Tips to increase your website traffic

Do you have the kind of traffic you are already looking for? Do you want more? Well the thing about web traffic is that it grows depending on the amount of wor you've done to promote your site. If you do nothing, your site is probably not going to get any traffic so the power lies in your hands. Do something to get more traffic.

Web Traffic: What is it?
The amount of traffic a website pulls is a sure way of determining itslong term success. In the physical world, we refer to traffic when we see cars all queued up and competing to use a common resource such as aroute. So I would refer to traffic as the intensity or magnitude of movement across a point of common interest. A specific route can be very important to road users and may as a result of this, experience slight or significant traffic from time to time and this shows that it is veryhelpful to the users.If you have got a website that is really useful to your visitors on a dailybasis, then you will definitely get a significant amount of traffic relativeto what value it is to them and this traffic can be converted to good use.Website traffic is one of the key elements that signifies the importanceor usefulness of a website and helps in raising its value. So how muchtraffic does your website currently have? Do you wish to improve onyour currrent traffic? If yes, then there are a couple of things you coulddo to achieve this.Web traffic is important for the long term viability of a site and a lot willdepend on how much energy is input in the creation and developmentof such site.

Do all websites really need traffic?
This is a good question but I’m yet to see one that did not really needtraffic. A lot will however depend on the purpose for which the site wassetup in the first place. From the way I see it, every website has got auseful purpose or goal to achieve before being considered a successand this is probably not far from the fact that it was intended for publicuse. I mean, why make it publicly available if you never intended it toget traffic? Once a website has been published to a url, it becomesavailable for everyone to see. Although they could be private or limited to users within a company, it is still intended to be used by more than 1 person.However, in theory, most websites are intended to be used by manypeople across the world and the most successful and useful websitesreally make do with a lot of traffic. Popular sites like retail stores,classifieds, blogs, social networks and others make use of traffic tobring in the required conversions that keep them operating successfully.

What do I gain from more traffic?
There is a lot fo be benefitted from improved web traffic and it may notreally matter if you have a great looking, beautifully designed portal butwithout the required traffic, it may eventually die off. Websites are likeliving organisms - they either feed and grow or wither and die. Thehuman element is needed to ensure that sites are kept alive and henceremain relevant to people who make use of them.

What does a website gain from more traffic?
Well for one, it gets morevalue. Other benefits of increased traffic to a website includes:
- Ability to generate more site content
- Increased potential for making more money
- Higher ranking on search engines
- Improved visibility
- Bettter authority
- Apprpeciation in value of domain name
- Long term viability
- Multiplier effect on web traffic
- Better sales if you are selling
- More comments if you are a blogger
- Increase in membership if you have something like a membershipsite

In all, more traffic means more goodies for your site as visitors are likelyto make it richer before leaving and every website owner should striveto achieve this.

How much is your website worth?
This is one question you need to ask yourself if you have been workingon your site for sometime and are keen on improving its traffic. Howmuch is it really worth in value? How much is it worth in content? Howmuch is it worth in age? What criteria do you use to analyze its worth?Some web tools you could use to value your website includes:

- Alexa Ranking: This helps in measuring the amount of traffic awebsite gets. The lower the ranking, the higher its traffic. Alexaranking gives a fair evaluation of a websites worth in units

- Websiteoutlook.com: This is a website and there are others likethis. They help in giving a fair assessment of the value of awebsite in terms of value and in monetary terms such as the USdollars. They combine a lot of factors to achieve this. The higherthe value, the more traffic it receives

- Google adplanner: You can see this tool athttp://adplanner.google.com to also get some stats. Adplanner isa portal advertisers and publishers can both use to access uniqueviews, traffic and suitability of sites for advertising.

