How To Get Fast Traffic to Your Website

submitted: Aug 30th 2008 | by: DarrelHawes | Total views: 1 | Word Count: 530 | PDF View | Print Article

Do you have a website? If so, you absolutely need traffic.

What is website traffic? Website traffic is actual people browsing your site. Many people have spent good money for the nicest-looking site with all the latest bells and whistles, but lack the visitors that actually generate cash from that site. This is just like building a Walmart, with all the items in stock and employees on staff, and placing in the middle of the Sahara desert.

There are many ways to get traffic. If you need traffic fast, there are two basic methods you can use.

First, you can borrow traffic. Most businesses can use some form of this method, and I encourage you to creatively adapt it to your specific situation. In essence, you simply get another website owner to agree to recommend your product or service to their "list" of interested individuals. This usually involves offering a referral fee or commission to get them to agree to this.

This particular method is effective for two reasons I'll mention. Firstly, the website owner has already gathered the list of people who are interested in your specific topic, saving you the expense and time of identifying them. Secondly, in so doing you are "borrowing" on the goodwill of the referrer. Consider in your own experience. If you need to make a buying decision, do you place more weight in traditional, self-serving advertising or upon the impartial recommendations of friends and advisers? Most people choose the latter.

The "borrowing traffic" method can generally be performed without upfront cash, though you will have to pay a percentage of sales.

The second basic fast-traffic method is to pay for advertising. You have many options available for paid advertising, and I'm going to recommend pay-per-click advertising. Google Adwords is the easiest venue to start with this method, although Yahoo and MSN have similar programs. With pay-per-click advertising, you are able to target specific keywords that people are searching for, and you can start in a matter of minutes.

This method, if performed properly, works for a number of reasons. Among the top reasons it works is you are causing your ads to be displayed based upon specific words used by searchers. Another reason it can be effective is that is trackable. Google, for example, has built-in analytics tools and you can use them free of charge. After a period of time, you will be able to tell which keywords generated the most "clicks"; i.e. visits to your website based upon your ad. With Google's conversion tracking tool (also free) you can also determine which keywords lead to a buying decision.

Unlike the "borrowing traffic" method, you will have a cash outlay whether you make sales or not. On the plus side, Google will likely not charge your credit card until the end of the month, so you may actually have generated more than enough in sales to pay your Adwords bill when it is time to pay. When you first start, most people keep close tabs on their Adwords account, to make sure they are not spending more than they had planned.

We have only covered two methods of generating traffic to your site. In future articles, we will cover many more.

About the Author

If you are trying to increase visitors to your web site, see Darrel Hawes' site for help in getting more visitors, and generating more leads.


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