The Pix Pixy

So, you have created a web site about a subject that you are passionate about; and you are proud of the look and feel of the site. Now what? How is this web site going to generate the traffic you are looking for and earn its keep?

No matter what your website focuses on (management, goal setting, dog training, ice skating, computer programming, arts & entertainment, home & garden, humor, etc.) your whole purpose of building it was to reach a target audience. If you are selling a product or a service, you want as many people to visit your site as possible to increase your sales opportunities. You can try spreading the word about your site to friends and family, but that will only get you so far. Your site must be picked up by search engines and achieve a high page ranking to attract the attention and drive the web traffic you are looking for. There is one thing that makes this happen faster than anything else: CONTENT.

Adding content regularly to your web site and adding new pages each week is the key to success. New content attracts Search Engine Spiders (the key to being picked up and listed by search engines). These Spiders love sites with many pages. Sites with a lot of pages are viewed as being stronger authorities on the specific subject matter. Now, this can not be any old content. You will need to produce informative, useful, relevant material to post on your site. Does it sound like a ton of work? Well, let me tell you a secret that will let you work smarter rather than harder.

The answer is republishing free articles that are related to your niche market.

There are many people who have written excellent articles about the subject you are advertising or promoting. Many of these folks have posted these articles on sites like www.nichecontentdirectory.com to gain exposure for their own web sites. Carefully choosing these articles, adding them to your site and attaching additional revenue generating tools to the new web pages will launch your new site to the next level.

Here is why:

* Articles generate interest in your niche market by educating the reader.

* Articles create credibility for your site; consumers appreciate useful resource information.

* Articles provide the free content that you need to add to your site to be noticed by search engines.

* Articles spark people’s interest and encourage them to save your site in their favorites and return often!

* Articles are a great introduction to other websites; use articles as a way to link to other sites and request links back to yours.

By using articles you can change the depth of your site and generate income! Here are some steps that you will want to take to produce the positive results.

1. Write your own articles and post them to free article directories. As an expert you will gain credibility if your writing has been published on the internet on sites other than your own. Remember to include an About the Author section and make sure you have a link to your site listed.

2. Use your articles as an introduction to additional articles. By establishing yourself as an expert readers will value your recommendations and look to your site for more information.

3. Add a section to your website to link to new article pages. Use a title like “Recommended Articles”, “Free Resources”, or “Information You Need”.

4. Find and carefully choose articles in free directories that you feel your audience will respond to most.

5. Add new pages to your site. Each article is a new page! Make sure any link to other pages open in new browsers, so your reader keeps your site open.

6. Add Google Adsense and related affiliate program links to each new page to generate revenue for your site.

7. Email the article author to request a reciprocal link on their site. This will get your website more exposure for increased traffic!

8. Take your article publication to a new level by creating a newsletter around your niche market. Set up a subscriber list and send you useful articles to your members. Your service will be appreciated and remembered; and you will build a list of possible customers!

Before you know it, your website that you were so proud of, will grow to be a top ranked, highly visited niche market site that will bring you money, entertainment and satisfaction for a job well done.

Understanding your Web site’s traffic patterns is a crucial component of your marketing mix. The information in these logs is collected as visitors find and move around your site at their own volition. So, it’s “market research that cannot lie” - and therefore provides unprecedented insights that can help you to strategize not only for the future development of the site itself, but also for your overall business and marketing plan.

I’ll describe the most important sections of the log report when analyzing your site’s marketing effectiveness. Often, deciding what’s right and what’s a problem is a gut feel that you’ll develop by looking at your log reports over a period of weeks or months, by trying some new tactics, and observing the trends and results.

General Statistics

This introductory section shows the overall traffic to the site, including the number of actual visitors, as opposed to “hits”. This is an important distinction - one hit is generated for every page and every individual image that a visitor requests (e.g. a page with some text and five pictures will take six hits to download). So, the ratio of hits to individual visitors can be quite high.

By the way, it’s also important for you to appreciate this distinction if you are selling advertising space on your site. You may be asked by a potential advertiser to prove your traffic levels, and if you happily say “millions of hits”, they may look suspicious!

This section also shows the average time spent on the site, which should give some indication as to how engaging it is. If your site is rich in content, but the time spent on it is relatively low, it may not be meeting the needs of the visitors it is attracting, or it may be targeted at the wrong audience.