- Google Trends: Get to know what is trending and if you site toois on the up or downside. Trends allows you to search based onkeywords(searches) or domain names(websites). More popularand visited sites have a higher ranking on Google trends thanothers and you can compare domains. You can access this bygoing to http://trends.google.com/websites

There are some websites than can be worth over $100,000 onevaluation websites like websiteoutlook.com and have fairly goodAlexa ranking below 100,00, this shows that it is on the average. Thelower the Alexa ranking, the higher the traffic it already receives.Although Alexa ranking are not a conclusive factor for determining theamount of traffic a site receives but a lot would also have to be placedon the value of the keywords that Alexa lists as driving traffic to thatsite. Such keywords can be compared to the search trends on searchengines like Google or Bing but on the average, a good Alexa ranking iscrucial. If your site is not listed within the 100,000 range or not rankedat all, then it probably is still new and still needs to get a lot of workdone before making it achieve the right traffic. Sites like Google andYahoo are worth billions of US dollars and have a very good ranking of1 – 3. So if you have got no Alexa ranking, no adplanner reports, little orno site value, then you need to work on developing it to gain morevisibility.

What you need to improve your site's traffic
Increasing the number of visitors to your site is practically everywebmasters dream. Now how do you achieve that? What tools do youneed? There could be a lot of tools and products which may have beensuggested or sold by internet marketing experts but in reality, here iswhat you really need:

- Information: You need the right information on how to actuallycarry this out. People get carried away by the tonnes of books,manuals and blogs about improving web traffic. You needinformation that is direct, clear and reliable if you are reallyserious about achieving success in this area

- Website Analysis: You need to do an evaluation of theconcerned website where improved traffic is desired. You need toknow its current strengths focus on it while also working onimproving in areas of weakness

- Action: Mostly SEO action, you need to put your plan to workand optimize your current website a bit to make it more useful tousers. Making your website more relevant and friendly to searchengines can help bring in the needed traffic.

How to really get more traffic to your website
So the big question now is how do you really do it? What steps can youtake to make this work. What is the real deal to get the right results?

Well, I have itemized these steps into 8 letters as follows:

A C F M G Q R S

- A = Advertising
- C = Content
- F = Freebies
- M = Mobilize
- G = Googlize
- Q = Quality
- R = Readership
- S = Socialize

I think by including the above key terms in your effort, you will be ableto experience significant traffic to your site in a few weeks.

[1] Advertising: Using Internet Advertising

This is by far the easiest and quickest means of getting online traffic toa site and all it involved is just to invest some money on advertising inorder to convert them to website traffic. It makes use of existing andpopular platforms to bring in the needed traffic to a site. It is like sayingyou know where a lot of your intended users are spending a lot of timeat and all you need to do is show up your ad to them to bring them in. Itrequires capital but it saves a lot of time and ensures good resultsSome of the benefits of using online advertising includes:
- Quick results
- Increased Sales for merchants
- Allows audience targeting
- Can be used to create more contentSome things to consider before using online advertising:
- What sort of website you have. It is much better for productselling sites rather than just blogs
- How much value can it add to your site
- It’s ability to get the right audience
- How much capital you are willing to risk or invest
- If it is for the long or short term

[2] Content: Add more web content

This is actually the most reliable way to increase and maintain thetraffic to your website. The more content a site has, the more itsability to drive traffic. Think of the more popular websites we havelike diggs, digital Point forums, webmasterworld, labnol.org,stevepavlina.com, problogger.net. Also think of corporate sites likeYahoo, Facebook, Nokia, Amazon, Itunes and so on. There issomething they all have in common and this is web content (texts,pictures and videos). Content add value to a website and brings lifeto it The more content a site has, the more it is likely to bring in trafficbecause search engines will index it more and people will constantlyreturn due to its resourcefulness.

