Internet businesses can be very profitable, tapping the vast resource that is the World Wide Web. But it is not as simple as simply setting up a website or an online shop and watching the money come in! The importance of generating traffic for your website cannot be stressed enough, and almost all articles you will read about online success will agree.

Traffic generation should be planned along with the plan for the website itself, and should start as soon, or even before, the website itself is published online. The following are some surefire ways to increase your website traffic.

1) Invest in good advertisement with the popular search engines.

Google and Yahoo are the top two search engines on the Internet, and these two sites draw huge amounts of traffic. They also offer great advertising schemes, Google with its Adwords and Yahoo with Overture. A lot of websites feature these advertising schemes, and you can be assured that your ad will be displayed quite widely, and will get readership.

Of course, advertising with Google or Yahoo will not come free of charge. If you have the money to spare, and feel that better advertising will benefit your online business, then by all means deal with the best and sign up with Google Adwords or Yahoo Overture.

2) Trade links with other sites and online shops.

Link trades or link exchanges are when two websites agree to feature hyperlinks to each other?s websites on their respective websites. These links can usually be found in a list, or sometimes on a separate page on the website. Link exchanges can benefit both parties, as the traffic to each can then ?cross over? to the other website.

These are also free, requiring only an agreement between the two parties. This means that you can work on creating a lot of link exchanges (thus drawing more traffic) without having to spend a penny!

3) Market virally.

Viral marketing is a new form of marketing that originated on the Internet. Viral marketing is different from conventional forms of advertising by being undercover, as it were. Usually, creative videos or games, or interesting articles, are spread on the Internet through blogs and other sites. The company?s name is actually attached to these viral pieces (even just a logo and tagline at the end of the video, or on one corner of the game window).

Viral marketing is low-cost, but depends heavily on the creativity and attractiveness of the viral pieces you use to market your company.

4) Determine and use the proper search keywords and keyword phrases for your site.

Search engines are essential tools for anyone on the Internet, as they allow easy access to desired information or services. Online businesses should take care to make their websites search engine friendly ? that is, easily accessible by these search engines. The process of improving a website with regard to search engines is called search engine optimization. This usually consists of creating new content for the website which includes the specific keywords and keyword phrases associated with the business of your company.

5) Create articles to spread awareness and increase interest in your site.

Similar to the previous tip, you can write articles about subjects related to your company?s field. For instance, a car dealership can create articles about car sales or car parts. These articles can be put up on the company website itself, or submitted to other sites that deal with the same subjects as the company.

6) Participate in forums and create your own online communities.

Forums are great ways to advertise your site. If more and more people become convinced that your company provides quality service, then you can gain an online following. Take advantage of this and try to lead it to form a full-blown online community. This community will not only maintain your current market, but also attract new customers.

7) Finally, make newsletters available.

Newsletters are another way of increasing awareness of and interest in your company. Just be sure that you can provide good information and quality content, and people will subscribe to your newsletter and help spread the word about your company.

Article Source: http://www.wisearticles.com

Phill Johnson is a traffic strategist expert who helps service professionals, small business owners and marketing professionals to get more traffic and sales using traffic generation tactics that works. To learn more on how to increase web traffic, please visit: SecretOfTrafficsRevealed.com

Great tips.....:smile:

But as you said " Trade links with other sites and online shops. " may penalize your site by Google as they are getting rude with sites which are into link trade business. So take care before trading links.......it seems Google is forcing us to signup their adwords/adsense for getting extra revenue :wink: so that they can earn through us. hehehehe

Sorry for this post but some of the above things I have to disagree. First of all how would a newbie get the money to Bid on the keywords in the PPC program. Market Virally. Words words and words I have wasted enough time in viral marketing. Nothing comes out of it. Participate in forums is good but creating a community of own will take years. Finally for newsletters I have seen many sites getting very good traffic even without a newsletter.

Can you please explain a little bit more on all the above points.

If you have no money, than you cannot use PPC. But using PPC doesn't have to be expensive, you can open accounts some places for $10 or $25. The main trick is to use PPC and make at least as much as you spend. I have tried it and it was no so easy. I prefer using SEO since the cost is less and it keeps on working for months or years.

If you have done viral marketing and it hasn't work, well you need to describe what you have done so we can understand. The main idea is you have something so exciting or useful that others do your marking for you. It does work and is great, but you have to have something that will work. You can't just publish another ebook about article marketing and expect great things to happen unless your ebook is really great.

Participating in forums has been my most effective marketing method after SEO. But starting a forum/community is something else and is difficult. However, if you are willing to put in the effort it can work fairly quickly. I think I joined about 7 months ago, and this forum, while still fairly small, has really taken off with attracting quality people if not huge numbers. Some of the members are getting to be real friends and others are working on projects or even a business together. There are ways to get a forum going more quickly. We can talk about that in a new thread if someone wants to ask about it.

Yes, sites can get traffic without a newsletter. That's not the point. The point is that a newsletter can increase your traffic and it can also make you some money if you can sell advertising.

Not everything works for everybody. I have tried affiliate marketing a number of times and have been really bad at it. I've made almost nothing for the time I have spent on it. Others do quite well at it but I just never quite figured it out. Luck for me I found Adsense. That has worked pretty well and if I had better sites I would be very happy.

I second nielsencl :smile:
Working hard on SEO and participating at heavy traffic forums will help us for getting good visitors and targeted traffic.
Posting helpful replies at forums will attract other forum members towards your site.