I had a client who earlier this year placed #1 in some major search engines. He was ecstatic! But his site had not been worked on for some time, and was very dry and boring. We discovered from his logs that the average time spent on his site was less than two minutes - obviously indicating a problem. And to make my point again, without this evidence from the logs, he would have continued to believe that his site was successful.

Most and Least Requested Pages

The most requested pages are a great barometer of the “hot” areas of your site, and thus the most popular aspects of your online products or services. These may be different from your original expectations, and so this information can be very valuable for overall business development decisions.

If the least requested pages (i.e. the ones that attract the fewest visitors) contain important content, then something’s wrong. Usually, it’s either that their content is not interesting to your markets after all, or that the site is not driving your traffic to these pages in ways that are attractive.

Top Entry and Exit Pages

If the inside pages of your site are well promoted in the search engines, there should be a number of top entry pages (i.e. the first page that the visitor sees), in addition to the home page. This is a good reminder to include clear navigation back to other areas of the site from every page, to ensure that the first-time visitor gets a complete picture of your offerings.

The top exit pages are also an indication of your site’s effectiveness - if these are not the right places for most visitors to leave from, some adjustments are needed. Make sure that every page of your site has an objective, and that you clearly direct the visitor to the next page or to the action that you wish them to take.

Single Access Pages

These are pages that a visitor views, and leaves without exploring any further. Typically, this will be the home page, and I am often asked whether this is an issue. I usually give the standard consultant’s answer: “It depends . . .”

Your home page should quickly show the different audiences for your site that they’ve come to the right place for what they want, and where to go to find it. So you might have sections for members, prospective members, journalists, consumers, etc. The home page should do enough to engage them, and send them on to the appropriate inside pages.

If the home page does a good job of this, there will probably be some remnant of visitors who came to your site by mistake, in which case they will leave immediately. But that’s OK - they aren’t the right traffic for you.

It’s really your judgment call as to what constitutes a problem. But, that client I mentioned earlier whose visitors spent less than two minutes on his site also had about 85% single access figures on his home page - some things are obvious!

A splash entry page to your site (i.e. one that says “Welcome, enter here”, but with little or no actual content) will often also show large single access figures. Although these pages can look very striking, they unfortunately tend to be unpopular with impatient surfers. I’ve seen splash pages that have lost one third of a site’s visitors. If you have a splash page, check the single access figures for it in your logs, and be prepared to remove it without hurting the feelings of your Webmaster!

Most Active Countries and Cities

If your site is aimed at an international audience, this section will show which country visitors originate from. This information can be useful in making decisions such as providing pages in languages other than English.

The most active cities report is unfortunately very misleading, as it relies on the registered location of the Internet Service Provider. Most log reports therefore show very disproportionate visitor numbers from Virginia - the home of America Online!

Top Referring Sites / URL’s / Search Engines

These are the Web pages that send visitors to your site. The largest figure here will usually be the “No referrer”, showing people coming directly to the site. This means that they are typing in your URL, or have your site bookmarked, and implies that your other forms of marketing are working.

The log reporting program should display other Web pages that send you traffic as html links, allowing you to click on the URL (when online!) to see the originating page. This will show the effectiveness of your reciprocal links or paid advertising. You will also be able to see other sites that are linking to you. It’s worth checking these out if you aren’t familiar with them - either to thank them, or to check that their link to you is appropriate.

For search engine referrals, clicking on the link will resubmit the search, and allow you to evaluate competitors’ sites and positioning relative to yours. It’s also possible to review keywords that are bringing traffic from one particular source, and to try to improve the site’s performance for those words in other search engines.

Top Search Keywords and Phrases

This is crucial information, as it shows exactly what people were looking for when they came to your site. Often Web site marketers take their best guess at these keywords on their first design, but because the search engines index every word on all your pages, other terms can be found, especially in a content rich site.

So the most popular search phrases can tell you what’s really “hot” in your products and services. Understanding these is another great key to understanding the current needs of your site’s market(s), and making business strategy and development decisions. One of my clients recently decided to write a book on a topic area that, until she saw her logs, she had no idea was so sought-after.

Conclusion

There are other sections in the log report, especially around the technical data for your site. The pieces that I have covered here are the significant ones for marketers. If you don’t have this information available, I really urge you to get it, and review it - I guarantee that you’ll find some gold nuggets!

One of the most popular ways to generate free traffic to your website these days is to use a free traffic exchange service.

