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Website Traffic Building Ideas for the Small Business

Every small business online quickly discovers that you need to have traffic to make any website or blog successful.  Just as quickly, you’ll discover that traffic is an elusive thing to find.  Traffic, traffic, traffic. The fact: building traffic to a website or blog takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. Even if you find the perfect keyword that has no competition so you’re on the first page of Google for that keyword, chances are it only gets a few hundred hits per month, if that. So unless you have the resources of Fort Knox at your disposal, you can’t effectively buy clicks for keywords that get thousand and thousands of clicks per day, especially if your site is not already highly ranked by Google.

What if they were all on their way to your website?!

What if they were all on their way to your website?!

Building traffic to any small business website or blog is a result of cumulative efforts. Traffic at first will be a trickle. The trick is to create a plan to exponentially expand your reach so that each effort builds on the next. Here are several proven no- or low-cost traffic-building strategies that should be in the marketing mix of every internet marketer.

First of all, make sure your website URL is connected with websites that get lots and lots of traffic. If there are ways to have direct links on your site to Amazon or eBay, do it. Even if the connection is tenuous at the beginning, it will help increase your visibility in the search engines.  Google ranks websites according to how “relevant” they think your site is.  Lots of links to and from your site or blog make it look more important.

Also, take advantage of the link and content opportunities available at sites like Squidoo or HubPages. Create a lens or a hub complementing your product or service and make sure your URL is either in the text (conservatively, of course, no spam), and in your signature and profile. Then promote these pages. Theses sites are highly ranked by Google, so if you can rise to the top in these formats, you will increase your own site’s relevance.

Write articles and submit to multiple directories, making sure your URL is in your author resource box.  Definitely get some articles in Ezinearticles.com, as it’s the biggest and Google loves articles accepted there. Different readers prefer different directories, so make sure you spread your work around. Go a step further and submit your articles to sites like Digg, Reddit, De.li.cious, Stumbleupon, and similar bookmarking sites. Again, traffic is a result of exposure so do whatever you can to get your links in front of eyeballs.

Learn how to use some of the social bookmarking and networking sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace.  Participate in forums, making sure you include your URL in your signature and profile. The more comments you make, the more the URL to your small business website or blog will be seen.

Make sure your small business site is listed in directories. There are thousands and thousands of directories. You can manually submit to several hundreds, or pay a service to submit for you.  I have been using TrafficBug.com lately, and I must say, the results have been impressive.  If you do it yourself, just make sure you submit your sites to categories that make sense.  How many newbie website or blog owners forget to even register with Yahoo?  It’s the simplest thing.  Just go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/submit and put in your URL.  It may take a few weeks to register, but doing that simple, 20-second submit will leapfrog your site over thousands of others that are waiting to be “found” by Yahoo.  Raise your hand, tell Yahoo you’re there and ready for business.

Never forget Google Adwords, as it can be very effective, though costly if you use the wrong keywords. But also consider advertising directly on Yahoo search marketing or even Microsoft AdCenter. These provide a great deal of traffic and are typically less competitive and less expensive than Google.  Personally, every head-to-head test I have run so far between Google and Yahoo, Yahoo has won every time as far as quality clicks for less money.

Just keep working on each of these traffic-building strategies and traffic will begin to build to your small business website or blog. The more traffic, the more eyeballs, the more Success. Just keep at it and you will succeed.

If you need help developing a traffic-building strategy for your small business website or blog, please let me know.  I would be glad to map out a step-by-step plan to build traffic and get the results you want.  I want you to reach your Success Point.

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