Traffic is the life-blood of any website. If you don’t have traffic, visitors coming to your site, you are dead in the water.
So much of an online business depends on getting traffic to your door, and much like an offline business you need to make your ’shop’ attractive to the casual passersby.
It is so important that much time and money is spent doing just that, getting people to your door in the hope they will come in and buy something.Let’s be real here… why else would you have a website if it is not to make money.
There are a number of traffic strategies an online business owner can implement.
Search Engine Optimisation
SEO is setting up your website in such a way that the search engines show you favour and index your site in the search results. Doing SEO tasks such as, selecting good keywords that are relevant and appropriate to your website topic, using these keywords wisely in your page titles, headings, anchor text and articles all helps to build your search engine credibility and gain good placement in the search results.
Link Building
Building links to your site using Social Networks, Social Bookmarking, Article submission to Article Directories, etc. all help to gain link popularity with inwards links. Again the search engines will take note of this.
Apart from doing SEO and Link building there are a number of other things you can do to make your web site attractive to new and returning visitors. While SEO is important to get the ‘good’ listing in the search engine result pages for your keywords, in the end it is people who will be visiting your site.
Here are 10 Cool Ways to attract people to your web site and keep them interested.
1. E-ZINES and NEWSLETTERS
Give people a free subscription to your e-zine. Almost everyone is publishing a e-zine nowadays so it’s important to give something extra with the free subscription. You could offer a free gift or advertising when people subscribe.
2. CONTENT
Provide your visitors with good free content. Your content will be more attractive to your visitors if it’s up-to-date and original. Long gone are the days when you could upload junk just to get high search engine ranking and adsense clicks. The
search engines and more importantly people, want good content. That is content that answers their questions and provides solutions to their unique problems. You could also offer vivtors the option to reprint the content in their own e-zine or web site.
3. ONLINE DIRECTORY
Offer a free online directory. The directory could be full of interesting ebooks, e-zines, web sites etc. If people find your directory to be a valuable resource they will visit it over and over.
4. E-BOOKS and FREE REPORTS
Give your visitors a free ebook. You could also include your own ad in the ebook and allow other people to give it away. If you don’t want to take the time to write one, you could ask other writers permission to use their articles or grab some PLR
articles to use. Make sure you don’t just copy and paste. Work with it and add your own value to the information.
5. ONLINE CLASSES & SEMINARS
Hold free online classes or seminars. They could be held in your web site’s chat room. The idea of “live” information will definitely entice people to visit your web site. You will become known as an expert on the topic. With the viral effect of videos and “TV Show” services now available you can host a regular online show.
6. CONTESTS
Give visitors a free entry into your contest or sweepstakes. Most people who enter will continually revisit your web site to get the results. The prizes should be something of interest or value to your visitors keeping in mind the niche you are servicing. An ipod, for example, may be hot to a music audience but may have little value to gardening niche.
7. SOFTWARE
Let visitors download free software. It could be freeware, shareware, demos etc. You could even turn part of your site into a free software directory. If you created the software, include your ad inside and let other people give it away. If you don’t have your own software you can use someone elses. Many PLR (Private label Rights) and MMR (Master Resale Rights) membership sites have such software you can give away free. Again try to target your niche audience.
8. ONLINE SERVICES OR UTILITIES
Offer free online services or utilities from your web site. They could be search engine submitting, copy writing proofreading etc. The service or utility should be helpful to your target audience.
9. CONSULTATIONS
Give free consulting to people who visit your web site. You could offer your knowledge via e-mail or by telephone. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.
10. MEMBERSHIPS
Give your visitors a free membership to your online club. People want to belong to something, why not your online club. You could also give away a free e-zine for club members only. People also like to contribute and have their say. A private forum ,for example, is an easy utility to start a membership club with.
When you are planning a new website, you would do well to consider the ideas above and select some or all to intergrate them as part of your online business model.
