Part 2 of How to Drive Traffic to Your Website 2
Part 3: How to Drive Traffic to Your Website 3
Including Dynamic Content
Dynamic content is defined as that special something extra that keeps visitors coming back for more and makes your site more interesting. Dynamic content might be things like a message board, search box, polls, RSS feeds, and other fun extras. However, don’t get carried away. If you have quality content on your site, only a few pieces of dynamic content are all that’s necessary.
Buying Ad Space
Another effective way of driving traffic to your website is by purchasing advertising space. You can purchase ad space at a wide variety of places. For example, you can use the Google Adwords program. With Adwords, you bid on search terms and positions. When someone performs a Google search, they’ll see the sponsored site adds on the right hand side of the screen. These are Adwords ads.
You can also buy banner ads on popular websites. Another great place to advertise is on blogs. There are thousands of popular blogs out there that can showcase your site ad for a fee.
Then there are ezines, which can also be great places to purchase ad space. When advertising in ezines, go for text ads rather than banner ads. It’s a scientifically proven fact that people are learning to overlook banner ads, making them less effective than a simple text ad. One handy method of getting your site ad in ezines is to write for them. Often, ezine owners will trade you a little ad space in exchange for your article.
While purchasing ad space can certainly be an effective way to bring visitors to your site, let’s examine some tactics that may not be so good.
One of them is buying credits at traffic exchange sites. These sites are usually looked down on by search engines, because it’s like forcing traffic. Plus, the traffic you’re getting is coming from other people who are only clicking through sites so that they can earn their own credits. What happens is a vicious cycle. Not only do you not get quality traffic, your site could get penalized or dropped by search engines. So be sure to steer clear of any site that guarantees you traffic in this way.
Now let’s take a look at yet another way to bring visitors to your site — with a press release.
Writing a Press Release
Press releases are basically announcements that are distributed to journalists, newspapers, websites, and periodicals. When writing a press release, keep the point of view in the third person and write an attention-getting yet informative article about your site and what it has to offer. To get your press release out there, try a site like http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com. This is not by any means the only press release site out there you can use — with a simple search you can find lots of places to submit your press release.
Then, there’s the option of starting your own affiliate program. Let’s take a look at how an affiliate program can bring quality traffic to your site:
Affiliate Programs
With an affiliate program, you will be recruiting affiliates to advertise your product or link. Every time one of your affiliates makes a sale for your site, they get a percentage of the profits. Affiliate programs are a great ways to get hundreds of people promoting your site for you. ClickBank is probably one of the most widely used affiliate sites out there, so if you want to start an affiliate program for your site, that would be a good starting point. There is a fee to use ClickBank, however. If you want to try out an affiliate program without paying, there are sites like PayDotCom. They are free, but you probably won’t get as many affiliates as you would with ClickBank.
Now let’s take a look at another way to bring visitors to your site — by providing them a valuable resource:
Starting a Newsletter
Starting a newsletter, ezine, or community can be a fantastic way to bring repeat traffic to your site. So by all means, if you can provide a newsletter once a week, then do so. A newsletter, ezine or even a discussion community builds a loyal subscriber base and brings more traffic from referrals to your site. You can put a subscription box on your website with some information about your newsletter. Then, all subscribers have to do is enter their email address, which will be sent to your database. There are a variety of programs out there that can help you start a newsletter, some of them for free. To get started with a basic newsletter, check out the free software at http://www.ideamarketers.com. This is a good starting point, although there are many other free newsletter software programs you can find as well. When your newsletter gets bigger with more subscribers, you can always move to a more advanced newsletter program that costs.
Offering Something for Free
Offering your visitors something for free can also be a great way to bring traffic to your site. You could offer a free ebook, for example. If people can obtain something free, they’re more likely to visit your site. Not only that, but then you can submit your site to the freebie and free stuff directories out there. People seeking freebies will then come across your site and visit. Not only that, but your link in the free directories counts as a backlink! If you do end up using this tactic, be sure that your site offers lots of quality content. Your visitors may come for the freebie, but they stay, and return, for the content!
In Closing
Bringing traffic to your website is an ongoing process. Let’s take a look at the steps we’ve discussed:
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Quality Content
Dynamic Content
Lots of Backlinks
Buying Ad Space
Starting a Newsletter
Giving Something Away
All of these steps can be used together to bring the most traffic possible to your site. Building a great site certainly doesn’t happen overnight, so be patient and keep at it. With diligence and attention, you can take your website to the top!
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Writing and distributing press releases online to promote your business is one of the most powerful promotional strategies you can use. As a publicity expert, I get more questions about press releases than about any other topic.
That’s why I created a free email tutorial called “89 Ways to Write Powerful Press Releases.” I explain why we should no longer be writing press releases only for the press, but for consumers who can find the releases online, click through to our websites and enter our sales cycle, even if journalists don’t think our release is worthy of attention.
The course includes several terrific press release samples as well as “before” and “after” makeovers.
You can sign up for the free press release writing tutorial at http://www.PublicityHound.com/pressreleasetips/art.htm
It’s a very long tutorial, with an entire week devoted to writing good headlines, but please stick with it. By the time you’re done, it will be like earning a master’s degree in writing and distributing press releases. And you’ll know more about this topic than many PR people.
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