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How to create massive website traffic with a shoestring budget

Cheap web site traffic can produce excellent results – free targeted web site traffic can pull in mammoth amounts of more web site traffic than you may ever need!

There seems to be a real mystery on how to achieve increased web site traffic, even though it is only “a paint by numbers” method. To get really satisfying results with your next web site traffic promotion, follow these steps.

Let me shed some light on this confused yet simple subject.

1. SEO your website correctly

There lots of SEO tools to highlight the weak areas in each web page. Search engines will then better understand your information and increase your website traffic. Patience is required using this method but long term this method requires the least amount of maintenance.

2. PPC – Pay per click. You pay for traffic

This is traffic you pay for. Pay-per-click advertising, banner advertising, co-registrations etc, all fall under this category. Works instantly but can be costly and may not be targeted to your niche market.

3. Borrow It

This is traffic that you get from joint ventures. Shared opt in sites with free giveaways etc. Lots of instant traffic that requires automated follow ups known as auto responders.

4. Pay For Inclusion Search Directories

When you search the internet from Yahoo, the results are provided by a web site other than Yahoo. Search the Yahoo Directory (hundreds of thousands of people do each month) and you’ll see web sites that have paid to be in those results. Each web site owner pays at least $299US per year to be there and may not even be included. This fee is for the application only. If your site is accepted, you will pay at least $299 per year, every year. You will pay more if you want a premium placement for your listing.

Pay Per Click Search Engines

The concept of pay per click search engines is very simple and works well. You buy targeted ad space based on a keyword phrase that is related to your product or service. Your ad is displayed on the search results page after a user searches for your keyword for that ad. Every time a visitor clicks through to your web site from that ad, it costs you from one cent up to $10 or more. You get web site traffic that is interested in your niche, as much as you are willing to pay for.

5. Increased web site traffic generation methods?

SEO – Find the right in demand keywords/key phrases for your topic niche. Give your website quality and relevant content that reflects a variety of keywords and key phrases.

Blog on other peoples forums, especially high PR sites of 5-7. This will get your site indexed hours or days and not months.

Giveaway quality stuff for free also known as loss leaders. People will like it and recommend your free downloads to others via their websites and or email lists.
This becomes viral and becomes a huge traffic generation method.

6. The importance of targeted web site traffic?

Targeted web site traffic is very important, people that visit your site are searching for a specific solution to a problem. If you supply the desired solution, then you have a customer in waiting with their wallet open.

If you are an adsense website, the click through rate will be higher as customers identify possible solutions on your website, even with Adsense.

7. Should I rely only on free web site traffic?

You can if done correctly, Google and Yahoo provide the majority of website traffic. Paid traffic is proportional to your wallet size. Getting lots of website traffic should only be a small part of your strategy. What you do with your visitors is much more important.

Getting large volumes of will increase web site traffic but paying for it may send you broke. To drive traffic to my web site I rely on promoting articles and back links that value my editorial contribution.

Leave paid alone and use it only with a structured strategy that you know that works. Never go in blindly with paid website traffic unless you can afford to lose it all.

8. Which web site traffic promotion is best for me?

That depends on many things. For newbie’s focus on basic SEO, good niche content and Google friendly is a must. It’s free and is consistent, it takes a while to provide steady traffic and it’s free.

Advanced users should consider Google Adwords or similar. Viral marketing works amazingly if you have a great new product that provides a sought after solution.

Reciprocal links are good to have and submitting articles to lots of article sites would have to be on everyone’s list of priorities.

Blog sites such as Google and Yahoo groups, Technorati, Digg and Delicious provide instant free traffic.

9. What can I do with my web site traffic statistics?

Plenty of things! You can establish which pages get viewed the most and which the least. Which keywords/phrases were used to find your website and which search engine brings you how much traffic. Which countries visit your website and days of week that are most popular. Handy to decide which day to use for maintenance downtime when needed.

Referred links are also handy to know, they display the websites that link to your website and provide traffic for you. Web site traffic statistics are a goldmine of information including daily traffic, number of pages view per visitor and duration time spend on your website.

10. How can I drive traffic to my web site?

Make sure you are registered with Google, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, DMOZ.org All the other search engines will index your website without your consent.

Back links are a must, blogs can really drive traffic but always short lived. Find permalink blogs with a PR of 4 or greater. If you can blog a comment on a PR 6 website, you will be indexed the same day!

