30 Traffic Generation Tips From Online Marketers

1. Sridhar Katakam
Keep track of blogs and leave comments on them. A good way to keep the conversation going is to install a MyBlogLog widget and visit the blog of people visiting your site.

2. Ian Delaney
Nothing creates long-term traffic more than value. Consider writing posts with resources or explaining how things work. Useful things get linked to and they get onto del.icio.us, which is far better long-term than a digg front page.

3. Scott Townsend
Inform search engines and aggregators like Technorati (using the ping functionality) when your blog is updated, this should ensure maximum traffic coming from those sources. (check the List of Ping Services)

4. Kyle
Simplify. Pay attention to complex issues in your field of work. It may be a big long publication that is hard to wade through or a concept that is hard to grasp. Reference it and make a shorter “for dummies” version with your own lessons learned and relevant tips. When doing this, I have been surprised to find that the simplified post will appear before the more complex version in search results. Perhaps this is why it results in increased traffic; people looking for more help or clarification on the subject will land on your blog.

5. Grant Gerver
Try to be polemic. I write obsessively about all-things political from the left-wing perspective in the form of humorous, sarcastic one-liners.

6. Daniel
A simple tip that will probably boost your page views: install a translator plugin. I decided to use a paid plugin for this, but if I am not wrong there are some free ones as well. The translation is not very good, as you can imagine, but it helps to attract readers that are not fluent in English.

7. Rory
Submit articles to blog carnivals (http://blogcarnival.com) that are related to your niche. Your article almost always gets posted, and it must generate a handful of visitors, at least.

8. Ramen Junkie
Newsgroups. I always see a spike when I post a review to a newsgroup.

9. Eric Atkins
Create a new design for your website. Not only will it be more attractive to your regular readers, but you can submit it to some CSS gallery showcase sites that feature great designs. This will give you exposure on those sites while generating a lot of traffic and backlinks from those types of sites.

10. Megan Taylor
Participate in conversations on related blogs. Start conversations on your own blog. Don’t just post about a story and leave it at that, engage your audience, ask questions and call to action.

11. Guido
Comment on blogs, write useful content and make good friends on forums.

12. Brian Auer
You must be active to generate traffic. I post comments on other blogs that are related to mine, and I post my site link in my signature at the forums. Spread the word about your blog and it will certainly attract readers.

13. Shankar Ganesh
Just browse around MyBlogLog.com and you will surely get visitors to your blog. Also try to join as many communities as possible that are related to your topic.

14. Andrew Timberlake
A great tip for generating traffic is off-line by including your url in all your off-line liturature from business cards, letterheads, pamphlets, adverts through in-store signage if applicable. I even have our website on my vehicle.

15. Cory OBrien
Read lots of other blogs. Leave trackbacks. Make sure your blog is optimized for search engines. Leverage social bookmarking sites like digg (both for new ideas and for traffic).

16. Jester
Leave comments on other blogs. If you’re already reading them, it takes
just a couple of seconds to leave a message agreeing or disagreeing
with the author, you get to leave a link to your site, and you will almost
ALWAYS get traffic from your comments.

17. Goerge Manty
Post 3-5 times a day. Use ping services like pingomatic or set up wordpress to ping some of the ping services. Engage your readers. Put up polls, ask them questions, give them quizes, free tools, etc. Make them want to come back and tell their friends about you.

18. Engtech
Community. It’s one word but it is the most important one when it comes to blogging. The only “blog metric” that makes sense is the vibrant community of readers it has. Building a community around your blog will bring you increased traffic, but how do you start? The boilerplate response to building traffic is always “SEO, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs” but it can be simplified to “be part of a community”. The easiest way to seed your blog is with an already existing community. But the only way to do that is to be part of the community yourself.

19. Chris
Squidoo Lenses are a good way to generate traffic. By using a lense,
you can generate your own custom “community” of webpages, including some
of the more popular pages in your “neighborhood.” Including your own
webpage in such a list is a good way of generating traffic.

20. Splork
I’ve had good success writing articles and submitting them to EzineArticles. Articles that have been written from well-researched keyword phrases and accepted by EzineArticles tend to rank very high in Google for that search term. Placing anchor text in the footer of those articles so the reader can visit my relevant website has always increased my site traffic.

