Simon Paul Thurston

As anyone who has ever attempted to start an internet-based business knows, drawing traffic is absolutely crucial to your success.   Any article you find, or any book you might read about being a successful internet entrepreneur will discuss the importance of generating traffic to your site.

While the task of drawing strangers to your website, and then getting them interested in your product or service, might feel overwhelming and almost impossible – it isn’t really, if you are creative, clever, and do it intelligently.  Most importantly – start taking these steps today, not tomorrow, to immediately begin drawing traffic to your website.

 These seven tips offer surefire ways to start increasing your traffic dramatically, right now.

1) Invest in good search engine advertising.

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide fantastic advertising schemes that are very popular, and assure great traffic.  Keep in mind that while this will most certainly increase your traffic, it could be fairly expensive.  For many, spending money to increase traffic isn’t an option.  However – when you compare the cost of the advertising to the volume of traffic it generates, and your eventual payoff – the costs are easily offset by the benefits. 

This method of advertising is a tried and true approach to drawing potential customers to your website.  If you’ve taken the appropriate steps in creating your website to capture the interest of your visitors, your increased audience will immediately convert into increased sales and revenue.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites.

When you exchange links with other sites that contain content related to the product or service you are selling, both of you benefit from efforts to increase traffic.  When either site offers a link to the other, both websites are helping to share traffic that either site generates.  This approach is even more valuable than most because it is a collaborative effort to generate traffic – and both of you reap the rewards.  The more links you trade – the more traffic you can expect.  It’s that simple.

3) Use viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any associated costs, or very low cost.  This is a somewhat clever approach to marketing because you essentially attach your company’s name, product, or link to certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, or very interesting article.  This approach captures the interest of a large audience, because once one person receives the media and finds it very funny or interesting, they forward it to all of their friends.  Many of us receive such emails all of the time from friends who receive jokes and find them so funny that they pass them on.  If you incorporate your website or product either inside the media, or attached to part of the text somehow – your website gets forwarded to hundreds, and even thousands of people.  Viral marketing is a new kind of marketing that has been shown to be very effective. 

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your site’s content.

Search engines look for certain keywords that will be shown in their results page.  In doing so, having the right keyword or keyword phrase is an important requirement in ranking high in search engine results.  Again, you can write your own content, or you can hire a good writer to do it for you.

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site.

This is an important aspect of the internet.  Many people who are starting an online business think that if they pack their page with keywords or keyword phrases, that they will draw traffic and immediately produce revenue.  This isn’t always the case.  Drawing traffic is only one small aspect to turning traffic into revenue.

You need quality content.  If people click on a link to visit your site, the only thing that will keep them there is quality content.  This quality content can also be in the form  of articles submitted to websites that are based on the same subject that your site deals with.  For example, if you sell computer parts, then write press releases and submit articles to websites about computers and computer parts.  Always attach a description of your website and a link at the end of the article.  If the article is written well enough so that people are impressed, they will be more likely to click the link – because through the article you’ve proven your expertise.

6) Join forums and form online communities.

A very large portion of internet users spend time talking to other people around the world on forums that cover all topics imaginable.  There are forums for childcare, mountain-biking, camping, and UFO’s.  Just about every subject has a plethora of forums and online communities of thousands of people who are interested in these topics.  These are the people who are your prime customer base. 

Join these forums, and write posts that prove to people that you are an expert in your field.  Some forums don’t allow advertising your own site on their forum, however if you have an excellent article on your own website that is relevant to the topic at hand – they allow you to quote from outside websites.  So write a post related to the topic being discussed, and quote from your own website.  People will click the link to see the entire article – and you’ve just drawn an audience from a potential customer base that is already interested in the product or service that you sell.

7) Offer Newsletters!

As I described previously on this blog – if people know what subject you are an expert in, and your existence is spread around through word-of-mouth, you will soon find yourself with loyal traffic that can multiply into additional traffic through referrals.  If you are providing your current customer base with a quality newsletter consisting of several articles every week that cover topics that your customer base finds fascinating and interesting – they will be motivated to refer their friends and family to your website.

Following the seven simple steps above – you will be able to quickly multiply the stagnant or non-existent traffic of your website, into a level of traffic that even the largest websites would be envious of.  It’s all about content, and getting the word out there that you exist, and that you are a valuable source of information.  Do this – and you will see impressive success for your internet business.