I have received countless numbers of email, instant messages and comments with requests to talk more about ways to increase website traffic. Here is an article as well as a video that talks about how you can increase website traffic.
In no particular order, here are some of the things that I personally do myself to increase website traffic.
Search Engine Marketing: Undeniably, scoring search engine traffic is by far one of the easiest way to get traffic to your website. Inside of that, Google is the most popular search engine on the Internet. Google indexes pages very quickly, so getting your pages in their database is easy. The question is, “How do these pages look when they do get indexed?”.
WordPress out of the box needs to be tweaked slightly so that your pages appear in Google just like the example above.
Social Networking: Building relationships with other authors, bloggers or webmasters is vital towards increasing website traffic. The more people that you know and make friends with, equal more people that will voluntarily talk about you or your blog on their website and provide direct links to many articles and sections within your site.
Start A Newsletter: In my niche of blogging, its all about Feedburner subscription numbers. I kill two birds with one stone and offer my readers the option of subscribing to my email notification service through Feedburner. My subscribers will receive an email the very next morning if I have written new content to my blog. The more subscribers I have the equal the more of a surge of traffic I have every time I publish new content to my blog.
Advertising: Advertising your blog or website is very important and there are many ways to advertise for free or for cheap. Commenting on other blogs is one way. Most blogs within my niche have installed a widget called “Top Commentator” and display a top ten list of the bloggers who comment most on their blog. Having your name on a “Top Commentator” list says a lot for yourself. Guest blogging on other blogs is another great way to gain readers and increase traffic. Lastly, is to bite the bullet and spend a little money by advertising in the right places. If you choose to buy advertising, make sure it is in places that will convert well. If you blog about wood working, you might not want to advertise on a Heavy Metal Music review blog.
The key element to remember is this…
It is not really about how many visitors you get per day to your blog, but rather what you do with the visitors that do come to your blog. I can make a business out of 10 visits per day. Honestly!!! If you give me 10 unique visits per day, I can work with that.
My focus is on conversion. In the example below, my focus is on converting the 10 visits per day and creating 10 new readers for life! So, then the next day, I have the 10 people that visited yesterday and then 10 more new people that visit for the first time. If you can convert 10 new readers per day, by the end of one year, you’re look at a ton of traffic.
With this simple formula and strategy, your blog or website basically doubles in traffic every day. Again… its all based off of just converting 10 people! We are talking about converting 10 visitors per day and turning them into 10 long term readers.
That in itself is the key. Search engine traffic is awesome! That is my personal favorite way to get traffic. But honestly, it doesn’t matter how you get traffic to your site. If you pass out business cards, or hire a pilot to fly a banner across the sky with a Cessna, etc… the key to success in increasing your website traffic is taking the current daily traffic you do get and convert them into people that visit your site on a daily basis.
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Date/Time: 11-1-2007 04:01:00 Comment #6220
It’s a great post, Garry. No Bullshit. It’s rare to see somebody make “10 visitors” as a value. People will just think it’s just too small and tend to ignore and search for more.
It’s interesting to see how we can actually get thousand of loyal subscribers and reader in a year time. Although looking small, it’s extremely great! Your traffic conversion is look like the great compounding interest in mutual fund investment.
Stumbled!
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 10:14:02 Comment #6226
Ken Xu,
Yes! Now, if I could apply this same theory to mutual funds, I think my life would slightly different! LOL!!! Thanks for the comment, Stumble and for visiting. I hope to have you back.
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 13:00:18 Comment #6229
I agree Garry, most people look at the high numbers. It isn’t how high your traffic is, sure it is a great thing but it is how many actually keep coming back. Great piece. BTW- I’m trying to email ya.
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 13:02:46 Comment #6230
oops forgot to state, I haven’t tried doing a newsletter yet, maybe I should try once we figure out life. The other thing is advertising, never tried it. Sure I advertise on my blog but never thought about trying to do it for my blog.
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 13:11:55 Comment #6231
The whole focusing on converting new visitors thing is something neglected by most people, myself included. Great post and thanks for the tip Mr. Gary!
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 13:23:04 Comment #6233
Garry- ever think of holding giveaways/contests? Well, okay I know ya have, but what’s your take on them?
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 17:07:17 Comment #6237
Garry, you bring up a good point! For bloggers is subscribers, for website owner it’s list building. On the internet your list is pure gold! It’s getting harder and harder to get people to opt in to your list if you’re a website owner, and I agree with you that should be the main focus.
Then you can build a relationship with them for future offers. Great post dude! Still hoping to hear back from David
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 18:25:27 Comment #6239
-Mike, I guess that was pretty funny when your phone rang right after posting this comment, and I really had not seen it, I promise.
-Garry, great post and video. I guess you are now using all my weaknesses as your material, lol. I guess I need to learn more about blogging, I still tend to do more by programming.