21. Jen Gordon
I came upon some unexpected traffic when my blog popped up on some css design portals like www.cssmania.com and www.webcreme.com. If you can put some time into the concept behind and design for your blog, I’d recommend submitting your site to a design portal not only for
additional traffic but to build an additional community around your site.

22. Kat
I’ve recently gotten involved with several “MySpace-like” community sites that focus on my target audience. I share my thoughts in their forums, post intros to my real blog on their system blog and I’ve even created a group for my specific niche. It’s been very, very successful for me.

23. Inspirationbit
Well, obviously everyone knows that social bookmarking sites like Digg, del.icio.us, etc. bring lots of traffic. But I’m now submitting some of my articles to blogg-buzz.com (a digg like site for bloggers), and I always get not a bad traffic from there.

24. Mark Alves
Participate in Yahoo Answers and LinkedIn Answers where you can demonstrate your expertise, get associated with relevant keywords and put your URL out there.

25. Tillerman
Be the first to write a post about the ‘Top Ten Blogs’ in your niche. The post will rank highly in any general search for blogs in your niche and other bloggers in your niche write about the post and link to it.

26. Nick
Participating in forums is a great way to get loyal readers. Either link baiting people in your signature or posting great advice and tips will give you high quality traffic, which will result in return visitors.

27. Brandon Wood
A simple trick I’ve used to increase traffic to my blog is participate in group writing projects. In fact, that’s what I’m doing right now.

28. Alan Thomas
Don’t forget your archives. I just posted a roundup of all interviews I did over the past seven months. One of them generated a new link and a big traffic spike from a group of users that look like they will be loyal readers now.

29. KWiz
Write something controversial. I don’t think it’s good to write something controversial just for the purpose of getting traffic necessarily (especially if it’s only for that purpose and you’re being disingenuous), but it works.

30. Dennis Coughlin
Find the best blogs on your niche and contact the authors. Introduce yourself and send a link of your blog. This might help them to discover your blog, read it and possibly link to it.


http://www.dailyblogtips.com/traffic-generation-tips-final-list/

How anyone can create a successful online business for next to nothing

How to grow traffic to your website without growing your costs
 

Be sociable 
Socialising online can be a great way to grow your online presence and traffic. Social media is now an established and cost-effective way to grow your business. Yes it can appear to bit baffling for the uninitiated - but it doesn’t have to be. So here are some top tips to up your website traffic without upping your costs.

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are the big daddies of the social media world and each can be used in different ways to raise the profile of your website and create an engaged community. 

It's good to talk

Twitter has grown hugely in the last few years and is a great way to get useful information out quickly to your followers. The golden rule for any social media channel is to give people useful content that they will use and share with their friends and colleagues. Don’t just bombard potential users with the same old sell, sell, sell messages.

 

Share and share alike

In Facebook the social currency is ‘likes’ – and the clue is in the name. Users need to like what you are doing and what you are offering. Providing exclusive discounts or promotions to Facebook users or access to free videos, guides or introductory products can work wonders.

Take a step back and ask yourself if you didn’t know your website or brand what you would like and what you would share. And regularly change your offers and coming up with new or innovative ideas.

Don’t forget to get social on your website. Link your Facebook page and your Twitter comments to your website (both Facebook and Twitter have information on how to do this on their websites) – and encourage people to engage with you and spread the word by offering exclusive discounts and offers.

If you play this right you can build up an army of online supporters that spread the word and do your marketing for you. And kick things off by spreading the word across your own network – encouraging them to share.

Writing interesting, engaging and even controversial blogs on your website and promoting these through social media can also be a good way of making an impact and getting user feedback or services.

In the world of social media fresh ideas can bring you fresh new users.

Tip: Use Facebook's 'Friends of Connections' option to target users whose friends are connected to a page, group, event or application

Make sure your advertising adds up

If initial Facebook activity goes well and you hit across a message or promotion that works you may consider paid for advertising - www.facebook.com/Ads. You should always look to try and target this as much as possible and try an initial test budget to see if it working for you.

