So you made the first step. You have your first eCommerce or Affiliate Website up and running and you're ready to make money online. Now what? How do you drive traffic to your website?
The basic theory of website optimization is quite straight forward. You visit the popular website directories (Google, MSN & Yahoo) and fill in the appropriate information. You enter your URL address, a brief description of your website and the related keywords or keyword phrases and you're done. Piece of Cake! Just kick back and wait for the search engine spiders to crawl your site and "bam," you're on page one.
If it was indeed that simple, the search engine directories wouldn't have the need for a second, third, or 953rdpage for your designated search results. Everyone's website would be on page one. The theory of website optimization and the applied practice thereof are spectrum's apart.
Realizing this, you now have two options at your disposal to drive traffic to your website. These options are paid or organic (free) traffic.
You can start up a PPC (pay per click) campaign on Google AdWords. There are many internet Gurus who swear by the benefits of paid advertising. Admittedly, your website will start getting hits literally within minutes of your campaign going live. But there is absolutely no guarantee that your revenue will exceed your advertising expenditures. If you don't know what you're doing, you could burn through a lot of money very quickly. And you might only recoup of fraction of those expenses in generated income.
What if you are just getting started and don't have or can't risk the money to invest in a paid advertising campaign? If this is the case, then free traffic may be exactly what you need to get your internet business going.
Your first thought might be, "Come on now. Nothing in life is free." And you would be correct in this assumption. Think of generating free traffic to your website like investing sweet equity in a property you've just purchased and are hoping to turn a profit on. You don't have the money to pay professionals to come in and patch the walls, paint, rip up the nasty old carpet and the ever dreaded linoleum. So you roll up your sleeves and go to work. And why would anyone in their right mind want to do all this? Because you know that the property is worth the time and energy you will put into it.
Generating free website traffic can be approached in much the same way. Your investment may not be monetary, but it will require time, energy, and above all, creativity on your part. You need to learn to think outside of the box! There are several methods that can be utilized in generating sweet equity traffic to your website.
The Fundamental Principle of Organic Traffic:
Organic traffic is based on building back links to your website. The more numerous these links are and the more relevant they are to your website's particular niche, the higher your ranking in the search engines. Sounds complicated, right? In reality, it's following a step by step process until you obtain the desired results.
Think of it like building a staircase. The objective of building any staircase is to get to the top of where it is you need to go. You simply build one step at a time until you have reached your destination. The primary difference is that you are building arrows in cyberspace that point back to your website rather than an actual physical staircase.
Nine Foolproof Methods for Organic Link Building;
1. Web Directories
One of the oldest and most established ways to increase free traffic to your site is by submitting your link to website directories. There are hundreds of directories on the internet. Every time you add your link to a directory, you are increasing your chances of generating free website traffic to your site.
2. Article Submission Sites
Submitting ezine articles is an effective way to establish extremely relevant links to your website. In addition to accomplishing the objective, the reader can visit your website directly from the author's box.
Ezine @rticles is by far the most established of the internet ezines. Their readership is not to be ignored. There are, however, may other ezine article websites on the internet. For a comprehensive listing simply Google ezine directories.
3. Social Bookmarking Sites
In recent years, social bookmarking sites such as Reddit, Stumbleupon, Furl, Del.icios.us, and Digg have gained immense popularity on the internet. You can bookmark virtually anything on the internet on these sites (including your own Ezine articles) provided you do not violate the site's terms and conditions. Fellow users of these sites then have the opportunity to link to your bookmarks if they find the subject matter interesting. This, in essence, can escalate into a form of viral marketing.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1870325
