how to drive traffic to your business how to increase online traffic in a business

                 Chapter 1
Increasing Traffic to your website

The World Wide Web has truly pervaded all aspects of human existence. Everything and everyone is going online now, and the move towards a totally connected world is not “if” anymore, it’s “when”.

Statistics show that up to 85% of the people who spend time online also purchase online. If you take the North American continent alone where more than 75% of the population have a broadband Internet connection at home, even if a fraction of these people buy online, it is still a huge market.

Online purchasing is also seeing tremendous growth and many companies are projecting a doubling of volume in just three years. If you take PayPal as a case in point, they have gone from $2 billion in payment volumes in 2002 to $16 billion in 2009 with revenues crossing $2.4 billion.

Amazon is another case that you can take as an example. Considering that Amazon is one of the largest online retailers, if not the largest, just looking at their total sales volume will show you that the trend in terms of online purchasing is only going up.

While just a few years ago, in 2006, Amazon was about par with retail sales, since then they have posted higher growth rates, including during the recession years while retail sales has seen a steady decline in sales. Amazon has posted a 16% growth since the last one year alone while retail sales have grown only by 2.5%.

Online is where you will have to be in the future and whether you are selling something or just blogging about your thoughts, if you are serious about it you will have to do something to increase web traffic to your business..

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There are a number of ways in which you can do this and there are a number of people who give free advice on what you need to do to increase web traffic. One of the most common things you hear is SEO or Search Engine Optimization, and while this is something that you have to keep in mind, there are a number of other things that you can also think about.

how to drive traffic to your business..

This guide is meant to be informative to help beginners who want to set up their own websites on the salient points that they will have to keep in mind while they do this. Some of the tips may be a little complicated, but most of them are very simple and how popular your site becomes depends on how effectively you can bring them all together.

Web Content

The content that you put up on your website is the most critical thing that you need to think of. In the same way that a store will do well only if they sell things that people need, you will get people visiting your website only if you give something that people are looking for. Of course it also means that you are entering a crowded market because genuinely unique niches are hard to come by. If you do find one, you are on to a good thing, but even if not, as long as you make the content appealing, you are sure to find takers.

Do something that others don't do. For example, selling products or services online is catching on really fast, and you will find a number of sites with products that link back to the larger online retailers like Amazon or eBay. If you want to do the same, it is not that difficult, except that there is something that you will have to give that other websites do not offer. For example, if you offer a personal review of the product that you are selling you are sure to develop a certain number of loyal customers and as long as the reviews are informative and helpful you will only get more customers with time.

There are other websites that offer the same thing, but most of them will have only a couple of lines that they probably found in other websites and copied. If you give information that is more detailed and specific, things that only a user would know, you are sure to make a hit.

Keep people coming back for more!

This does take more work and time, but unless you are willing to invest in good content, there is really no point in proceeding further. Make sure that you do your research. Even if you are only selling dog collars, as long as you give the pros and cons of each one honestly people will appreciate it. The goal should be to make the

content such that people who even casually visit your site once will bookmark it and keep coming back.

Keep it short and simple

While writing your content, remember that just because you want to be informative you should not have long winded articles. Statistics show that between 600 and 800 words is the best length for most online articles. If you want to fill space in your site use other interactive content. Not only will this make the whole thing nicer to see and read it will also relieve the monotony of just plain text.

Even if you do not have the expertise to create interactive content, just using bullet points and charts in-between text will break it up into smaller more easily read pieces.

Stay who you are

Lastly, while writing, never lose your human voice. While writing it is easy to lose the personal touch that you give when talking and instead go for a more professional voice. The only thing that this will serve to do is to make visitors feel unwanted.

This becomes more of a problem as you grow, because as you see more money come in you will start to streamline the content. You need to walk a tight rope here because it is very easy to lose what brought people to your site in the first place while doing this. The risk of changing anything is that just as there is potential for success, there is an equally good chance for failure too.

