There are a lot of blogs out there that talk about how to build website traffic but most of them are pitching an e-book or trying to get you to buy some elaborate Search Engine Optimization strategy that relies on complex (often underhanded) strategies to carry out something that is fundamentally easy, yet time-consuming.
That's right … building an online presence is actually one of the easiest things a person will ever do in the lifetime of business, easier than building a website or opening a retail site so why do so many people do it so badly? Fear, ignorance, uncertainty and shame.
Fear of the unknown, being ignorant of the unknown and being uncertain of where to start learning. It's exactly the same reason I didn't learn to cook until I was in my thirties or why I still don't know how to change the gasket in my car. In fact, I don't even know what a gasket is or which part of the car it might be found in but what separates me from most is that I'm not ashamed to admit that I don't know anything about my car.
The Secret
A very complex UML diagram of the process.
So what is the secret to building web traffic? It's radically simply, building web traffic is as simple as telling people about your business. Building quality web traffic is about telling the right people about your business and building sustainable web traffic is about telling the right people about your business and treating them with respect once they've taken the time to visit your business. It is the easiest thing you will ever do. Let's break it down again in a more conventional lesson plan format:
- Tell people whom you believe will benefit by your business about your business.
- Ensure people are richer for having visited your business.
- Repeat.
Telling People About Your Website
If you're proud of your website (and you should be), telling people about it should be a pleasure for you. It should show your personality and be an extension of your business so why not tell the world?
If you tell people about your website, they'll come visit your website, it is honestly that simple. So the art of building your online web presence is about telling as manypeople as you can about your website and help them easily find your website.
Telling the Right People About Your Website
The problem with telling people about your website is that many of the people you tell are simply not the right people and this is where SEO practices often fail. People tend to measure success by how many clicks their website gets but that's a pointless statistic since you don't really care about how many visitors you get … you care (or at least you should care) about the amount of money you get from that traffic.
In order to get the right traffic to your website, you first need to know who your traffic is. Many people start websites assuming the ‘right people' are everywhere in the world but the simple truth is that most websites would be better off using the Internet as a method for their traditional market (local or regional) to access information faster so the first step in attracting website traffic is to decide if your business is better off appealing to:
- a neighborhood,
- a city,
- a region,
- a state,
- the entire country,
- local counties or
- the entire world
Once you know that, ask yourself if your website appeals to men or women more. If it's equal that's great but you should be able to honestly determine it (for example, my website appeals to ~60% men but why?). Is your website for consumer or business traffic, people living in the suburbs or businesses in the heart of the city? Do you appeal to a specific industry or ethnic group? By narrowing these categories many might feel they're limiting their market but it's actually a process called niche marketing and allows your business to spend more money per prospective client while lowering the overall cost of a marketing campaign.
Now that you know who your market is, your goal is to Increasing Website Traffic for Free by participating in communities and building your relationships with others. Take part in forums, leave valid compliments on blogs and build traffic by helping others, this leads to a tremendous influx of quality traffic but more importantly it leads to an influx of legitimate business.
Giving the Right People a Reason to Tell People About Your Website
The biggest secret in building website traffic? Let others do it for you. Produce high quality content designed to help people and watch your website statistics sore as people tell their friends about your great tutorials, free downloads and useful tips.
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