A traffic exhange is website service that enables you to view someones website, and others in turn view yours. You earn credits when you view someones site,
and you use those credits to have others view your site.

Internet marketers would like to know how to bring traffic to their
websites quickly, without spending any money. Traffic exchanges can
accomplish this.

The greatest benefit comes in when you sign up others and receive
traffic from their efforts.

The different types of exchanges are start page exchanges,
manual surf, and auto surf.

The key is to join more than one exchange, it could be start page,
manual or auto surf exchange, and promote them to get referrals.

Go to any search engine such as yahoo or excite, and search for traffic
exchanges. There are hundreds, with new ones being established everyday.

With all the traffic exchanges you find from the searh engines,if you
join them,you will increase your traffic greatly.

Paul Kellum is the webmaster of a new website
that sells over 3500 products with some of the lowest
prices on the internet. Our fantastic affiliate program
is free to join. http://www.great-web-deal.com
http://tinyurl.com/4vgt4

Let’s face it; the Internet is cluttered with all sorts of guides about increasing traffic to your web site. Unfortunately, most of these guides are outdated or incomplete. In fact, many of the techniques being touted in them will get you in serious trouble. Wouldn’t you like to build up quality traffic that will stand the test of time? The key phrase is “test of time”. You don’t want to be a flash in the pan.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Before you rush out to tell the world that your brand new web site is open for business, set it up properly. Do not even start to think about traffic if your web site still has broken links, empty content, and other unfinished business. While patience can be a hard thing to control, having some will pay off later. Once your web site is completely operational from top to bottom, you are ready to flood it with traffic.

SEARCH ENGINES

While there are many web sites out there which claim to be search engines, you only need to be concerned with a few of the major ones like Google, MSN, etc. You do not need to submit your web site to these enginesthey will find you on their own once your web site is being linked from other web sites. Never pay for a service or software that does this function because it will be a complete waste of money. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either trying to sell you a product or lacks real experience on the matter. The goal is to get your web site linked on other related web sites, which will cause the search engines to index your web site and visit somewhat often to look for changes.

DIRECTORIES

Your first step to building a solid traffic foundation is to submit your site to good directories. Doing so will increase your incoming links, page rank and traffic. Many directories charge a fee for a listingmost are one-time fees. Following is a breakdown of some of the more important directories to get listed in.

The ODP (Dmoz.org)
Submission to this directory is free and it is one of the best to be listed in. It is extremely important that you read their guidelines. All submissions are reviewed by an editor and the approval process can take weeks to months. Many web site owners have waited a long time before having their web site added. It is worth the wait.

Yahoo.com
Adding your web site to this very popular directory will cost $299 annually. Because of the price, you will want to think about this one. Experiences with Yahoo listings are on both sides of the aisle. The best thing to do is see where your web site will most likely be listed and evaluate the conditions for that section.

sbd.Bcentral.com
This is Microsoft’s business directory and it will be a solid listing for you. The current listing fee is $50, which includes the use of their web site tuning service. This service will evaluate your pages and let you know if the page is ready to submit or contains errors such as under-optimization and spam alerts. It can help you optimize your pages for the keyword phrases you are interested in.

SevenSeek.com
This directory has a great page rank and many back links. As will all directory submissions, pay attention to the guidelines. The fee for submission is $40. Seven Seek is a general directory so just about any web site will fit here.

GoGuides.org
Go Guides is another great directory to get your web site into. Their web site is crawled by all the bots daily, which is a great plus. Submission is $40 for this general directory.

Wowdirectory.com
Wow Directory is a large general themed directory. Web site submissions are free but approval can take some time. They offer an express submit for $20 that will ensure your web site is listed within 24 hours.

There are many more directories out there but these are some solid ones to get into first. In time, your web site will begin to appear in the major search engines. Most directories that charge for submission have adopted the policy started by Yahoo where the fee is for “review” only. It is absolutely vital that you read over all the guidelines to be certain that your web site will be accepted.

ARTICLES

A great way to generate traffic and back links to your web site is by writing articles. Here is the general process of how it works:

1. You craft a great article.
2. You submit that article to web sites geared towards web site owners needing content.
3. Owners grab your article, which contains a link to your web site, and use it on their web site.

As you can see, the process is very simple. When other web site owners place your article on their web site, you will be generating incoming links all over the Internet with no work at all. This will not only lead to possible traffic but help to establish the value of your web site to the search enginesso better rankings.