One more thing that you should keep in mind when developing web content is that the more graphics you have, the more time it takes to load the page. While this may not be a problem with many people because they have a broadband connection, a number of people access the net through their phones and tablets, and heavy websites really slow down these machines when not on a wifi connection. Find that balance.

Sending Newsletters and Info

Newsletters and subscribers are a big thing in many websites nowadays. Websites ask people to subscribe to their free newsletters and keep sending out information every week or sometimes more frequently depending on the strategy that they follow. A few years ago, there may have been an issue with spam filters and emails being placed in junk folders. Today, this is still true but ISP are realizing the fact that news letters are here to stay, so place news letters and email info high on your list of to do's when feeding your subscribers.

When you do send out your email's and newsletters it is a good idea to get creative with content and the title of your email. Interesting titles create open rates, and open rates create revenue. Try to offer interesting titles which offer value. Depending on your business you should be able to work out what your subscribers want to read and what sells after some time of research.

Give them the option

A better idea is to give the option to people to subscribe to an RSS feed. This gives them the option to either choose to subscribe or not which means that only genuinely interested people will. It will also give you a much more accurate idea of how popular your site is because most of those who subscribe will actually read what you have to say. You now have three good option for people to read your content.

RSS Feed
Email Newsletters
Your website content via bookmarks
Give value

When you have your subscriber interest, the best ways of generating interest is to give huge value. Don't just write rehashed information that is easily found in other places online. If you are recommending a particular software for a specific purpose give honest impressions that are not found elsewhere. You may think that this is too much to give away freely, but look at it this way. Open Source is catching on like blazes now, and there is a free alternative to almost everything, including Operating Systems. If you want to charge for your opinions as well as for the product that you

sell, you will find that someone else is only charging for the product and is offering their opinions freely resulting in a movement away from your site.

In conclusion to giving value, ensure you give the best value. Remember, you are in competition with a lot of other websites and newsletters around the globe. stand out to make a difference.

Become a Community Member

If you are starting a website business, chances are that there is already an online community on the niche that you want to start yours in. Make sure that you become involved and join them. Don't get so high and mighty that you think that everything that you write online should get you money. Write on other people's blogs and websites too. Just make sure that you link back to your site. Usually this is done in the signature and is one of the most effective ways of generating traffic to your site as long as what you write is worth reading. If the posting was good, people will come to your site just to read other articles written by you which is what you want. Gone are the times of selfish business owners. Giving and sharing content are the new ways to do business. People respect the knowledge of others and follow that knowledge. This is how you will generate your content.

Quote, but link

If you are pushed for content, another way is to quote from an article written elsewhere on the net. Usually nobody minds you quoting as long as you give them credit for it and link back to their site as well. Not only is this good etiquette, it will also improve your standing within the community which means that slowly, other more established people will start to link to your site. Remember, people respect knowledge.

Apart from the traffic that this linking generates, there is another more valuable reason for doing this. Most search engines do not index a website as soon as it is hosted. There are a number of people who create sites on free to use communities

and then do not follow it up. Obviously no search engine wants any site like this in their results. One way that they identify if a site is in use and is genuine is by the number of links back to it. If these links are from sites in good standing with the search engines, the chances of your site getting indexer faster are greater.

However, you do need to remember to write original content 99% of the time and do not quote everyone else's content 100% of the time. The search engines love original content.

Use article directories

An older, but still very popular way of getting these links back is by posting articles on article directories and then linking it to your site in the bio section. There are many such article directories that allow you to upload content free although they have certain criteria about the kind of articles that you can upload. Ezine Articles is only one among them and there are a number of others that you can post to.

What this does is help you upload a lot of content in places other than your website and then back link to your website thus improving your website standing with the search engines. This is where you use the SEO optimization that you hear about frequently. There are two goals to doing this, one is the already mentioned improving of ranking with search engines, and the other is that sometimes these articles will actually come up higher in the ranking than your site. If this happens you will be driving traffic to your site from there too. Remember, original content is always the best way to achieve the best rankings from your articles and your website content.

