Never be afraid to try something new

« Using trading to gain advantage over your competitions

How to bring traffic to your site – Linking methods – Part 2

Author: Bello

Search Engine Optimization can be the difference between a small, barely profitable or visible website and a traffic magnet website.

There are so many ways, both good and bad, to acquire links to be able to drag traffic to your sites. Some sites react to certain strategies better than others.

Some even have conflicting strategies that they react to. To document all of these things would require a significant number of pages and research that goes beyond the scope of this article. So we have just listed below some legal ways to be able to acquire good traffic to your site.

Write articles for others to use in their newsletters or as content for their sites. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content. Just ask for a visible link to your website and include it in the lower end of the article. This is an effective viral approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time.

Another good way to bring traffic to your site is to issue press releases. This is one linking strategy that really works; just like articles, you have to find newsworthy events such as launching your free services. You then send a news release to print and web periodicals in your industry.

The links to your site in online news databases may remain for years and have some clout with link popularity. However, opening or redesigning a website is seldom newsworthy these days. You may want to use a Web news release service such as PR Web.

Placing your website URL in online copies of your press release may increase link popularity some. Issuing press releases is a traditional promotional strategy, but there are other traditional approaches that can help you as well.

Blogs have gone a long way when it comes to marketing strategies. This tool is the latest buzz in the SEO industry. If you want quality links to your site, then start a business blog.

Begin a business blog on your website. If you offer excellent content and regular industry news, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site’s PageRank.

Always make sure when you are sending e-mails to include your site’s URL with your signature, as this helps potential customers to keep in touch with you.

Most e-mail programs such as AOL, Netscape, and Outlook allow you to designate a “signature” to appear at the end of each message you send. Limit it to 6 to 8 lines: Company name, address, phone number, URL, e-mail address, and a one-phrase description of your unique business offering. Look for examples in e-mail messages sent to you.

Buying text ads in Ezines is also a good way to gain exposure. Some of the best buys are small text ads in e-mail newsletters targeted at audiences likely to be interested in the same or similar fields. Many small publishers don’t have sophisticated advertising and offer attractive rates.

Purchase pay-per-click ads. The top ads appear as featured links to the right of “natural” search engine results for your keywords. Your ranking is determined by how much you’ve bid for a particular search word compared to other businesses. This can be a cost-effective way to get targeted traffic, since you only pay when someone actually clicks on the link.

List Your Products on Shopping Comparison Bots and Auction Sites. Shopping bots compare your products and prices to others. Google’s Froogle is free, so be sure to list your products there. A Froogle listing also helps your product page’s ranking on Google.

Advertising in Froogle is cost effective as well. Listing your products in Froogle is a MUST-DO free way to market to thousands of customers. Reaching these customers otherwise might cost you billions of dollars. By listing in Froogle, you save a huge portion of this money.

A key consumer benefit of these sites is the convenience factor whereby consumers can easily assess different product options from different retailers all at once on a single web site.

Froogle provides very specific results. They’ve even taken the time to display the images of the products they’re listing, giving it all a very shop-search-like feel.

SEO Webmaster Tags: IT, Search Engine Optimization, SEO