My Top 5 Ways To Increase Traffic

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This post is not actually a top 5 list, bu ZK at WebTrafficROI asked it to me in my post Question Session 1 and I promised him an answer so here it is.

In order to make a list of the best way to increase traffic we first have to look at the possible income traffic sources. After that we can get into how to affect each ones promotional power.

So What Are The 3 Sources Of Traffic?

1. Direct Traffic
2. Search Engine Traffic
3. Traffic From Referring Sites

Direct Traffic visitors are visitors that type your address directly into their address bar, so you know that these are users that already know you and your site well enough to remember your URL and want to go directly to it. There are no ways of getting new direct traffic. Direct traffic will come from your current readers or the word of mouth and I mean actual spoken words, not links because that would be referral traffic, that they give you. So if you want to increase your direct traffic you best be good to your readers.

Search engine traffic is a little bit easier, but not much. We know what search engines are and for the most part how they work, yet generating new visitors from search engines is so difficult. The best way to increase your traffic from search engines is by working hard on studying keywords and writing specific articles that have proper placement and density. This answer really doesn’t help, because it needs to be explained further which I will do in an upcoming post. The easiest way to increase your search engine traffic without learning SEO is to use the SEO Plugin For Wordpress if you aren’t doing so already.

Now we come to traffic from referring sites. This is the big boy that is easy to manipulate and where my top five list will come into play. You can promote your blog and increase the number of visitors by doing so many different things to generate new back links and get more referral traffic. So what are they?

My Top 5 Ways to Generate New Visitors From Referring Sites Are:

1. Start At Home, Work Harder On Your Content
2. Comment Like It Is Your Job
3. Join 1 Social Network
4. Answer Questions On Forums
5. Advertise

That is right I said start at home and work harder on your content. The best referral traffic you can get is when someone takes the time to tell people how good a post your wrote was. Why? Because these people are coming with the intent of reading your article not just browsing and leaving. So many bloggers post round ups and links to exceptional posts that if you sit down and write a truly good post you are almost guaranteed a couple good back links.

Comment like it is your job. Read, respond, and follow up. By commenting on others blogs you are creating free backlinks, getting your opinion heard, and building new relationships. Great ways to generate new traffic, your link will be seen more, people will begin to identify with you and your writing style, and you may get to know another author. How could you not gain new traffic? But remember one thing about commenting, if you leave a comment somewhere go back and follow up with any responses made to your comment, otherwise their is nothing to make you stand out and people will just forget you.

Join 1 social network, but don’t join every social network. If you use one social network properly you can generate tons of new traffic. Build up a group of friends on stumble and review each others posts. If you can get even 5 or 6 people to exchange reviews with you you could receive hundreds if not thousands of new visitors to your site daily. I have found that focusing on 1 network at a time works a whole lot better than trying to keep up with 5 at once.

Go answer questions on forums that are related to your niche. You write articles on your blog as though you are an authority on the topic. Well by sharing your knowledge with individuals on a one on one basis in a forum proves that you are an authority and that you can be trusted. While you are doing this make sure to keep a link to your site in your signature and you will find that people follow those links if the user is respected.

Advertising is everybody’s least favorite method of generating new traffic because it costs money. But advertising on the right sites can generate great exposure for you and start to make your brand identifiable. If you are cheap try to get a blogger to swap with you. I just recently did this with Freddie Taylor, check out his banner in my sidebar. If you are only semi cheap buy one of my ads as the are selling for $2.00 a month right now.

Well there you have it, not really a top 5 list, but a top 5 list. I hope that you enjoyed the post. If you did remember to subscribe to help my win my competition. Don’t forget to comment before you leave. Let me know whether you agree/disagree, love/hate, or just don’t care.

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