Use Experts to Write For You

This is easier said than done, but using experts is one of the most effective ways of generating traffic to your site. Whatever niche you are in, unless you yourself are an expert, getting one to write articles for you is a good idea. Of course, not many experts will actually consent to write anything for you, which is where the previous point comes in. Most of these experts would be high standing members of the community and as long as you lay the groundwork properly and get connected, they are sure to notice you. Over time you can approach them about writing something for you, and even if they decline, you've not lost anything by asking. By becoming a respected member in the community you will just be making it that much harder for them to refuse you when you do ask.

This is not something that you can do a couple of weeks after you start, or even a couple of months after you do. It takes time to earn a name, and even if you are not considered an expert in the field, as long as you make sure that you are a respected member in the community your chances are greater. Once you have an established website which offers some good content and has a reputable name, guest writers will come naturally. People will want to write for you, because of your search engine standings and traffic rankings. You more you grow the more attention you will get from interested writers and invited writers.

For example, if you want to start a website that recommends/sells software, make sure that you join a community where such software is discussed. Join as many as you can, and make sure that you participate. Help out others who ask for help and if you do this long enough it is the best way to get noticed. If you offer your time and expertise for free not only will those you helped directly come to your site the next time they want something, other members in your community will also link to your articles. Over time, some of them may even start recommending that their visitors visit your site. Helping others very rarely does not pay; it just takes time for you to see the results.

Use Tracking Software

Any business revolves around metrics. You need details of how many people visit your site, how long they spend at your site, which pages are the most often viewed and many other details that will help you improve your site. There are a few different ways to do this.

The most popular way is to use Google analytics. Google analytics is a free code that Google gives you that you have to put into each page of your website. This code runs every time a person visits your website and keeps track of everything from whether this was their first visit to how long they spend in each page. This is not a foolproof method because this system does not take into account people, who disable Java script in their browsers, but the number of people who do this is very small and in any case Google only uses 500,000 randomly taken hits for their metrics.

Although Google analytics is the largest used such software there are others too that you can use, both free as well as paid. There are issues with running such software starting with increased loading time, but they are getting better and better with each passing month.

There are some websites that do not use Google analytics because the information thus collected can be accessed by others. By others, it does not mean retail customers, but for example Google itself retains this information for their uses. Large corporations are not comfortable with other companies gaining information about their websites and therefore do not go with Google, but for most of us analytics is good enough and an excellent resource for small to medium business owners.

Use of Keyword Tools

Using key words is one of the most important things that you will have to do. First, you will have to decide what the keywords are that most people may use when they want to look for what you are providing. Think about the words people would use to find your site, and the more people who contribute, the more exhaustive the list is going to be. After you have narrowed down the general keywords that you think that people will be looking for, you can use specific software like Google's keyword tool, Yahoo's Overture Keyword selector tool, Wordtracker, Keyword Dictionary, Market Samurai or any other tool that you are comfortable with.

Most of them are free to use and will give you a combination of keywords based on the keyword that you typed in. This will help you identify the best combination of keywords to use in your content because it will give you the search strings that are the most commonly used in relation to the word you typed in.

Be dynamic, not static

This does not mean that once you write and post your articles you are finished. Keywords are very dynamic, and often, along with trends the search strings that are often used too often will change. You do not have to necessarily change the entire content in your site during times like this. Just making sure that you incorporate the new keywords is sometimes good enough. Remember, reviving old content is a great way to keep your content highly ranked.

Don't overdo it

This may sound simple but in reality it is not. This is because you will have to walk a fine line between over-stuffing your articles with different keywords and with putting in too few. And even then most search engines are able to identify if the keywords come logically as part of the sentence or have been forced in somewhere where they are not suitable.

Nobody knows exactly how the search engines do this as it is their trade secret, but suffice it to say that just because your article is full of keywords it does not necessarily mean that the site is going to get a better ranking. Often an article with the keyword appearing just once will pop up higher than one where it has been repeated a number of times. Keep this in mind when writing your articles, don't

overdo it with the same key words. Google likes to read content like a reader, not a manufactured key word hungry robot.

