So you’ve got a website setup but you’ve got no one visiting it; that’s the dilemma and reality of many people who come online and think ‘hey I can setup and website and make loads of money online’. The thing is this scenario is far from a reality for most people who embark on online ventures.

You need to treat you online business like any other business, you need to do research on your market, set targets, goals and form a strategic plan to follow to guide you on your way and to keep you on track. Once you’ve got this in place your life will be much easier.

There are many different ways to get more traffic to your website; here are some simple strategies and proven online techniques which I use to drive traffic to my website:

- Article writing and distribution
- Link exchanges
- Submit your site to online directories
- Posting in targeted forums and discussion boards
- Joint ventures
- Recruiting affiliates
- PPC search engines such as Google Adwords
- Basic search engine optimisation
- Writing and submitting press releases
- Write great content that people want
- Using feeder site such as a blogs or a Squidoo

There are also other techniques such as using traffic exchanges, posting on classified ad sites and using safe lists, however the one I’ve listed above are the ones I primarily use.

I’ll briefly discuss each one and how you can use it to get the best results for you online business.

Article writing and distribution – This article itself is and an example of this; I write the article and distribute to thousands of websites across the internet and at the bottom of each article I have a resource box with a link back to my site in it. Now if I’ve done my job, the resource box at the end of this article should grab your attention or induce your curiosity so that you click the link and check out the great free ebook I’m promoting. Article distribution is also a great way to get more links back to your site which should help your search engine ranking.

Link exchanges – Find websites that are related to your own and contact them to do a simple link swap. The key here is to find good quality sites that are directly related to your site but not competing, this way your products or services will complement each other, not compete.

Submitting your website to online directories is a great way to get back links and generate traffic to your website. Just do a search on google and you’ll find thousands of sites to which you can submit your website.

Posting in targeted forums is a great method to raise your profile and credibility within a niche and in turn attract people back to your website. Use the search engines to find forums related in your niche, answer questions, help people and give good solid information. Don’t spam the forum by posting ads you’ll kill your credibility and reputation.

Joint ventures - Contact other website owners in your niche and set up some simple joint ventures to cross promote each others products or services. Or offer them a good percentage commission on clients they refer. There are many ways to set up joint ventures so I suggest you do your research before trying to set one up.

Recruiting affiliates is a great way to rapidly and dramatically increase your business, I used this to double my sales on one of my products. Offer them high commissions and provide loads of promotional tools to. I created an affiliate ‘mini-site’ for one of my products and gave it away with great success. The more you help them and the more incentives you give them the greater the results you’ll experience. Another strategy you can use is to encourage your customers to become affiliates, as they’ll have intimate knowledge of your product or service and should be more than happy to recommend it.

Basic search engine optimisation – When you build your webpages incorporate the keywords and phrases you uncovered in you market research into your pages. Try to put your primary keyword into at least your title and header tags within the page. But remember you’re creating the site for people not search engines.

Web Site Traffic Articles Index - Click here

PPC or pay per click is search engines such as Google Adwords or Yahoo search marketing are good way to get traffic to your site, but you have to pay for it. As the name suggests you pay per click. With Google Adwords you can set up a campaign and be receiving traffic inside of 10 minutes. Write compelling ads; I also find that if I use the keyword I’m targeting within the ad I get best results. Also if you only want really targeted visitors disable your ads from being shown on the content network as they will not nearly be as targeted.

Writing and submitting press releases is a great strategy and is one which I use very often. If you haven’t used this strategy before I suggest you go to PRweb.com and read their tips on writing press releases. I submit my press releases through PRweb.com and PRleap.com but there are a lot of other sites out there though so make the most of them.

Write great unique content that people want. The key here is to give people what they want, if they have a problem give them solutions. There is an expression which you’ve probably heard before, ‘content is king’, and it’s as true today as it ever was. Give your visitors great content, let them interact, share their views and give them a reason to come back and tell their friends about your site.

The last method we’re going to look at in this article is using blogs or a Squidoo as feeder sites for your main sites. You can set up free blogs at Blogger.com or use Wordpress; you can then use these blogs to link back to your other sites and generate you more traffic. Search engines love blogs at the moment as they are usually updated regularly with fresh content You can use a technique called blog and ping to get your blog picked up and found quickly, it’s really easy, every time you make a post go to pingomatic.com or pingoat.com, send out a ping and your done I’ve found this strategy works very well.

You could also setup a Squidoo and become a lensmaster to raise your credibility within your niche and send more people back to your main websites. In fact if you pick up a copy of the free ebook in my resource box I show you how I got my Squidoo lens ranked #14 in Google in just a few short weeks.

There are a few strategies to dig your teeth into, try and incorporate as many strategies and techniques into your marketing plan as you can, there are many more out there other than the ones discussed, but these should get you started down the right path.

Copyright © 2006 Ian Canaway

About The Author: Discover a free ebook which shows you step-by-step a quick and easy way to drive more traffic back to your websites so you can make more money and give your business a boost and best of all it's free. Click below to download now:
iancanaway.com/squidoo/squidooreport