A high traffic website or blog is more often a profitable site. You can work it out, the more traffic you can bring to your site the higher the chances of your visitors being interested in your ads or the products you sell. It's simple mathematics really.
All bloggers and webmasters want, is traffic, and not always to generate income. Many have a special cause or want to get their message across.
As I have mentioned the primary reason for my site is to help me develop myself through learning and sharing my own new knowledge with you. In doing this I am developing as a person, and coming across some really good stuff in the process.
The most popular means of generating traffic is doing it organically, using search engines, and through other sites, or buying traffic through cost per click and banner ads.
Of course before you can consider using any means to drive traffic you have to have content, and good value content.
Visitors need to come to your site for a reason and they need to hang around, and the best way to keep them is to provide good quality and unique content. Most bloggers create bite size articles, which admittedly are easy to read and sometimes entice the reader for more, but may not always work best to increase traffic.
Here's a look at the two ways I have mentioned
that are good visitor pullers:
Organically generated traffic
Content
Content, content, content. You know it makes sense, the more
original content you have on your site the more likely you will have
a high page rank on Google. Without content you will be way down the
list and not get looked at, and therefore not attract any visitors.
Content not only increases your chances of a high Google rank, it
also provides valuable information for your visitors and is likely
to keep them on your page longer.
Social Networking
Everyone and his wife seems to be on Facebook these days and
the way to start is to encourage your friends to visit your site.
Post articles that might be interesting to them on your Facebook
page, and make sure you include a link. These people are your
friends and are very likely to visit you, and be repeat visitors if
you keep your site fresh. Create a Twitter account and regularly
update your status, getting your weblink in as often as you can.
Business Cards
If you have a personal business card be sure to include
your site web URL on it, so each time you give out a card you will
be spreading the word about your site.
Leaflet drop
Why not produce a self created leaflet drop in your local
neighbourhood. Include a description of your site, include as much
information to encourage visitors, and the URL, you may find this
generates a few visitors and if you do it in your spare time, and do
the printing yourself it need not cost very much.
Search engines
Make sure you have submitted your site into search engines.
Remember Google isn't the only search engine around, BING and Yahoo
are also very important and don't forget Altavista.
Links
These are probably the most important part of search engine
optimization, together with content. Google rate the number of
quality sites linking to your site. The more quality links you have
the more likely you will be at the top of the Google search page.
Blog comments
Post blog comments on other bloggers sites, as often as you can, but
make sure they are relevant and you are not just using them as a
means of posting your URL, you'll soon get found out.
Paid Traffic Methods
Google Adworks CPC (Cost per click)
Adworks advertises your site on a cost per click basis,
they promote it on their search site, depending on the search term
used, and each time your site is clicked you pay Google for the
click.
Banner Advertising
Create a banner about your website and buy space on
partnering sites to display your banner. Double check that your
banner is working by clicking through it to your website. Amazingly
not everyone does this and it's common sense really to ensure you
are getting what you pay for.
Buy Click Traffic
You can buy traffic to your site and you can also choose
which location, social group, and even get targeted sales traffic
visits to your site.
Guaranteed Inclusion
Some search engines still offer this service, you pay a
flat fee for 12 months this guarantees your website will be included
in the search engine and are crawled on a regular basis for 12
months.
Context Advertising
These are small links within text that act as
advertisements and are billed on a Cost Per Click basis.
Remember when you are using paid services to generate traffic always analyze your web traffic to ensure it's worth paying for the service.
These are just a few of the more popular ways to increase your traffic profile, there are other ways too and new ways are being develop often. Try lots of different things to see what works best for you.