Also never copy content, unless you are linking back to where you are copying from. All search engines are able to identify copied content and if it finds that your article is copied, you will even lose ranking because it will tend to push your site to the bottom of the pile. Original content, is always the best way to rank don't forget this.

Don't be Afraid to Copy Others

This may sound a little odd, especially after the previous chapter but this is something that everyone does. You don't copy the content; instead you copy what someone else is doing better by getting more traffic to their website. You will know what websites are getting more traffic to them by their ranking on search engines. You can also use Alexa.com to check the rankings of websites you are interested in.

Do your groundwork

This is not as easy as you would think though. You will first have to locate all the sites that are the leaders in the segment you are in. There are a number of tools that will help you do this, and Google PageRank is both very useful as well as free and can be installed in any browser.

After you form your list you will have to visit each of these sites and figure out for yourself why they are doing better than you. Check different search engines that will give you this information and this is where your true talent lies. The more accurate you are in identifying why others do well, the better you can make your site.

While making changes you will obviously have to continue tracking hits to your site, but do not be hasty and make changes quickly. It will take a day for the changes to be indexed properly in the search engines, and even then you will have to allow some time before the changes start making any difference. It is a slow process and you learn as you go.

Never directly copy website content, this is not only illegal but detrimental to your website search engine rankings. Remember, no one not even Google likes a copycat. Use content as ideas to create your own content and make it better.

Focus on the most Popular Parts of Your Site

Many people do not realize it when they start out, but it is difficult to start a website and put in information that is always appealing. To most of us as long as the article that we post is well written and interesting to read, it should work, but it rarely does. You need to know which portion of your website is working well and which is not.

You can get this information using Google analytics, and once you identify this trend, it is up to you to start concentrating on that portion of your website. For all you know the portion of your website that you would think is the least appealing will get the most number of look ins.

For example, if you have started a website where you post reviews of different home appliances and also sell them, your assumption would be that the most hits would be on the reviews. When looking at the metrics however you may be surprised to find that it is your blog or your comments page that is receiving the most hits.

What you should immediately do is to concentrate on the comments page and leverage it. Ultimately advertisers look at the total number of hits on your website and as long as you can maintain a consistent number of visits a day or week it is all for the best.

Of course it means that you will probably need to rework your review page so that it too starts seeing more traffic, but that should be the second thing on your priority, not first.

Be patient

Many websites that are really popular have a ratio of around 1:20. This means that for every 20 articles that you put in, one will turn out popular. For beginners this ratio will be much higher, but keep plugging away at it. Nobody finds a winning combination instantly and you should be willing to spend a lot of time on making your website a success. Don't be afraid to try out new things. If it does not work you can always remove the page later, but if it does click, you have something on which you can concentrate on.

Another thing that you should not worry too much about is not so much the number of hits on your website, but on how long the people stay. There are a number of reasons why people may just open your site and close it immediately. Those who matter are the ones who stay for a certain length of time. Although, for most commercial purposes it is the number of hits on your page that matter, for you to develop a good site it is the people who stay on whom you will have to concentrate on. Only then will you know what people are visiting your site for and provide more of the same. Google Analytics will provide all of these details for you.

Always Give Free Stuff

Stuff? This does not mean that you give out free products. It could very well be a simple eBook on a particular subject or free wallpaper.

For example, if you have a website that is related to IT you could give wallpapers or screen savers that you have designed. Many people do this, but not all ask for contact information as well. Remember we talked about building a list of contacts, well this is a way to do it. Exchange email addresses for content so you can add people to your newsletters and information distribution list.

