Generating Traffic to Your Site for Newbies

There are so many informational sites out there on the best ways to generate traffic to your site. Sometimes, especially for newbies, the information can become quite detailed and frankly overwhelming. So I have decided to put together some easy to follow tricks of the trade.

1. It is very important to optimize your website. This is easily the best way your site will be seen. Google is currently the highest ranks search engine out there, but you can also use Yahoo, Bing, Ask, or as many other search engines you'd like. It is not necessary to use them all however it wouldn't hurt to use more than one.

So what does it mean to optimize your website? I am a big fan of Wikipedia definitions and here is theirs: "Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion."

Example: The ads that you see when you do a  google search at the top and right border of the page.

Some people mistake SEM with SEO which Wikipedia defines as:  "the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid search results...Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines."

SEM and SEO can be hard to master if you haven't done it before. There are Search Engine Optimizers which are typically consultants you pay to optimize your site for you although they may be a little pricey, especially since SEO and SEM is a continuous process. As soon as you stop paying for services, they stop optimizing your site.

Another option for SEO and SEM is to do it yourself. There are courses out there like Adwords for Beginners that teach you how to set up campaigns and monitor them. This is handy because you only pay for the course information once and you can review it as you please.

2. Banner Ads or Contextual Ads. These are defined as: online advertising that is embedded on a webpage. Its goal is to attract traffic to a website by linking to the website of the advertiser. The advertisement is generally an image, JavaScript program or multimedia object that can have animation, sound, or video to maximize presence.

This is another form of advertising that will require out of pocket expense. You can create your own ad, however the site you would like to advertise on may provide "Creative work" for free or at a discount as a courtesy for your advertisement.

The site you choose to advertise on should be consistent with your Perfect Customer (If you need to review how to find a perfect customer please visit my past blogs). The advertising site should not already be cluttered with other advertisements and should be relative to your product or service. IE I wouldn't recommend advertising a vegetarian product on a meat packaging site!

3. Promote Promote Promote! Every email you write, business card you hand out, and new person you meet should know about your website or have a URL to lead to it. There is nothing wrong with shamelessly  promoting your company. JUST BE SURE YOU AREN'T SPAMMING PEOPLE WITH IT!

Blogging is a great tool for writing about your product. It is free to sign up and gives you an oportunity to promote your site, link it, and find other people that are blogging about issues related to your site. You may find someone blogging about their alarm clock not being loud enough and you just so happen to offer the loudest alarm clock in the world at your site. You can reply to their blog about your website and the loudest alarm clock ever. Not only will you have solved that particular blogger's problems with your product, but someone else that has been reading their blog may have the same problem, so now you have generated two sales to target customers for free.

Social Networking Sites are also a free way to get the word out about your online business. Facebook, Myspace, LinkdIn, and the newest social site Twitter are all great ways to find targeted customers and let them know about your site. It can sometimes be a little more difficult to find targeted customers at first, because profiles may be private, but it doesn't hurt to get your site out there for free to expand your internet reach.

Twitter is a little more business friendly in that you can search key terms and also for the most part the profiles are public and accessible. There is a great program called Paid for Tweetn that teaches the best tips and techniques to make the most out of getting targeted followers, automating tweets, and promoting your business in the allotted 140 characters.

4. Get Affiliates. This is a good way to spread the word about your site to others. The affiliates earn on a commission basis so you do not pay anything until they sell. The affiliates will help to send targeted customers to your site or their duplicate affiliate site. This can expand your reach greatly but I would suggest holding off on starting an affiliate program until you already are earning a steady profit from your own efforts.

(I have an earlier post about Affiliate marketing and how it works in my blog)

5. Offer an email list. This will help you maintain contact with current customers and people that may not have bought yet and are still in the research phase of the buying process. With an email list you can send out new promotions and discounts, follow up with customers, and let them know about new products or services. Another good thing about having an email list is that even if they are not interested in your new product or special offer, they may have a friend who will be, so they will forward your offer to their friend thus expanding your reach.

One thing you must remember when you have an email list is to NEVER SPAM! You can get blacklisted for spamming people or selling information.

Wikipedia's Definition of Spam:  the abuse of electronic messaging systems including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately.

6. Barter. Trade banner space or ad links with other websites. This is a great way to have your site seen and increase your reach. One thing you should consider is that having ads on your site may take business away from you as well. If you decide to trade links or ad space make sure you are doing so with companies that  have relevant sites. That will increase your Search Engine Ranking and move you up Google and other Search Engines rating system. Do not try to compete with yourself. If you offer sporting goods on your site do not try to barter with another site that also sells sporting goods. However, you may want a site that sells something in the sporting goods catagory that will compliment your site. Approach partners, customers, and vendors directly with link trade proposals, they usually will be open to the trade because it benefits them as much as it does you.

7. Public Relations. Many online businesses forget about the importance of PR. A press release about a contest or new product or a free tool available on your site will drive traffic to your site. Attract attention to your company. Make the headline interesting and write a story has a good angle. Testimonials work great in media releases. The best part about it..its free!

If you like to write you can also consider writing an editorial or article about your business and what product or service you are offering. These are a little more time consuming but are great ways to promote your site with out spending money.

Well, there you have it. The most valuable ways to generate traffic to your website, according to me. I'm sure you will find similar information on other sites so there must be truth to these tips! They are the fundamentals to web traffic and hopefully I have outlined them in an easy to understand outline.

If you can think of anything else, please comment me, or if you have a great link to some more helpful tips, I'm sure my readers will also appreciate the extra info.