Web
traffic is the stream of visitors that come to your website.
There are two
types of web site traffic – paid traffic and free
traffic. Paid traffic usually comes from buying ads and begins
to arrive almost
instantly, as soon as your ad is shown.
Free
traffic arrives over time, often taking weeks or months to begin
to arrive. If you have built your website correctly, and have created
enough links on other sites that point to it, the free traffic
will
build and build over the months and years until you have hundreds
or even thousands
of visitors per day.
The
choice between free and paid traffic comes down to: do you need traffic
right now, or can you wait a while?
Paid
traffic is simple. You just buy advertising thru Google, Yahoo, or
Microsoft’s Live Search and the traffic will arrive in minutes.
You can also buy ads in newspapers and magazines but these
are usually more expensive per-visitor than search engine advertising.
There
are also various websites that will sell you traffic, usually for
something like ten thousand hits for $20, but this
is usually
not targeted
traffic interested in what you are selling. This is usually
just people who are paid a penny apiece to visit websites
and create
hits, and they
will not be on your site for more than a second or two.
You
need visitors that have clicked on a specific ad promoting your product
or service so they will be targeted prospects
for your product or service.
The
downside of search engine advertising is that, when you stop paying
for the ads, the traffic stops.
Free
search engine traffic takes more time and more work but the traffic
is truly free. Free traffic can even
be more targeted
than
traffic from
an ad because you can have more information in a search
engine listing than an ad.
Attracting
free traffic is called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.
There
are two approaches to SEO: On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO.
On-Page
SEO is anything that is part of your site: text, images, HTML code,
links, etc.
The
most important On-Page SEO concept involves having your site focused
around a theme, with
each page
focused on a
keyword related
to the theme.
The search engines love theme-based sites.
As
part of the theme-based site structure, each page should be focused
around a keyword
phrase
related
to the theme.
This keyword
should be
used at least twice in the copy of the page
and in the other page elements such as title,
filename,
heading, and in a
text link.
This will make
sure that the search engines get a clear
picture of what
your page is about.
There
are also some basic guidelines for page content:
• Have
at least 125 words per page
• No more than 6 links to other sites on any page
•
Don’t use your page keyword too much
• Triple-label
your images, using the filename, the image ALT tag, and some text on
the page next to or below
the image to describe the contents.
If
you want to break any of these guidelines, such as with a links listing
page or
an image slideshow
page
with no
text for
example,
you need to
use a “noindex” META tag
to make the search engines ignore
that page.
Off
page criteria involves creating a network of links that point to
your site.
You can
use the
many free
websites to
create this
network.
You can use bookmarking websites like
Digg.com and Del.ico.us; blogs like
Wordpress & Blogger; social websites like FaceBook.com and Squidoo.com;
video websites like YouTube; Directory
websites like DMOZ.org; article sites like EZine Articles.com; Classified
ad websites like USFreeAds.com;
and press release websites like PRweb.com.
There
are hundreds of these free websites that you can use to build your
link
network. It
will take
a bit of
time and
effort,
especially
to create
the content such as articles and
videos but, as you build up this network
of links,
the free
traffic
will grow
and grow.
You
can do link exchanges, where you and another site agree to link
to each
other,
but these
are considered to not be
as effective
as one-way
links.
The
best overall strategy to build website traffic is to thoroughly
research and
plan your site
theme and page
topics
before you
build.
The
traffic strategy for Build-a-Perfect-Wesbite.com is to use a combination
of both free and paid traffic. We are using paid advertising to jump
start the traffic to the site, and building up the resources that
will bring free traffic in the future.
Learn
more about web traffic & SEO:
Download
Make Your Site Sell by Ken Evoy. The Traffic Volume
in
this
e-book series
will show
you how
to research and
build
your website to
get the most possible free traffic
from the search engines.
When Make
Your Site SELL! launched in 1999, it was instantly
coined "The Bible of selling on the Net." It
swept the Net.
MYSS! remains
a great read, full of useful, evergreen ideas and information,
especially if you are trying to sell a product.
And...
it's free!
Click
here to download Make Your Site Sell!
|
 |
|
Next
-- How to make money on the web without a website
-->Click
Here
Do
you have a comment or question about the e-commerce website information
on this page? Use the Contact form to
let us know.
Sign
up for our mailing list to get our monthly
Small Business Website Design newsletter
|
