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The 3 Best Website Traffic Sources
The Author's Background: Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and co-author of an amazing program that teaches you how to write and utilize free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website, without spending a dime on advertising! Turn Words Into Traffic.
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The
3 Best Website Traffic Sources By Jim Edwards (c) 2005
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Webmaster Tips, Hints and Resource Articles
Archive - Click
Here
Not a day goes by that any serious website owner doesn't wonder
how to get more traffic to their site.
This intense desire to generate more clicks makes virtually any
online entrepreneur easy prey to many of the traffic schemes and
scams that pervade the Internet like conmen on a carnival midway.
Promises of fast traffic and big bucks often separate even the
most savvy business person from their money because they want to
believe the promises made by these traffic hucksters.
However, rather than thinking "complicated equals better"
in the traffic game, the best website traffic sources are extremely
easy to separate from the useless garbage traffic.
Fact: "Good Traffic" equals "Targeted Traffic!"
That means the visitors come as a result of desire to find out more
on 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 fest.
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 the link.
Bottom line, when you get right down to it, the best, most dependable
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 it involves a targeted link that a targeted
visitor can click to get to your website, think twice before opening
up your wallet.
To my knowledge, only three ways exist to get a link to your site:
buy it, "voodoo" it, or grow 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 then run ads with a link on those sites and any time someone
clicks the link, you pay for the click through a relatively straightforward
bidding process based on the popularity of the keyword.
You can also buy links in ezines, newsletters, and on other peoples'
websites either on a per-click basis, for a period of time (a week
or month), or in exchange for paying them a commission if a sale
gets made as a result of a click on the link.
** Linking "Voodoo" **
Linking "voodoo" refers to attempting to manipulate the
search engines into displaying links to your website.
You can find a large number of automated software programs online
at any given time that will claim to help you get more search engine
traffic.
Depending on the intensity of competition in a specific market
and the fact that search engines change their rules frequently,
pursuing search engine links this way can quickly turn into the
online equivalent of Alice chasing the rabbit down the hole.
** Grow Links **
I personally prefer this method to get links to my websites: growing
them.
The best type of link to get involves one person telling another
person, either explicitly or implicitly, they should click 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 mange the process for you.
A search on Google.com for "reciprocal link manager software"
yields a good start.
The easiest way to grow a link is through using articles other
people post on their websites which link back to your website.
The reason articles work so well for "growing" links
involves the numerous ways in which articles get distributed online,
each of which can create dozens, hundreds, even thousands of different
links back to your website by publishing a single article.
In fact, the following represent only 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 only appear 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 website.
~ 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
and of themselves attract readers searching for content.
~ OPS (Other People's Sites) - Popular websites
like WebProNews.com attract repeat visitors by offering targeted
content to their readers.
Since they can't 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 people's ezines, you can get a link on the most valuable
real estate online, a targeted prospect's 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 site 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
represents the absolute best way to get steady traffic to your site.
Though not as fast as buying them or as exciting as trying to manipulate
the search engines, growing links with articles gives you a long-term,
dependable presence online.
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