Increasing Website Traffic

First of all make sure you have basic search engine optimization in place. This means that the page title tag and heading tags should include keywords. Then the keywords should appear in the text of the page so the page is themed around the topic of the keyword.

Also use the keyword in the URL of the page. Link to all the inner pages from the home page unless they are sub-sections of the site. Link back to the site URL from the footer of every page with the keywords in the anchor text.

Many sites don't have enough text content. Make sure you have original text content on every important page of your site. Write say 10 paragraphs of relevant text concerning the keyword for each page.

To get more traffic from search engines, create more content pages. Write, write and then write some more.

Blogs make it easy to create new content pages and they take care of the navigation links. Create at least 10 pages of quality content.

To get started, just start. Force yourself to start writing and the words should flow as long as you are writing about a topic you know about.

If you don't know much about a topic, re-write content you read on the web. Don't copy it, just write what you learn in your own words.

If you have a community site but lack the community, create one of pretend people i.e. talk to yourself with different personalities. This will draw lurkers in since nobody except spammers will kickstart a community or comment threads on a blog.

Try and retain visitors with RSS feeds, regular additions of fresh content and sticky features. Your traffic should increase exponentially if visitors regularly return. Bring them back with email reminders with your newsletter.

Write as if you are talking to the visitor. A bad habit I have is writing for the search engine robot so my blurb can sometimes be a bit wooden maybe? So try and write for the visitor and the robots.

Lately I am typing posts in a Word Processor package, this seems to help me get it right first time in terms of paragraph layout.

Then I cut and paste the text to the lens/blog.

So you've got a great content laden themed website waiting to hook in swarms of visitor traffic. Now we need to unlock the gates and let the visitors flood in.

So you need to go out and get inbound links to your site. These links will get your site noticed by search engines plus get some clicks from people. My main focus is getting noticed by search engines.

The link should ideally contain your keywords in the anchor text. If you can't control this aspect then one tip is to have a domain name containing your keywords, then they will most likely be included in the anchor text.

The easiest way to get links to your site is via a forum signature. So join a relevant forum and post some helpful answers to the questions that you will find in abundance. Then slip your link into your signature after you are accepted into the community.

Next, you can comment on blogs. But check that the blog does not use the rel=nofollow tag. This will lessen the worth of your link. But you may as well comment anyway since you are there and it only takes seconds of your time.

Then submit your site to directories such as dmoz.org

For new sites I recommend my own directory: Initial Traffic which specializes in getting your first links and traffic to your site.