Thins you could do to add more content to your website:
- Include a blog
- Set up an article directory or get links from related articles
- Add more web pages
- Allow users to drop comments
- Set up a membership portal
- Set up a Q&A service

[3] FREEBIES: Give out something for free

This is an easy wat to ensure visitor loyalty as well as getting newvisitors. Why would people visit your site if they have to pay foreverything they get from it. It’s enough that they pay for their databundle or internet service. If you could offer or make it a policy ofoffering something for free on your site, chances are that you will begetting more visitors and many of whom will tell their friends and hencemultiply your traffic. People love free stuff.Could you imagine what cyberspace would have been like if people hadto pay to open an email account? If your visitors could get free stuff likehelpful information or guides, free downloads, free membershipaccounts or even a physical gift, chances are that they are likely tokeep coming back as people really can’t get over benefits in kind.Loyalty to your website can also be infectious as people who have hada good experience, got something for free, will more likely refer theirfriends to your great site.Think of large sites like Yahoo.com, how do you thinkg they drivehundreds of millions of uniques traffic and membership accounts? They probably did it easily with their popular free web based email service.Yahoo offers free email service and Google offers that also and then ithas got a good search tool too which is bringing more and more peopleback to Google everyday just because it is a free and amazing website.So you need to set up or think up something that can help motivateyour visitors to keep coming back. Some bloggers and informationalwebsites apart from the free tips they give also give free ebooks andsubscription services to their users for free and this helps keep peoplecoming back. If you are going to offer people something for free andwant to ensure that at least majority of them keep coming back andbringing newer members, then you should also try to get their emailaddresses using email subscription services. Freebies are what has helped a lot of successful online companies remain in business for years and keep brining in the traffic

[5] Mobilize

Make your website mobile friendly. By just mobilizing your website, your website's traffic can almost double. I experience that when I mobilized my website with css. Yeah, css is an easy way to make almost any website mobile friendly and recognized by search engines. There are also other ways to mobilize your website if using dynamic pages by adding some features such as mobile browser sniffer to display mobile version for mobile devices and desktop versions for a desktop browser.

When a website has been mobilized, there are advantages such as getting high ranking on mobile search results, opportunity to reach more internet users and generating user content. All this would help build your website's traffic in the long term.

[6] Googlize your website

If a hardworking search engine like Google doesn’t list you in its searchresults, you are probably still invisible and need a lot more work to bemade visible. If your site is already indexed but doesn’t show up on thefirst three of four pages for your top content keywords, then you mayhave to do a lot more work to gain respect from Google

.Although popular websites could do well with or withoug Google orother search engines, chances are that you could be losing a lot of traffijust because your are not yet friends with the big search engine.To Googlize your website or make it more respectable and rank highon Google’s search results, you would probably need to use some SEO skills to make it work. If your site is still relative new and below 6months old, you shluld just focus on builsing unique content and wait forsometime. If you’ve been at the game for several years but still notpullin in the right traffic, then you really need to make use of some ofthe free tools that Google offers and make it rank better.Forget about your control panel and your web stats within it for now butif you really want to rank high with Google, just make use of some ofher webmaster tools that can help bring quicker results. It would give you an insider’s view and idea of how the search engines and othersearch engines work.Things like duplicate title tags, bad html, unavailable pages and bad linkstructure can cause bots to penalize you and make you rank low insearch results and this ultimately brings down you traffic. Google offersyou the ability to monitor and control this.Some of the tools I use to improve my site’s traffic includes:
- Google webmaster Toolshttp://www.google.com/webmasters/tools
- Google Insights http://www.google.com/insights/searchGoogle Webmaster Tools: This allows you own a free webmasteraccount at Google, submit your site and monitor it.

To see how well they perform on search rsullts and helps in dealing with issues affecting itsperformance. It also allows you to do kekyword analysis and know yourstrenghts and weaknesses. Keywords drive trafffic to your site andreports for your stie may already be made available by Google evenbefore you open an account with time. All you need to do this is addyour site url and sitemap and them confirm your ownership of the site. Itallows you to submit sitemaps and feeds in .xml format.

Have you wondered why some blog post gets published or indexed onGoogle search results wiht a few hours of it being posted on that site?Well it has to do a lot with the sites reputation as well as its feeds thatar integrated to the Google platform. So webmaster tools can helpGoogle find more about your site and index it much faster.

