4 Methods That Increase Website Traffic | Article Marketing

By KurtSchmitt
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Methods to increase website traffic are being spun, packaged, wrapped up in e-literature, and sold for a price. Some of these methods work. Unfortunately, a number of them are also known as "black hat" or are borderline black hat and will only work for a short period of time. They'll probably stop working right about the time you buy the ebook, or get around to reading it and implement it. Since I'm sure you're taking a long term approach to your website, you'll want to dedicate your time and effort to creating a less risky, and more lasting traffic strategy.

Some of these tricks will work, but I'd like to discuss several "white hat" methods that result in lasting traffic. They're not exciting, and they're not kept under lock and key by any guru, but they're being used successfully by many webmasters. In fact, it's a way to future-proof your Web business. These methods will work to produce free traffic for any site you choose for many months and years to come.

Article marketing -- There are a number of benefits to using article marketing and other than building pages, it's the number one method I use to increase website traffic. If written correctly, your posted articles will often rank high in the engines and you can end up with several top listings. The article directory sites have a lot of trust and authority with Google, and provide an excellent backlink to your site.

In addition to the above, the article directories may also send direct traffic to your site. Since those clicking through to your site have already read your article, they're highly targeted visitors. There's a viral effect that occurs when other websites republish your article with a link back to your site. You can continue to get new backlinks without any further effort and this effect can last for months or years.

Making your site delicious -- The best social bookmark is one you don't have to do yourself. You can encourage your visitors to bookmark your pages by placing icons on your site with links to popular social bookmarking sites (such as addthis.com). Bookmarking can dramatically increase the backlinks to your site with minimal effort. In addition, if you bookmark other sites that link to yours, you can improve your rankings in the search engines.

Building content -- When in doubt, build more content. More pages on your site equate to more PageRank, more opportunities for adding in keywords that the search engines will pick up on, more pages to link to, and more information for your visitors. All of this adds up to increasing website traffic. I own a domain name because someone built an online store at the same time I was building a content site on the same subject, with almost the same name. The store is gone, my content site is still there, and I own that former online store's domain name.

Social media sites -- Placing your content on other sites is what I call a web-centric approach to success. Many people know about using Digg and Reddit to drive large amounts of traffic, but this is very hit or miss. Others are using Facebook but that is tricky as well. I'm not saying not to use those sites, but a better way to spend the majority of your time might be to use the user generated content sites. Looking at some of the most popular ones, Squidoo, Buzzle, and Hubpages come to mind. There are also a number of up and coming niche related community sites published on the Ning platform and others. All of these let you create valuable backlinks to your site in some way.

Increasing website traffic with these methods will produce lasting results, as opposed to some of the risky, flash-in-the-pan methods that so many are suggesting these days. Start incorporating one or more of these techniques, and you're sure to see an increase in visitor count.

About the Author

Kurt Schmitt explains how to use article marketing and other Web promotion strategies to increase website traffic .

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