Email lists also work but you need a list and they are time consuming to build and maintain.

11. How to increase targeted web site traffic?

Knowing your niche and the keywords associated is the first step. Once this has been identified, you must write or obtain information articles that relate to your niche keywords. Simply put, ensure your website is packed full of interesting content that readers will value. Also the search keywords entered by searchers within Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. match with your keywords throughout your site.

The search engine spiders note this and accordingly rate your website as relative to search requests. Of course you are competing against others doing the same.

Just do it better! Reciprocal links or one way links are a must. Aim for hundreds of links, eventually as your site matures go for thousands of links. There many tools to help you do this. www.linkmetro.com is one to start with.
Just register and other sites will contact you.

Remember to reciprocate your links ONLY with niche related sites!

12. Should I buy web site traffic?

YES and NO, newbie’s should stay clear of paid traffic. Why? It is easy to fall prey to wolves that promise much and deliver little. There is no reason to buy traffic when first starting out! The exception is that you are a seasoned website owner and you have a proven formula that works for you. Then the risk of buying web site traffic may be justifiable and even be very profitable.

Google Adwords is web site traffic on steroids BUT just like gasoline without respect it can blow up in your face!

13. Is cheap web site traffic worth the effort?

YES, but it requires lots of hard work to get the momentum going for every website you promote. Do not believe the hype of easy or no effort to your first million dollars, it will not happen. Stop dreaming, roll up your sleeves and do the hard yards now for the rewards later.

14. The best way to generate web site traffic?

Without doubt the best way to generate web site traffic is providing quality informative content, Google site map on your site, blogging and or submitting articles to article sites.

Google adwords is extremely powerful at getting massive traffic to any site BUT it can cost you big time too. Adwords should be left to the disciplined only. Otherwise you may get a surprise credit card statement from Google adwords traffic.

This is traffic where you deliberately ‘engineer’ an environment that attracts visitors from Search Engines. SEO, Social networking, Blogging, Feeder Sites etc all fall under this category.

Great ways to use Twitter in your business and personal life

Twitter is a micro blogging platform which allows you to publish short messages of less than 140 characters through different mediums like IM, cellphones and the web.

It is similar to an IRC channel although messages are displayed less rapidly. Some have called it a slower version of internet messengers.

It has a social element as well, as it allows users to befriend and monitor each other’s messages or updates. So what you have here is a publishing tool that can be either public and private.

Twitter gives you a fragmented experience of opinions, events, news, ideas and feedback largely because its structured to accommodate non-contextual usability: You can easily follow thousands of users and listen in and enter into conversations conducted among multiple users at any point. And this is usually the case.

On the other hand, Twitter can be actively used as a tool to push out messages that capitalize on the attention you’re receiving from other users. Yes, I’m talking about self-promotion and marketing. This involves active user engagement.

Twitter and Marketing: A General Overview

There’s been a great deal of articles on how Twitter can be used for marketing purposes and I think most of them can be condensed to the simple aim of tracking and directing attention. Twitter allows you to monitor how influencers think or feel, you can also get into their attention zone via active networking.

For businesses, Twitter is another channel which connects current and potential customers with your product or brand. It allows deeply infiltration into the lifestyles of interested participants, which helps to build brand persistence/loyalty.

In its most obvious form, Twitter can be seen as a traffic generation tool. The placement of links within profiles and conversations can direct visitors to a specific website and is especially powerful if you pitch to early adopters and influencers.

As a lead acquisition tool, it doesn’t always reach the audience you want. Most Twitter users are somewhat web savvy and it is extremely difficult to target a specific subset of the general demographic and determine their level of potential interest.

As there isn’t an option to advertise within Twitter (unlike Facebook), Twitter marketing is a task that involves two-way audience engagement, on the part of the marketer or business owner. In a way, this is a good thing.

The Problem With Twitter

Twitter is not a difficult tool to use so there’s a low barrier of entry; Anyone can pick it up. What really matters is how it impacts your online habits and daily life. For many, Twitter is a distraction, albeit one that is very much welcome.

It saps your attention and pulls your focus away from other tasks. Kathy Sierra goes a step further and talks about the very real fear of being disconnected:

Ironically, services like Twitter are simultaneously leaving some people with a feeling of not being connected, by feeding the fear of not being in the loop. By elevating the importance of being “constantly updated,” it amplifies the feeling of missing something if you’re not checking Twitter (or Twittering) with enough frequency.

