This intense desire to generate more clicks makes virtually any online entrepreneur easy prey for many of the traffic schemes and scams that pervade the Internet as conmen on a carnival term.
Promises of fast traffic and big bucks often separate even the most savvy business person from their money because they want to believe in the promises that these traffic hucksters.
But rather than thinking "complicated equals better" in the traffic game, the best website traffic sources rate extremely easy to separate from the useless garbage traffic.
Fact: "Good Traffic" equals "targeted traffic!"
This means that v
isitors are coming because of the desire to find out more about a specific niche topic, not as a result of "exit" traffic or membership in a "safe" list where members simply pitch each other in an incestuous spam party.
Good traffic comes from people clicking links on topics targeted to their interests and getting directed to a website containing information they want and expect as a result of clicking on the link.
Bottom line, when you come right down to it, the best, most reliable sources of targeted traffic come from links that people click.
So next time you're considering spending money on a traffic source, understand that unless there is a targeted link that a targeted visitor can click to get to your site, think twice before opening your wallet.
To our knowledge, there are only three ways to get a link to your site: buy it, "Voodoo" on it or cultivate it.
** Buy Links **
Buying links actually rates the fastest way to get traffic to your website.
You simply sign up for Google AdWords at Google.com or you open an account with Overture.com.
You can then run ads with a link to these websites, and preferably someone clicks on the link, you pay to click through a relatively straightforward bidding process based on the popularity of keywords.
You can also buy links in Ezines, newsletters and other people's website either on a per-click basis, for a period (a week or month), or in exchange for paying them a commission if a sale is made as a The result of a click on the link.
** Linking "VoodDoo" **
Linking "Voodoo" refers to trying to manipulate search engines to display links to your site.
You can find a wide range of automated software programs online at any given time that will claim to help you get more traffic from other search engines.
Depending on the intensity of competition in a particular market, and the fact that search engines change their rules frequently, pursuing search engine links this way can quickly turn to the online equivalent of
** Grow Links **
We prefer this method to get links to our websites: growing them.
The best kind of link to get involves one person telling another person, either explicitly or implicitly, they must click on the link and visit the site at the other end.
One way to do this is simply to exchange links with another site, which targets the same audience as your site.
You can manage this process manually or use one of the many software packages that will mangetout process for you.
A search on Google.com for "reciprocal link manager software" provides a good start.
The easiest way to grow a link is by using articles other people on their websites that link back to your site.
The reason articles work so well for "growing" links include the numerous ways in which articles get distributed online, each of which can create dozens, hundreds, even thousands of links to your website by publishing a single article.
Indeed, the following are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the places you can grow links by publishing articles online.
~ Blogs - Your articles can not be displayed on your own blog, but get posted by others on their blogs with surprising ease.
The links in these articles can point directly back to your site.
~ Article Directories - Article directories such as IdeaMarketers.com abound online.
They not only provide an easy way to display your articles to allow others to pick them up for posting on their websites, but also in itself attracts readers search content.
~ OPS (Other People's Sites) - Popular websites like WebProNews.com attract repeat visitors by offering targeted content to their readers.
Since they can not produce all the content themselves, they publish articles created by others. Links from these sites can bring a steady stream of targeted visitors by giving you targeted exposure.
~ Ezines - By getting your articles published in other peoples' Ezines, you can get a link to the most valuable real estate online, a targeted investigation email "inbox."
Many ezine publishers run articles written by others to their targeted readers, and your link in the resource box can bring you a veritable avalanche of targeted visitors when hundreds, even thousands of people receive your article at the same time.
Whether you choose to buy them, "Voodoo" them or grow them, getting targeted links to your site posted on the Internet is the absolute best way to get steady traffic to your website.
Although not as fast as buying them or as exciting as trying to manipulate search engines, growing links with articles gives you a long-term, dependable presence online.