You do not always have to ask for anything in exchange. There is fine line between giving items away for email addresses and becoming annoying to your visitors

asking for some every time you give something away. Treat your readers and website visitors with respect. Give them freebies for simply being a subscribers. This builds reputation. You can even ask them to share this on social media sites for the pleasure. This also build reputations and traffic.

imagine you are opening a medical related site, giving out a short 10 or 20 page eBook on some ailment, say diabetes, will only do good. Of course if this book is not a good one you will be better off not offering it for free as the reputation that you will receive will be bad. If you give out an informative well written book, or a really nice looking wallpaper, people will talk about your site and ultimately the amount of publicity generated will be greater than if you had spend 10 times as much as you did for what you gave away. By offer awesome value or basically something you could charge a fee for, people will love and share your content.

The traffic potential of giving away a free guide takes time, but the viral aspects and out of this world. The more shares and people you have reading and distributing your eBook, the more traffic you will get. Simple.

Advertise Advertise Advertise

Advertising will of course cost money, but you have no other way round. Any startup company needs marketing and even if it is online you will still have to market your wares. There are a number of innovative ways of doing this starting from fliers posted at different places to you having your website displayed prominently on your vehicle. Depending on the route you take the budget may be high or low and have varying degrees of effectiveness.

Go with AdSense

Not only offline but you can also go for online advertising. There are many websites that offer space to advertisers for a sum and you can advertise where you think you will get the maximum benefit. Pop ups, banners and advertisements are all popular,

but the most popular is AdSense by Google. Anyone can sign up with AdSense and Google determines the kind of advertisements that go into the web-page.

If you want to advertise on other websites you must place a sealed bid for the space and if you are selected you can advertise. If you want to sell ad space, Google takes care of everything but takes a 32% cut in the income generated.

Even with this revenue loss it still makes sense to go with AdSense because a number of small operators who do not have the financial clout to do much have generated income from AdSense.

If you are purchasing ads, then the only thing that you are limited by is the budget you have. The more you have, the more you can advertise.

If you are looking at generating income through advertisements, you have to be a little careful about it. When your website is still new, and is not generating much traffic, many people will purchase ad space very cheap and then reap the benefit of all your hard work because they will be getting much more than what they paid for. It is better to wait a while until you get established before you start selling advertisements because of this.

Don't get too greedy

Another bad thing and more important when it comes to generating traffic to the website is that a site that is covered with ads just turns people off. You may start to earn money quickly by adopting this strategy, but many browsers do not like sites that have a lot of advertisements meaning that you will actually be losing traffic by advertising, although this is one income stream that you cannot afford to ignore.

How you balance your need for income generation with your website is where your talent lies, and how well you do depends on how right you get it. There is really no simple rule that you can follow here. There are a number of sites that are loaded with ads and yet do well, while there are others that do not have too many and still do not do as well. There are a number of factors that are responsible, and only time will tell whether you are right in what you did or not.

Build Your Brand

When you are developing your website, you need to have a vision of what you want from it. You are building up an organization, not just a website and the growth potential is limited only by your imagination. You need to establish a brand and live up to it.

Of course this takes time, but it is time well spent. You have to set expectations and make sure that you live up to them. If you are in the practice of putting in two posts a day, you will have to ensure that you continue to do so every day. You may complain that this means that you do not have any holidays or time off, and you will be right here. Yet, it will be worth it in the long run.

Statistics show that even if you miss one day the traffic falls immediately. Of course, if you are going to miss only one day this is not a long term impact, but if you are going to make a practice of doing this, you will start losing traffic instead of gaining it.

Plan ahead

If you feel that you absolutely have to take a break, make sure that you plan in advance for it. There are a number of things you can do starting from outsourcing this blog posting to making sure that you have a ready supply of posts that you can post from anywhere. The whole world is connected these days and as long as you have already prepared the articles, all it is going to take is 10 or 15 minutes of your time to post it every day.

If you are putting in articles regularly, make sure that the quality of your work does not flag. With success don’t become complacent. Outsource some of the more labor intensive work but make sure you check it for originality and quality. By staying on top of the work you choose to outsource your site will not lose the high standard that you want for your business.

Over time a certain website will stand for something, and you need to identify what this something is even before you start. Only then can you work towards it. If you just start without having any other goal than just that you want to earn money, there will be no direction to your site and it will vacillate here and there, never a good thing.