It is very important that your article is written well. If not, quality web site owners are much less likely to use your article and it makes you look bad. Most web site owners skip this important step in traffic building because they can not craft effective articles. If this is you, do something about itvisit Jason A. Martin right now and click on the “Articles for your web site” link. For a small fee, articles can be generated for youand you retain full rights. Once received, simply slap your name on it and submit to places like ContentTycoon.com, Ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, etc.

This is perhaps one of the most important steps of all and after your article is written, it takes no work. The results can be extremely fast. Many articles out there are not crafted well so it is important to not formulate your writing style and perception blindly on the work of others. While many web sites that offer articles claim to “edit” them, it is more of a casual edit.

TEXT LINKS

The goal here is to increase the number of links from related web sites. For example, if your web site is about hot dogs, you will want to obtain links from web sites that are about such topics as: hot dogs, eating, hot dog buns, hot dog toppings, hot dog contests, etc. Obtaining a link from Joe’s Engine Parts will not help much and may actually hurt in regards to search engine rankings.

After thinking up words and phrases that are related to your main topic, visit your favorite search engine and search for those items. Visit the web sites that come up and try to get your link on them. Some might exchange a link with you, some might offer a link on their web site in exchange for payment, and some might simply say no. Keep at it.

IN THE END

By completing these tasks, your web site will have established a solid foundation that will withstand changes the future holds. I invite you to read about ways to promote your web site, improve ad copy, and much more by visiting InternetBusinessEntrepreneur.com. Remember to always keep a sense of pride about your web site. Resist the temptations to do actions which will hurt your web site and build it with the future in mind.

Jason A. Martin is pursuing a Journalism degree and has over a decade of successful Internet business experience. His informational articles can be found at JasonAMartin.com. He also runs ContentTycoon.com - a website where you can get free website content.

If you’re a serious online marketer with your own website or websites, or you promote affiliate marketing programs, you know how expensive PPC (pay-per-click) advertising can be. If you’re in a very competitive market, you know first hand how very expensive this can be. Your $1 and $5 clicks add up very quickly, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you will lose a lot of money to your competition, and to the PPC companies you’re advertising through, like Google AdWords.

There are other online advertising options open to you other than just PPC. There are traffic exchange websites that allow marketers to earn credits to have their websites advertised to a whole community of many thousands of users within the exchange. Webmasters earn credits to have their websites and promotions added into the rotation while surfing through other websites within the traffic exchange system. Also, most of the newer click exchange websites allow you to purchase hundreds or thousand of hits for fractions of a penny, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time surfing. Some also have games to keep you occupied and amused while earning credits. Some allow you to sell or trade your credits for cash. Many of the newer traffic exchange sites are truly a huge benefit for online marketers today.

Another huge benefit for website owners from traffic exchange systems is the number of back links they receive for their websites. The more popular these click exchange sites become, the higher their page rank becomes in popular search engines. When your website URLs are in the website rotation, your click count increases, and search engines start to rank your website higher on the free search engine chain. You not only attract new visitors to your website each and every day from the exchange, but you have the ability to get your website higher in the free search engine listings.

One of the absolute best ways to get free, or very cheap, targeted traffic today is by using traffic exchange website. Having a large community of users, clicking through websites and advertisements to earn credits is a powerful way to get targeted traffic to your website. Having the ability to generate more free traffic, and options to purchase clicks for fractions of a penny, or cash in credits for cash, are just some of the benefits why these traffic exchange sites are so popular today and their popularity is growing by the day. All website traffic is not created equally. Traffic is one thing, but targeted traffic is king! These traffic exchange website deliver targeted traffic by visitors who are interested in what you have to offer.

Nothing will replace good old PPC advertising, but when you compliment PPC with click exchanges, just watch your visitors increase by the hundreds, if not thousands each and every month, and watch your sales increase as well. And isn’t this what it’s all about? So do all you can to increase your targeted traffic, and you will increase your odds of converting your visitors into paying customers. And that’s the name of the game my friend.

Copyright 2005 East Tech LLC

Andrew Daigle is owner and creator of many websites from DXInOne Free Training Site and Forum at http://www.dxout.com, to Google AdWords Training at http://www.adwording.com and Free Traffic Exchange at http://www.trumptraffic.com

Plenty of marketers push fancy software programs to increase traffic to your site. Certainly, some of the software programs are effective. There are, however, some simple, free, online techniques that can help business people who are short on cash but are willing to invest the time it takes to slowly build site visits.

