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Article by: Bernard Peh
By participating in forums, you are exposing your
url to anyone who is reading your post. For example, if you provide
web design service, you might want to be more active in the web
design section of the forum because you know that the people who
are reading your post are people who are interested in web design.
The clicks from these people are usually more valuable than clicks
from any other tom, dick and harry. I would recommend using only
one link in your signature to avoid confusion. Some people use
alot of links in their signature for SEO purposes and that actually
defeats the whole idea of getting quality traffic.
Many people leave their urls when participating in blog discussions.
Like forums, people who take time to read the blog are interested
in the topic. Depending on the popularity of the blog, your url
in the blog comments may provide you with quality traffic.
Article Submission
Article submission to websites and discussion groups can reap
great rewards. If your article is unique and good, it might be
duplicated in many websites and invites alot of targeted readers.
If the readers are impressed with the content, the chances of
them reading the bio at the end would be high, and hence there
is a good chance that they will click on your url. Many people
write articles for different reasons and I find that many people
like to stuff links in their content and bio. I, too operate an
article website and sometimes, I saw an article so well written
that I wanted to use it in my website but the bio spoiled everything.
There were too many links in the author bio. I can understand
from the search engine optimisation perspective of putting links
in the bio but it will become harmful to my website (I am stingy
about out-going links) and annoying for the reader if the bio
is stuffed with links. Some links aren't even related to the author.
Online Advertisement / PPC Programs
Another proven technique is to advertise urls or banners in established
websites. If you noticed, Dell loves to advertise their products
in MSN. Just imagine how many people are surfing msn everyday
and how many people are looking at the banner...Intelligent use
of words and banners can lead to high volume of targeted leads
to your website. Such advertisements can be effective but very
costly. Therefore, most people tend to use Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
programs whereby your urls will only be displayed when certain
keywords are searched. The most notorious of all PPC programs
is Google Adwords.
Good SERPS
Let us not all forget that the best way to get quality leads
is via organic search engine results. Though it takes alot of
hardwork and time to be ranked well in major search engines, the
effort will be rewarded in a long run. Once you are ranked well
in the Google especially, quality traffic becomes almost unstoppable.
Offline Advertisement
This is an area that is often overlooked. Sometimes words of
mouth can be even more effective than all of the techniques mentioned
above. I remembered how friendster used to spread like a virus
sometime ago and everyone were talking about it everyday in schools,
colleges..etc. This is how powerful peer pressure can be. As long
as something becomes popular, everybody will go for it. Many traditional
advertising techniques such as putting your urls in brochures,
magazines, stands, t-shirts, cars...etc still works. Of all the
offline advertising techniques, I found newspaper ads really effective
especially if the newspaper is really popular. Offline advertisements
may well worked better for people who do not use search engines
alot.
There are other ways to get traffic but most of them are not
really effective. I will list 2 commonly used techniques nowsadays:
Guaranteed Targeted Hits
There are companies that promised certain amount of quality hits
for certain amount of money. This service is very attractive for
new website owners because it is hard for a new website to get
traffic. How does it work? By using pop-up advertisements. There
are also unethical companies using automated scripts to generate
hits. A quick way to determine if this technique works for you
is to check your web statistics. If all the visitors from the
"Guaranteed Targeted Hits" program does not go beyond
the landing page or generate sales, then you should consider quitting
the program. There are also cases that this technique actually
works for some webmasters. For me, I will block all "pop-ups",
"pop-downs", "pop-unders"...etc whatever.
Hits Exchange Network
Some websites offer hit exchanges, ie you visit my website and
I visit yours. It usually works on a point system. The more websites
you visit, the more points you get and the system will show your
links more frequently, bringing in more hits for you. There is
usually a timer to make sure that you visit the site for at least
20 or 30secs before you can move on to the next. I must admit
that this is a very good and cheap way to get free traffic but
the traffic is not targeted. Most users in the network visit your
site just to get points and they do not take your content seriously.
I have joined many such networks and none actually works for me.
Conclusion
Quality Online Traffic is important for anyone who provides an
online service or runs an online business. Visitors who arrived
at your site with a purpose are more likely to make purchases.
This article discussed some of the common ways to bring in quality
traffic for your website, some online and some offline. There
are of cause many other ways not covered in this article.
Bernard Peh is a great passioner of web technologies and one
of the co-founders of Sitecritic.net
Website Reviews, Web Design Ideas. He works with experienced
web designers and developers for more than 5 years, developing
and designing commercial and non-commercial websites. During his
free time, he does website reviews, freelance SEO and PHP work.
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