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Quick and Easy Tips for Driving Traffic to Your Website  
TIPS 

Tags: website, traffic, marketing, promotion, driving, tips, hints, quick, tricks

For most websites, traffic is a function of two things: people finding you in search and people coming to you from other sites. The former falls under the science of search engine optimization (SEO). The latter falls under grass roots marketing to create awareness and generate inbound links to your site. These subjects can fill whole books, but here are a few simple tricks and techniques to try first. Also, feel free to add your own….

	It may sound basic, but it is important - clearly define what your business is about and who your target customer is and where they can be found online.
	Whether you are a content site or have products to sell, people are drawn first and foremost to sites with interesting content. You can weave your product “in and around the content”, but it is the interesting content that they will click on in search or from other web sites.
	Make a list of targeted keywords. Choosing relevant and popular keywords is essential for optimizing a website effectively. You can then strategically place these keywords on your website and key pages so that when the search engines index your pages they will associate these terms with you.
	You can also buy these keywords (via Google AdSense or related programs) if you are selling stuff on your web site. Note that these programs work well for sites that have something to sell, as they can calculate ROI (return on investment) by measuring the cost of acquiring traffic with the sales revenue it generates. Content-only sites rarely can buy traffic, as the contextual ads on the pages won’t make enough to cover the costs.
	Design your website in a manner that all the internal links, code and validation are working correctly.
	Put important keywords and phrases in the meta tag and H1 headings of your pages, and try to keep them under 255 characters long.
	Employ relevant title that are between 60 to 64 characters. Search engine give a certain level of importance to the page titles.
	Directory and search engine submission. Submit your site to the biggest search engines. Some (like Google) allow you to submit a “site index”, others allow you to submit your URL. Depending on the search engine, it may take some time to see your site listed.
	Build links on other sites. This is important. If you have interesting content related to a specific area, find the web sites and blogs where this content can be promoted. Post comments in response to blog entries where a link to your content (and site!) can be showcased. Also, post your content on social bookmarking sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit and many more. Also, allow people to be able to bookmark your site on these popular social bookmarking web destinations.
	Links from blogs and social bookmarking sites do two things – they create opportunities to send traffic your way and these “inbound links” are part of what Google uses to assess your pagerank. The higher your pagerank, the higher you come up in Google’s natural search results. So it can be a win-win.
	Offer a newsletter to bring your regular, registered users back to your site.
	Create interesting 300-500 word articles and submit to articles sites. Try for one a week, and try and make your articles either tell an interesting story or Article that create a problem and then solve it with a solution. Two good ones are www.ezinearticles.com and www.goarticles.com but there are many others. Also, you can Google "free articles" to find others.
	Add your site to popular web directories like DMOZ.
	You can consider paying a fee to be part of link-exchange programs. Try www.textlinkbrokers.com for more information.
	Join online forums that relate to the subject of your web site and make regular postings and contributions. Don't submit to forums purely to advertise your site though. Get involved, help others as well. Each time you reply to a post include your signature, with your link.
	Create a blog as way to have a dialogue with users about what you do and are passionate about. Examples include Google’s blog site, www.blogger.com. After your blog is created use a ping to inform the search engines that the content of your blog has changed, such as www.pingomatic.com.)
	Keep your web site simple. Good example – search engines can’t read animation such as flash. So if you want the search engines to be able to figure out what content you have, consider your presentation carefully. Also, stay away from “splash” front pages that offer not content – they just add another barrier for users and search engines.
	Theme your text in a repetitive way such that search engines will associate you with those terms when consumers do searches.
	Try to avoid frames for laying out your site – search engines can be challenged by them.
	Try to keep the main text body near the top of the HTML code, and JavaScript and navigation cells towards the bottom. The search engines look for relevant information at the top of the code.
	Be careful about spam. Search engines will penalize or ban a web site if they find invisible or small text, excessive keyword repetitions, duplicate pages or sites, use of unrelated phrases and repeated submissions. Don't try and trick a search engine; just provide great content.

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