So let's look at four easy techniques you can quickly put into place to get visitors flocking to your site.
What You Should NOT Be Doing
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For starters do NOT use start-page exchanges, safelists, FFA sites, email blasters, and such like to direct traffic to your site. In my experience they are a waste of time and effort. Yes, they will get you PAGE VIEWS, but what you want are real visitors looking for a site like yours. For a real eye opener on how you can use them for profit, download a free e-book, "Lifting the Lid on Viral Advertising." Download it here:
http://www.adminder.com/c.cgi?FortPublish&Astt
What you SHOULD Be Doing
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These are the four simple strategies I used to quadruple my visitors - and the numbers are still rising!
1. Keywords - my visitors increased by around 20%
You MUST get a good set of keywords for your web site. Sit down and write all the words or phrases that you think people will type into search engines to find a site like yours.
Now go to http://www.overture.com to their "Advertiser Centre". Click on "Tools" and you will see the Term Suggestion Tool. Click on this and an entry window will pop up. Enter one of the words that describe your site and press the 'Go' button. You will then get a list of key words and phrases which you should type into Wordpad/Word.
When you've done that, put in another word and do it again. You will soon compile a good selection of keywords. Get as many as you can, with no duplications. Separate them with commas and a space and paste them into your web page, between the <HEAD> tags like this:
<head> <META name="keywords" content="(Put your comma separated keywords list here between the quotes)"> </head>
Your web design software manual will show you how to do this if you're not sure. Now the search engine spiders will have something to get their teeth into when they come knocking at your door, and traffic will increase.
2. Submission Services - my visitors doubled after using this technique.
Some are free and some will cost, but believe me it is well worth spending some cash if you can afford it, especially if you shop around for the right service at the right price.
I use: Network Solutions. $39 for the first URL, $25 for each URL thereafter - per year. https://www.networksolutions.com/en_US/index.jhtml
Others you should check out:
Microsoft bCentral - www.bcentral.com,
AddMe! - http://www. addme.com/ (Free service).
Bravenet - http://www.bravenet.com/ (Free service),
TrafficZap - http://www.trafficzap.com/ (Free service).
3. Self Submission - my visitors doubled again after putting this in place.
There are plenty of submission software programs out there. One or two are free, some will cost. I use one called Site Promoter (http://www.adminder.com/c.cgi?FortPublish&Asptt) which is not free but is very good. Others you can try are:
TopSite Promote - http://www.topsitepromote.com/ (Free
software/free submission service),
All-In-One Submission - http://shareware.cnet.com/?netscape.swbtn (Free trial download),
AddWeb Website promoter - http://shareware.cnet.com/?netscape.swbtn (Free trial download).
4. Reciprocal Links.
This really is a no-cost strategy that will reap dividends. Search engines like Google look for other sites linking to yours and boost your ratings accordingly.
What you do is search the net using your own keywords and visit as many of the sites as possible. Then write a polite e-mail to the webmasters saying you have a similar site to theirs and that you think there would be a mutual benefit in swapping links. More often than not webmasters are only too pleased to co-operate as they too know the benefits of linking.
This way you will be able to build a 'Links' page on your site that will benefit your visitors and bring in more traffic into the bargain.
SUMMARY
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Put these simple strategies in place and check your web statistics regularly. I cannot guarantee you will get the same results as I did, but I am sure you will see a significant increase in traffic to your site if you do.
I wish you every success!