Gain Traffic to your Websites- By Sam Barns

Web site traffic is the number one imperative of 99 % of the marketers on the Internet. How does one go about gaining more web site traffic? That is putting the cart before the horse. The first thing a person needs to do is measure current web site traffic before embarking on gaining more traffic.

The second step is to use some or all of the methods listed below to gain more web site traffic and the third step is to measure current hits once again in order to calculate the success of the traffic-building campaign.

If someone else is hosting your site, most likely they'll have a traffic analysis package that you can access through the control panel. Packages such as Webalizer or AW Stats are common. Even if one of these web site traffic analysis applications is not offered by your host, most likely you'll still have access to the log files and can download these to a PC and use an application such as Funny Web Analyzer to give out the necessary stats.

If these web site traffic analysis packages are not available or understandable, you may wish to turn to an outside vendor who will give you a little Java code to put on the pages in order to give the necessary stats. Once you have an idea of how many visitors per day you're receiving and where they're coming from it is time to start using some methods to gain web site traffic.

The best method with the highest return on investment of gaining web site traffic is to perform search engine optimization (SEO) on a web site. Traffic from the natural search engines such as Google is free and for some online businesses, this accounts for 80 % of their sales. Since SEO is a slow, long-term plan for gaining web site traffic, typically taking months for the rankings to kick in, many web site owners choose to use a pay-per-click campaign to gain traffic in the short term.

Pay-per-click programs such as Google Ad Words and Yahoo / Overture Site Match are a way to see immediate results by placing a web site in the Sponsored Listings section of the SE's search results page. Traffic from these campaigns can also help you judge the viability of the keywords you've chosen for the SEO campaign. When doing pay-per-click (PPC) you basically bid on a keyword or key-phrase. The more you pay, the higher you appear in the Sponsored Listings and the more traffic the web site will receive.

The downside of pay-per-click though is that you keep paying and paying and paying for the traffic. Soon youll spend way more on PPC than on the optimization services. Search engine optimization is not an end all and be all for everyone when it comes to generating more web site traffic. Many different and varied online marketing practices should be employed. When employing these other practices, though, don't neglect SEO because you can be sure your competition isn't neglecting it. Some of the ways by which Traffic can be gained are:
1. Search Engine and Directory Submissions. If you need alot of hits, then submitting to search engines and web directories will do the trick.
2. Submit your site in chat rooms. This is a guaranteed hit. Youre guaranteed to at least get 50% of the people in the chat to visit your site. Imagine you submitting to over eighty people, and they all visit. That is a lot of hits!
3. Submit your site to larger sites. This is the second best way of doing things. For one a lot of people look at the links section, and if your link is there, there is a good chance of that person going to it. I would submit your link to any site you feel that would give you good hits.
4. Submit to Top Site Lists. This isn't the best way of doing things, but it helps somewhat. Most people won't visit your site if it is a low rank, which isn't that good. So try to take a top site list that lets the people vote. This way, even if your hits aren't that good, you can possibly achieve a high rank. Even if your site is a low rank, at least it is there.

About the Author: Sam Barns owns Links-Exchange.net the internet best link-exchange system. For more information on search engine optimization and other services you can email him at http://f1mail.rediff.com/bn/compose.cgi?login=kfsahiwala&session_id=1L8PK1KQKYdhEGJIzWTmqHRMB07psW0&FormName=mail_to_individual&email=sam@links-exchange.net Webmaster Resource Sites & Services