardless of whether it is 1.0, 2.0 or even the impending 3.0 which will usher in an age of lightening bandwidths and full motion video, there is no other way to increase website traffic besides embracing what technology has to offer us. Social networking web sites are one such outcome of current web technologies where users drive traffic and generate large visitor counts. This increases website traffic not only to these social networking sites but also to those web sites that are featured on these web pages.

Leveraging Business with Social Networking
The far-reaching success of customer communities on the world-wide-web has demonstrated that serious business relationships can be developed and sustained for mutual benefit on the Internet. It all started with MySpace, Facebook, Sphinn.  In a matter of a few months twenty million Internet users from around the world were talking to one another and generating increased website traffic on these sites. The business world perceived an opportunity in which the same web environment could be harnessed to develop business networks, generate warm leads and close sales to pre-sold buyers. Forums for online business networking that emerged to fill this sudden void included:

  • Linkedin.com
  • Ryze.com
  • Zoominfo.com
  • Tribe.net

And many other business networking web sites that are further defined by geography, SIC code and industry sector

Geo Targeted Content

Are you a local business owner with a website targeting a specific city or region?  Increasing local web traffic to your site should be at the top your list of priorities.  Increased web traffic means more business for your site and ultimately more money in your pocket.  Here are a few things to remember when trying to attain more web traffic through geo targeted content.  

You hear it all the time; content is king.  It seems like a simple task to put fresh content on your site but just any content won’t do.  It’s important to have keyword rich content that is engaging, interesting and purposeful.  

Finding relevant keywords should be your first focus.  Research what keywords are good for your business and implement them into some good content.  Try to stay away from one word phrases as those make it more difficult for you to obtain a higher ranking.  Focus on what words you would like to be known for and elaborate on them until you find some highly searched combinations that will specifically target your business and its goals.  

Once you have found some solid keywords that represent your business it’s time to put them into writing.  Creating good content is much more than slathering keywords all over the place as it seems as though this is what the search engines want but it’s actually the exact opposite.  Overstuffing articles with keywords does 2 things:

1.    Causes search engines to deem your articles as spam and hurts your ranking.
2.    Deters online users from reading because content is irrelevant and awkward.

Mobile Media

mobile-social-networkingFirst there was the PC. Then came the laptops, the PDAS and the digital assistants all of which eventually were conferred the Internet boon. Now that we have slowly but surely stepped into an era of GPRS, iPhones and Version Voyagers, the wireless mobile surfing experience has undoubtedly improved over the years with enhanced interfaces and an across-the-board attempt by the mobile industry to better understand mobile behavior. It has therefore become important for you to begin thinking about how your Internet property should better integrate with the online mobile experience to generate increased website traffic from mobile visitors.

If you believe that your customers are not going to visit you while searching on the Internet due to the miniature size of the keyboard, think again. There are more people typing on the keyboards of mobile devices today than on true blue qwerty computer keyboards because of the widespread and unprecedented popularity of Short Message Services or SMS. The number of subscribers who are comfortable using the keyboard on mobile devices continues to grow rapidly and it is precisely this customer segment of on-the-go prospects that you should aggressively target in 2008. It is human imagination and not technology that tends to impose limitations on expansion and growth.

Effective Link Management

Having a solid link building campaign is a crucial part of any search engine optimization project to increase web traffic on a site. Google places their greatest weight on link popularity because on-page elements can be manipulated quickly and easily. Both Yahoo and MSN also place importance on the anchor text and the quantity of incoming links, but not nearly to the level of Google.

Convincing quality, relevant sites to link to your site can be tedious, time-consuming and yes, very frustrating. Link building must be done carefully to avoid link spamming. When you are building links to increase your link popularity and increase web site traffic, to whom do we link? The question of where should we link to effectively increase our ranking can be a daunting and confusing task.

Our experienced and trained staff of SEO professionals will analyze the quality of each potential link partner to ensure the topic complements your website to achieve the utmost in link popularity in a natural and search engine friendly way. The bottom line is that our link building campaigns get results. Sign-up with TBS now to start building up your link popularity and generate targeted web traffic coming to your site!

Blogs

Blogs are powerful tools and can help you generate links and content. Blogs are just starting to come into their own as a corporate tool and in many cases, corporate blogs are still uncharted territory. Create an offsite blog but resist the temptation to post one or two highly self-promotional posts and a link. Again, your blog might help you get higher results in a search... but it won't help you convince your customers to buy from you!


Instead, decide on the scope of your blog and how regularly you're going to post and try to determine a potential value that a regular blog can have for your customers. A useable blog will create more links for you (as people link to your blog and your site) and it will create more sales!
These are just a few strategies you can use to help increase your site's presence on the Internet without sacrificing the quality and salesmanship you need to get people to buy from you!

Site Analytics

Web analytics provide a powerhouse of valuable data which can be harnessed by you to propel your website traffic figures in no time.
Do you know who is visiting your web site? Wouldn't it be great if you also knew from where they were arriving, how much time they were spending on your site, and most significantly, from which page they were departing from your web site and why?
Web analytics tools and real time web site tracking solutions have now made it possible for web masters as well as for those companies for whom a robust Internet presence is critical to success, to use this form of dynamic data to review performance, correct pitfalls and plan highly successful online marketing strategy.

Let us begin by first exploring site tracking and analysis terminology. Like every knowledge domain, site analytics has its own buzz words. It is important to understand these terms if you are looking at ways of increasing web site traffic to your piece of Internet property.

Improving Visitor Counts through Page Views

You have probably noticed this phrase in online marketing brochures where web sites proudly proclaim the large quantum of visitor traffic they have experienced on their sites. A Page View refers to the total views of every page on your web site. A Unique Page View is a page view by a unique person within a twenty-four hour period. Where as page view counts are site specific, unique page views are visitor specific. Both communicate important information about visitor behavior patterns and provide valuable insights into your search engine ranking-- parameters that are critical to increasing web site traffic.

Gauging Site Popularity through Hits


The reason why there is some confusion about this term is because it emanates from server technology and not from the art and science of visitor tracking and web analytics. A Hit merely refers to the number of information requests received by a hosting server. The number of hits is determined by the number of objects on a page. For example, if your home page has twenty-one objects, your site hosting server will record the page access as twenty-one hits. A word to the wise... It is best to use this statistic cautiously for what it is worth and not to be misled by inflated hit counts when implementing your online marketing plan designed at increasing web site traffic to your site.

Referrer or Visitor Source

A Referrer or Referring Link also known as the Visitor Source is a page which links to your web site. By looking at your referrers, it is possible to accurately identify the pages from where your site visitors are arriving. Visitors usually arrive from one of these three sources:

  • From another web site that has linked to your site
  • A search engine results page
  • Directly from a browser launch


Referral data is a gold mine of information to increase web site traffic because it clearly pinpoints the keywords or key phrases being used by searchers to arrive at your web site and the search engines that are sending you the traffic. You can use this data to conduct more targeted and meaningful keyword analysis, refine existing keywords and submit your site to search engines and directories where you are not listed. This data can also be used to further optimize the content of your web pages for improved search engine rankings (SERs).
If you are listed on a search engine such as MSN and begin to notice that you are receiving little or no traffic from that search engine, you can re-examine your web site to see if all the submission requirements are being fulfilled, make the changes and then re-submit to MSN. This method can go a long way towards increasing web site traffic from search engines with low traffic origins.