-Garry, just a note, I told you at 4pm I would have a term listed in the Google index in the morning, I was wrong, it took 3 hours to get in the Top 20!
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 19:38:57 Comment #6242
Thanks for all the comments everyone. With all the positive responses in addition to getting featured on 45n5.com today I think I will go ahead and publish a second post and video on some great examples on how you can convert visitors into regular readers. Thanks again for such a positive energy you guys are giving me.
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 20:37:20 Comment #6244
Hey Garry… Now that I have been eliminated from NIM, I am making the rounds and catching up on some reading. I am a firm believer in creating quality content. With your tweaks, that content will rank highly, but without the content no amount of tweaking will do a bit of good IMO.
Date/Time: 11-1-2007 21:28:40 Comment #6245
Content is the key.. that is a gimme. You have to have great, unique, useful and creative content. Welcome back! I was beginning to wonder if Joel had you locked up or something… LOL!!
Date/Time: 11-3-2007 05:12:55 Comment #6268
Garry man, I never really looked at it from that perspective before.
Thanx for opening my eyes.
Wow… I got some thinking to do
.
Date/Time: 11-3-2007 09:06:23 Comment #6271
Hi Garry,
Good article! It’s cool to see you’re pushing conversion instead of only visitors. Question though: what do you see as conversion?
In your post you seem to see a return visit as conversion, but that’s visitors again….
Date/Time: 11-3-2007 12:46:12 Comment #6279
I guess there’re several ways you can decide on a conversion – getting first time visitors to return could be one.
Garry, you should put up a series on SEM, if you’ve not already done so. I’ll dig deeper into your blog.
Date/Time: 11-3-2007 15:30:06 Comment #6288
What’s SEM?
Date/Time: 11-3-2007 15:52:34 Comment #6289
Search Engine Marketing
Date/Time: 11-3-2007 16:28:11 Comment #6290
John,
SEM stands for “Search Engine Marketing”. Sorry about that! You know, that would make for a great reference sheet.
SEO = Search Engine Optimization
GSEO = Google Search Engine Optimization
SEM = Search Engine Marketing
GSEM = Google Search Engine Marketing
AFF = Affiliate or Affiliate Program or Affiliate Link
SERP = Search Engine Result Page
GSERP = Google Search Engine Result Page
WP = WordPress
… ok guys and gals, what else am I missing?
Date/Time: 11-9-2007 10:00:31 Comment #6451
Social networking in my opinion is absolutely the most important thing to do, commenting on other blogs is pretty much key to increasing traffic.
Date/Time: 11-9-2007 10:15:48 Comment #6452
Garry, solid approach, stumble.
Date/Time: 11-17-2007 20:22:53 Comment #6632
Thanks for the comment, compliment and stumble!
Date/Time: 11-23-2007 10:49:43 Comment #6753
When it comes to marketing, I believe in the dynamics of creative thinking and traditions. http://www.oakleafnow.com
Date/Time: 2-4-2008 21:12:41 Comment #10350
I have been using Google adwords and Yahoo search marketing to advertise my site http://www.collegecreditbuilder.com and have found that the keyword traffic is very expensive, but results in actual click-throughs, whereas the content match feature can burn through you daily budget with many clicks, but no actual click-throughs. I know there are click-fraud lawsuits pending, but it seems like something is still not right.
Date/Time: 2-26-2008 02:15:10 Comment #11898
Great article Gary. I never imagined that 10 visitors could actually make such a difference. Thanks for the insights, this is a very valuable piece of information.
Date/Time: 3-29-2008 04:47:24 Comment #12931
Plenty of ideas here to get unique visitors.
Here are 2 more ideas for generating traffic to your webpage.
1. Write unique content. Do this daily and add pages daily. Traffic will follow organically.
2. Create a signature link in forums. This will direct traffic to your site. Choose forums that are relevant to your niche.
Date/Time: 3-30-2008 18:28:57 Comment #12995
Excellent suggestions. Might I add that a short burst of paid traffic can create residual traffic well into the future. I recently purchased a URL that had absolutely no past traffic. I dropped $20USD for paid traffic over a couple of days. Right after that my daily traffic jumped from 0 before the $20USD to, on an average 40 hits per day and growing.
chasemortgagegroup.com
Date/Time: 6-17-2008 04:14:39 Comment #15629
Brilliant topic…. You describe best methods of increasing traffic. After I used some of method on my blog I getting good traffic. And increase my PPC management………..thxxxxx for info..
Date/Time: 7-8-2008 16:31:46 Comment #16716
Free Web Traffic through Keyword SEO for articles, blogs, and web sites is – from all that I read a must. The plus for the blog author or webmaster is getting attention from search engines And other authors through the use of accurate site words, words in general, and word placement on a web site. This will make that site. Your above information looks like it will bring in views, make sales, even increase revenue from the ad on a site. Something many Webmasters and Web Authors should keep their mind on.