Tips: Focus on your top keywords and try to invest more content onnewer keywords where there is less competition

Google Insights: Google insights gives you insider’s information about search queries onGoogle. This is one great tool I use when I go keyword hunting. WhileWebmaster tools can help me know my best performing or promising keywords, Google insights can help me get newer keywords and rising opportunities. It gives you an idea of what people are searching for onGoogle from where and when.To use Google insights, you don’t really need a Google account or login but just go to the website and search for searches and keywordsbased on geographic locations or globally. As I said, it is useful if youwant to know the top queries from people in your area or city. It tellswhat people are searching for as well as rising searches. You could find a new keyword to focus on and this can help improve the overall trafficto your website. All you would ned to do is identify the keywords andthen provide relevant content on your site that can be useful to yourvisitors.

[7] Quality: Improve the quality of your website

Things to consider in this section could include the graphical view,design, loading speed and quality of its content. How does your sitemeet the needs of its users? If for instance, they spend too much timetrying to load your site amidst pop ups and pop unders, it may give abad user experience and may not ensure returning traffic so you don’twant that. Things like bad grammar, poor pictures or little content canalso put off visitors and may give your site a bad reputation.So you need to to ensure that your site it not dissappointing to say theleast as the more quality it has, the more likelihood of it bringing inincreasing traffic. You may consider things like site redesign, usefulcontent and more interactivity. Your design and link structure alsomatters and it should be compatible to 21st century websites. How yousite looks, feels and responds to the needs of users can go a long wayand is a deciding factor so work on quality.

[8] Readership: Keep your visitors and get new ones

Having a website and have people visit it frequently may not be enoughto maintain and improve traffic. You need to also find a way of “gettinginto their emai”. Try to make use of a subscription service that allowsyou to send them an email when you have new content and in casethey forget to return or fogot your url.A great service you can use to manage email subscriptions is Google’sFeedburner. Feedburner works reat for websites providing content fromtime to time and they are updated by means of your site feeds. Youfeeds are in .xml format and all you need to do is create a Feedburneraccount, integrate your feeds to it and set up and email subscriptionservice on your site. Visitors who love your site will definitely submit their email addresses for updates .Random visitors too can convert and become permanent visitors aslong as they remain subscribed to your service. Sites that do well in thiscategory include blogs, news sites, classifieds, Q&a services andshopping sites.The reason why I recommend Feedburner is because it is free, fast andreliable in maintaining your readerbase.

[8] Socialize: Get social for more traffic
Little things like a Youtube video, Facebook fan page, twitter address,media feature or even a public function at church, work or college couldactually help in getting more traffic to your website. As long as cancreate a first good impression for your first time visitors, you candefinitely convert and retain some of themSocializing is a great way to bring more visitorsto your website as itconnects more with people who may realy share similar interests withyou or your business.Every website socializes in one way or another. Websites need people and they need to be social in order to remain relevant for the long erm.Just like humans, websites need to remain social in order to remainrelevant.Integrating your website to popular social network sites are an easyway to drive in more traffic as they do have a lot of users and ranki highon search engines. Sites like Twitter already have a section on Googlesearch results and they are ranked high. So if you connect yourwebsite’s feed to twitter, it will be easy to get in more traffic.Connect your website to Twitter and Facebook by getting your Twitteracccount and a Facebook fan page. You can then integrate your feedsto Facebook and twitter using available apps for doing so.

To Connect your website to Twitter, follow these steps:
- Sign up for a feedburner account
- Burn your feeds
- Click on your feed burner feeds and publicise
- Select socialize and add a twitter accountNow your updates will be published on Twitter withing 24 hrsConnecting to Facebook:
- Create a Facebook fan page for your site
- Use apps.facebook.com/twitter to connet the two
- Confirm the connectionNow your twitter will update your Facebook status each time it updates

Conclusion
Newer ways of driving web traffic are emerging and even some employoffline methods to drive in web traffic. I think however that using someof these steps mentioned above, if you were not already doing so, willdefinitely bring more people to your site. The list of things you couldactually do to get better results are limitless but you just have to choosea strateg and stick to it until you see some improvement. I do hope this resource was helpful to you.Thank You.