The issue here is that effective Twitter usage necessarily involves an investment in time and attention. One needs to be plugged in to a certain extent to reap the benefits that come from using Twitter. Even listening takes an effort.

17 Ways to Use Twitter: My Experiences So Far

I’ve signed up for a Twitter account a long time ago and used it sporadically because it never really did appeal to me. Last week I decided to give it another chance and installed Snitter, a desktop application for Twitter.

I started using it actively and gradually developed an avid interest. I think Twitter is a manageable process that can be adopted for all types of lifestyles, busy or inactive. You’ll just need to integrate it within your normal workflow. It’s addictive but once you understand how to use it, it’ll be a very effective tool indeed.

Having read a great deal of other articles on Twitter, I decided a do a quick summary of all the ways you can use Twitter for both your professional or personal life. Some of these methods go beyond the use of Twitter as a lifestreaming device:

1. Personal Branding. Twitter is a social media platform you can use to build your personal brand. It has the primary benefit of developing a casual persona and establishes you as a social personality that is connected and approachable. As Twitter adoption increases, new users will be drawn towards well established Twitter personas.
2. Get Feedback. Need an alternative perspective on how a website looks or the right course of action to take? Blast out a message asking for advice and you’ll receive replies from other users. This collective intelligence can be used as fodder for articles or projects.
3. Hire People. Need a good logo designer, marketer or programmer? Send out a message asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.
4. Direct traffic. Twitter can be used to get traffic to your websites or the sites of friends. If you ask your friends to tweet about it, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up. There is a viral nature to all types of news, even on a site like Twitter.
5. Read News. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news. You can also subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific websites/conferences, which allows you to receive and view content quickly. This is very useful for active social news participants.
6. Make New Friends. Like any other social network, Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is an easy way for you connect with people outside of your usual circle. Make an effort to add active users you find interesting. A Twitter acquaintance can be developed into a long lasting friendship.
7. Network for benefits. Twitter can be used as a socializing platform for you to interact with other like-minded people, especially those in the same industry. It can be used to establish consistent and deeper relationships for future benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.
8. Use it as a ToDo list. Use Twitter to record down what you need to do while you are away from the computer. Mark the tweet as a favorite to file it for referencing. Another alternative is to use an Online task management service that is synced with Twitter. One example is Remember The Milk.
9. Business Management. Twitter can be used as a company intranet that connects employees to one another. Workers can liaise with each other when working on group projects. Particularly useful when certain workers go out often in the field. Updates could be set to private for security reasons.
10. Notify Your Customers. Set up a Twitter feed for the specific purpose of notifying customers when new products come in. Customers can subscribe via mobile or RSS for instant notification. Twitter can also be used to provide mini-updates for one-on-one clients.
11. Take Notes. Twitter provides you with an easy way to record important ideas or concepts you want to explore further. Include links relevant to ideas you want to explore. Note taking can also be done offline via mobile applications.
12. Event Updates. Businesses can use Twitter as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes. This is a hassle-free way of disseminating information, especially when you don’t have the means to set up a direct mobile link between you and the audience
13. Find Prospects. Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online. Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users. Tweet about topics parallel to your product and close prospects away from public channels by using direct messages or offline communications. Discretion and skill is needed in this area.
14. Provide Live coverage. Twitter’s message size limit prevents detailed coverage of events but it can allow you to provide real-time commentary which may help to spark further discussion or interest on the event as other Twitter users spread the message. Very useful for citizen journalism.
15. Time Management and Analysis. Twitter can simply be used to keep a detailed record of what you are doing every daily. This might be boring for others but this type of usage is useful when you want to analyze how you spend and manage your time.
16. Set Up Meetings. Twitter can help you organize impromptu meetups. For example, you can twitter a message while at a cafe, event or art gallery and arrange to meet fellow users at a specific spot. It’s an informal and casual way of arranging a meeting.
17. Acquire Votes. Send a link to your stories you’ve submitted in other social news sites like Digg. Sometimes your followers will vote up the stories because they agree with it. This allows you to acquire more support for your efforts on other social media websites.

I suspect I’ll be writing a little more about Twitter in the future including a roundup and summary of some of the articles I found really useful (there were quite a few).

Hopefully this article has given some ideas on how to use Twitter to promote yourself and your business or website. If you found this article useful, feel free to send it to your Twitter friends. I’ll love to get some feedback.