Create a marketing schedule and stick to it. The following techniques are useless if you do not use them consistently. You want to continuously drive traffic to your site. So, the best thing that you can do is write your marketing goals, create a schedule to fulfill those goals and daily review your strategy.

The first technique is social. Visit and post messages to bulletin boards and forums that are relevant to your site. You may want to lurk for a while to better understand the forum’s written and unwritten rules. Get involved in conversations, and offer advice to people who seek answers or need help. Don’t be a know-it-all. Be humble, and help people for the joy of it. You will slowly build yourself as a forum regular who is knowledgeable and cares about others. Be sure to visit more than one forum board. In fact, you should consider visiting three or four forums a week. Don’t forget to add your website’s address to your signature lines for your posts.

Place your website address in the signature of your e-mails. This is an unobtrusive marketing method, and people will eventually begin clicking on your link in your signature. Add a phrase, telling people what they will find on your site. Some e-mail programs have features to change your signature’s font and color. A red signature is eye-catching. Your link should be blue, because people intuitively associate the color blue with linked sites.

Write articles and post them to article directories, offering them to publishers for free. There has been a lot of positive discussion associated with this marketing method. It works. In the best case scenario, you should write at least 30 articles and post them everywhere. The more articles you write, the greater the traffic. So, 30 articles are your first goal. Next, go for another 30. Don’t stop there. Write articles constantly. Post articles constantly. There are hundreds of places where you can post your work. Post your work in as many article directories as possible. Find article directories in a search engine, using the search terms, article directories and free content. Publishers will run your article on websites and newsletters. A resource box, usually located at the bottom of your articles, will have your byline and a link to your site to send traffic your way.

The one-way links, resulting from your widely placed articles, will draw increased recognition from search engines. Again, writing articles will also brand you as an expert. It may take weeks or months for you to see a considerable traffic increase, but it will happen. Not only will your site’s popularity rise, but you will also be considered a trusted leader in your field.

Claudine Williams is a freelance business writer and the owner of Kiss Debt Goodbye (http://www.KissDebtGoodbye.com) where you can find free work at home job leads and business advice.

Increasing your online business hinges on your ability to optimize your web page for the search engines. While different search engines look for different things, some of the larger and more popular search engines such as Google and Yahoo, look for keywords and links. Keywords are important because the Internet is made up of words; however links are just as important because they allow the search engines to weigh your web page in terms of popularity, so to speak.

Of course, you might be wondering how you can possibly get links to your web page in order to increase your search engine results. Fortunately, you have several options. You can offer to pay individuals and webmasters for a link to your site and you can also offer a reciprocal link trade.

A reciprocal link trade works because most web pages are interested in increasing their search engine rankings and traffic so most will be willing to host a link to your site if you host a link to theirs. The easiest way to achieve this is to target web sites that apply to your target market, but are not in direct competition with your products and services. Then, put up a link to their site and send the webmaster an e-mail asking for a reciprocal link. The webmaster will then either link to your web page, or not. If not, simply delete the link to that web page and start the process over. It will be successful most of the time, but if not don’t get angry, just keep looking for other sites.

Links are the backbone of any successful website. Without them, you have little to no traffic. In order for your website to gain valuable exposure, you need to develop as many backlinks as possible. These links can come from reciprocal link exchanges, directories, articles, and a slew of many other sources. The key is to gradually build a large collection of inbound links which specifically target key words. The bottom line is, links are essential to your websites success.

Ron is the CTO for Dice Ventures Inc an internet holdings and development company.

For more information on building quality backlinks, check out Ron’s website promotion service site or our visit our Affiliate marking service to help promote your business.

How to make your site spider-friendly in 5 steps

These techniques will help search engine spiders index your site better:

1) Include a sitemap that has a link to every page on the site that you want to index (basicly all non-admin, non-members pages)

2) Include at least one static text link to all your main pages on the index page.

3) Never use relative urls, use the full url: eg http://www.yourdomain.com/page.php instead of page.php

4) Goto this page and download the freeware spider Phenix Spider (second file) and spider your page.

5) If you did steps 1 - 3 correctly Phenix Spider should find all of the pages you want to index.

Now this will help search engines index your site, as long as you made good use of META tags and keywords, you should come high up in the rankings, last time I checked I was top on MSN for