Think you're ready to start building your website traffic? Before you start spending time and money on getting visitors to your site, be sure your site is ready for them. Is your sales copy complete? Is there a clear way to purchasing your products/services? Do you have all the information available that your visitors require?
If your site is really ready then you need to get yourself some traffic, here's some basic information on getting started:
There are many many ways to get traffic to your website. Which method you will use will depend on what you are promoting on your site and how much you can afford to spend on promotion.
It is important that your traffic is targeted, there is no point in getting 100,000 people to a site that sells something they are not interested in. You are much better off getting 100 people to a site that are looking for that product, they will be much more likely to want what your site has to offer them.
Here are some common methods for getting more visitors to your website:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - In order to start doing SEO you need to choose keywords (or keyword phrases), then optimize your site for those keywords. Don't just pick a word that describes your product (like 'handmade soap') and start working. You need to research your keywords. This is very important because you want to find keywords that are going to bring you the most targeted traffic, and if you are competing with thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of other sites it will be difficult to get a high ranking in the search engines. You will also have to get your site indexed with the search engines to start working your way up to top ranks in the search results. Yahoo and Google are two important search engines to be sure you are listed in.
Pay Per Click (PPC) - PPC is a great way to start seeing immediate results for your efforts. You create an ad, pick the amount you are willing to pay, and then when someone clicks on your ad you pay for that click. It is also very important to target your keywords to get targeted buying traffic heading to your site. Be careful that you are not spending more on ads than you will make from the sales, this is why tracking is very important. Here are two sites where you can set up Pay-per-click campaigns:
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