Now that you've created that killer website, how are you going to get people to come visit it on the web? Unfortunately with so many websites out there, you must take an active role in promoting your site so that it will receive visitors. Fortunately there are a number of ways to do this. Some cost money, others are free. The ones that cost money will usually work faster, but the free ways work as well, if you are patient. So let's talk about some of these traffic generation techniques.
Pay Per Click
The fastest way to drive traffic to your website is to use pay per click (PPC) advertising. Both Google and Yahoo offer programs where you can pay a certain amount each time someone clicks on an advertisement they show on their search results. PPC campaigns can drive traffic because you are paying money to have your ad shown on the first page of search results for specific keyword searches. The downside is that PPC advertising can get pretty expensive, especially if you don't do a good job of tracking results.
Article Writing
Writing articles is a good free way of generating traffic. When you write a 500 word article, submit it to article directories. Each article will have an author bio box where you can place a link to your website. There are thousands of article directories on the web, and some article writers believe that it is a good idea to submit to as many as possible. Others believe that there are only 4 main article directories worth submitting to:
* articlecity.com
* EzineArticles.com
* ideamarketers.com
* goarticles.com
The best thing to do is to experiment and see which set of directories works best for you.
Blogging
One way to get backlinks is to create a blog on a free blogging site and put links there to your website.
Google and other search engines will regularly spider your blog to index the new postings. In order for this strategy to be successful, you will need to keep your blog updated on a regular basis. Also, be sure to use relevant keywords in all your blog postings.
One good blogging platform is blogger.com. You can create your blog for free and take advantage of the wide range of layouts available. Another good platform is Wordpress.com. You can even use the WordPress software to create a blog on your very own domain name if you want, and take advantage of the many plugins that WordPress offers to do advanced things like adding social bookmarking tags or executing PHP code.
Comment on Forums
Try to find forums that are relevant to the topic of your website. Then look for posts where you can make some intelligent comments. Many forums will not allow you to post an advertisement for your website, but they will allow you to post on the forum as long as your comment is useful and not obviously an attempt to get a backlink.
Comment on Blogs
Like forums, blogs also allow you to make comments. You should especially look for blogs that have the "do follow" feature. Most blogs use "no follow" for links which means that the links have very little value for search engine optimization. But if you can find a do follow blog on your subject matter, then definitely post a comment. Just don't post anything that is obviously spam or your comment will get deleted.
Link Building Systems
Recently there have been a few automated or semi-automated link building systems launched. These systems provide webmasters with backlinks while eliminating almost all of the hassle in getting these links. Link building systems offer many advantages and are well worth a look. They are especially useful if they can provide backlinks from relevant websites.
