Twelve Sources of Internet Traffic

Internet traffic, in layman terms refers to the flow of visitors to a website. Everyone worries about getting visitors to their sites but the good news is that there are countless ways to create Internet traffic, depending on your resources and how much you know. The money will definitely come once you can create massive traffic to your website with whatever knowledge and resources you possess.

Here are the 12 sources for generating internet traffic to your website. Some of them do not even incur any cost.

1. Article Marketing

Write and post articles on well-known online article directories and get massive targeted traffic without any fee. This is how article marketing works and it also helps build your trustworthiness. It is hence one of the best methods.

Putting down your signature file with your name and also a link to your website serves as a ‘traffic creator’. Whenever a reader reads your articles and proceeds to click on your links, you have just gotten a visitor to your website and in a way article marketing raises awareness of your website.

2. Blogging

Blogs are highly interactive and hence attractive to web users. Making full use of a blog to create traffic begins by ensuring that your blog is powerful in its keywords, has appropriate content and also includes constantly updated RSS feeds on popular websites like Yahoo! and Google. All these help your website to be ranked top in search engine results and you will be on your way getting immense targeted traffic to your website every day.

3. Email Marketing

Email Marketing is an effective method to generate traffic but there are rules to abide by. Hence, one has to pay close attention to and be aware of the rules. Checking out the rules is essential for email marketing.

One of the basic rules is certainly no spamming. There is a need to comply by the Can Spam Act (FTC). Also, do not send traffic to your company- provided website but to a Lead Capture Page when you are renting a list.

Being ‘street smart’ is also important. Make sure that you practise email marketing to people whom will be interested. Do use a well-known autoresponder company should you wish to do email marketing through an autoresponder from people who opt-in to your website.  Compile a list and await returns.

4. Ezines

Online magazines, electronic magazines and magazines that can be created and distributed electronically all fall under ezines. Ezines are usually free of charge but some do charge for your advertisement. The price differs based on the placement of the advertisement.

Ezines, being easily accessible, convenient and inexpensive, help send massive targeted traffic to potential visitors. Tapping on the strategy of targeted marketing undertaken by ezine publishers for their subscribers, you can also gain from the content, which will normally be of value.

5. Online Classifieds

Online classified advertisements are exactly the same as that found on newspapers just that they are online versions.  They normally have two to three description lines and include your website address link. A simple search will help you find free online classified sites.

6. Banner Advertising

Banner advertising online is similar to classified advertising. The difference lies in that banner advertising uses a banner in the form of a colourful shape and has an image or logo of what you are marketing whereas classified advertising is restricted to mainly text. Clicking on the banner brings users to your website.

7. Press Releases

Press release services sites are easily available online. Publicise your business or website for free by publishing convincing and attractive press releases. Juicy details and interesting content are things being looked out for.

8. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO simply means optimizing your website so as to rank high in keyword search engines’ results. This can be done by firstly maintaining high-quality content. Keeping content relevant to your website’s subject matter will help. Secondly, it is to increase your link popularity as this will increase publicity of your website. Thirdly, using the right and effective keywords for your website that search engines look out for will deliver traffic to your website.

9. Video Marketing

Video marketing is becoming more widely used. It can be found on websites, in emails, on video sites such as YouTube and almost anywhere. Video marketing provides the visual and also hearing impact that can help promote your business.

10. Viral Marketing

‘Viral’ comes from the word ‘virus’ and hence viral marketing means the publicizing of products and services offered like a virus, when promoting the business. Email service is a good example of viral marketing whereby people began using the service when they got emails sent to them and slowly more and more people are using the service. Searching for a site that offers viral marketing will help increase traffic to your website.

11. Pay Per Click (PPC)

PPC is an advertising tool used on websites and search engines whereby advertisers bid on keywords that they think their target audience would key in when using search engines to look for what they want. When a user key in the keywords you bid on, sponsored ads or links to your website will appear on top of the search results and hopefully the user sees the links and clicks on them.

Advertisers are charged when users click on their ads. The fee depends on the keyword used and of course the number of clicks.

It is advisable to try out first by starting out small and slowly making it big once you are able to get the results you want. Adjusting of ad copy, keywords and cost per click can be done if results are not achieved.

12. Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is similar to the idea of bookmarking we all know but it allows your bookmarked websites to be kept on the web server instead of just the computer’s hard drive like what the Favourites tool does. Users who sign up for an account can have access to the services on the social bookmarking sites whereby you can bookmark websites under categories of your choice. These categories are like tags and this suggests that you can decide where you want to store the websites. Tags are usually not specific so it gives more flexibility in categorizing.

Social bookmarking sites are good places to link web users to one another. Users of social bookmarking sites will link themselves to each other and this connected chain provides an avenue to create traffic and backlinks.