So you finally have your online business up and running. However, you must not only be working, but you must be ahead of the competition (way ahead, if you intend to quit your day job altogether). And with the hundreds and thousands of web pages on the Internet, competition is a whole new ball game. If you are serious about generating sales and traffic, you must not only have quality products, competitive prices, and a stylish website, but you must also have an audience. Otherwise, his efforts would amount to nothing. Here are some web 2.0 techniques you might want to try if you want to increase web traffic.
leaving traces
One of the keys to increased web traffic is high-quality backlinks. These are links posted on other sites that direct visitors to your site. You can also add backlinks in community forums and online newsletters. Make sure that when you do this, you already know your niche. While this is almost always completely free, keep in mind that you are trying to generate sales. It doesn’t take too long to post a link somewhere, but it’s better to have a solid understanding of your niche. For example, if you’re promoting hunting equipment, promoting your website on animal welfare community forums is not only an exercise in futility, it could also be considered insensitive and could be terrible for your company’s image. Another way is to post comments on authority blogs. You can use Google’s blog search to find out about bloggers that are in your niche. However, make sure that these blogs are ‘reliable’, not just something someone has posted so that others like you can post links to them. Also, make sure that if you ever leave a backlink, it’s a dofollow link. Otherwise search engines will not follow that link.
social bookmarking
There are sites that allow you to bookmark your URL on their site, such as Delicious.com. In this way, you can promote your website for free. Others will know that you have such a website up and running and might visit it. If other people like your site, which is possible if you have an attractive website with informative content, they will also bookmark it. These sites have a tagging system and unlike SEO type ranking, your position will increase if other human beings actually like and thus bookmark your site. The higher your ranking, the more you will notice not only people but also search engines. A high search engine ranking can increase web traffic by a mile. Keep in mind that by doing this, you must have useful content. While it is possible to strike a deal with a large group of people to promote websites on social bookmarking sites, doing so knowing your site is nothing more than fluff is nothing more than cheating. And customers would not like to deal with shady companies. When posting links, be sure to use competitive keywords in the link text when entering information in the forums.
Social networks
You are probably already familiar with this Multiply, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Sites of this nature, specifically Squidoo and Hubpages, can be used as a powerful marketing tool, and you don’t have to be a social butterfly on the internet to be able to use this. This will be a kind of interactive stage for your online business website as customers can communicate with each other in a less formal way – sharing product suggestions and reviews etc. Also, you may be tempted to use content you’ve already used on your website, but never duplicate it. Rewrite it if you want, make a video version of it or something, but never repost it. Forwarding is only acceptable for highly literary articles (Short stories, poems, anyone?).
Social media has become a powerful internet marketing tool. You can put it to good use and increase web traffic for your online business. However, whatever you do, make sure that your site actually delivers on what is promised, even if implicitly, by that text in the link. That is the only way to go, if you want to stay in business.