There are a few money saving tips if you are considering Facebook ads. Firstly if you buy advertising on Facebook, link the ad to a page within Facebook and your cost per click will be lower. Because Facebook want users to stay within the site, this is a mutually beneficial tactic that saves you money while generating traffic to your Facebook page. Secondly try different messages and offers and compare and contrast the results. Don’t be afraid to get a bit scientific about this and remove your emotion or affiliation to a particular campaign. The stats will tell you pretty quickly what is working and what isn’t.  Again remember to rotate your ads so that you keep things fresh – and you can even automate this process with simple tools on Facebook.

Finally a little-known tip to target a wider user base is to use Facebook’s 'Friends of Connections' targeting option. This allows you to target users whose friends are connected to a page, group, event or application and can drastically increase your market reach. And you can still feel you need to get some help it doesn't need to cost the earth.

Another link in the chain

LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com) acts more of a professional network rather than a social network. But you can still use its free features to promote your business.

For example you can send direct messages to your contacts and ask them to spread the work to their contacts. You can also set up groups through your Linked In profile and encourage people to join – and use this group forum to share the latest news and information about you and your website. If you are selling to other businesses or professionals you may also consider LinkedIn advertising. You can target by occupation – so it can be a useful way of getting the right decision makers to decide to take your product. Services like Experian or e-Location provide lists of relevant business contacts from their expansive databases and could be a good alternative.

Here are some other quick top tips that can help to publicise your website:

 

Swap shop

Consider swapping advertising or links with other friendly and relevant websites or services to cross-promote each other. 

Affiliate to accumulate

Go one step further and launch an affiliate programme – where you pay by performance if another website or partner promotes your products. This can be done on a one to one basis with partners you want to target. Or you could use affiliate networks where you set up an account, let third parties know about your products and what ‘cut’ they can get if they promote and sell them for you.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/article-2132567/How-create-successful-online-business-Part-VII.html 

The 9 Golden Rules For Running An Online Business

1 – Keep Your Website Design Simple and Well-Organized

People have a tendency to want to over-design their website in an effort to make it stand out or look cool. They may add flash animation, sound in the background, and load the site up with large graphics. This is a huge mistake, especially for business-oriented websites. It is much more important to make sure your design is organized in a way that visitors can easily find what they are looking for at a glance. Music blaring out is actually a pet peeve of many internet shoppers, especially if they are surfing at work as many do. You also want to make sure that the text is easy to read. Dark text on a simple light background is the safest way to go. Apple.com is the perfect example of a well designed website. Apple.com has some of the best web designers in the world who develop their website, check them out and also other big company sites for ideas if need be.

2 – Respond To Your Visitors Promptly

When a visitor, a potential customer, emails you or fills out your contact form, it is imperative that you get back to them as soon as possible. People always take mental note of how long it takes an online business to get back to them. Even if you are on vacation, you should either have an employee answering the emails in your absence or take your laptop along and answer the emails while your out-of-town.

There is way too much competition out there now for you to let potential clients slip through the cracks because you weren’t diligent enough to follow through.

3 – Engage Your Visitors

If you can turn your visitors into active participants on your website, you will increase loyalty and sales. The simplest way to do this is to add a blog and open it up for comments from your visitors. Advertise your posts in your newsletter and ask for comments. For larger sites, you may want to add a discussion board where your visitors can create their own topics. Set yourself up on a number of Social Media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest or LinkedIn and conversate/share/inform your customers with high quality answers and content. Also make sure that you have a follow, Fan Page ‘Like” widget or a Pinterest badge on your website so that people can follow you through their favorite social media platform and stay in tune with your progress and updates.

4 – Give Your Visitors a Reason To Come Back

Repeat visitors to your online business will increase sales for sure. You can give your visitors a reason to come back in many ways. For example, you can let them know that once a month you post a one-day only sale. Another example might be to write an article and let the readers know there will be a follow-up next month. Make the topic of the follow-up something that people really want to know. Just adding quality content on a regular basis is a good way to get repeat visitors.

5 – Do Not Over-Sell To Your Visitors

No one likes a pushy salesperson in a brick and mortar business. Online business are no different in this aspect. People hate to feel like they are being overly pressured to buy something. You can point out the advantages of your product or service but try not to over-sell. Watch out for superlative spammy language too. It will usually backfire on you!

6 – Do Not Over Optimize Your Website

You have probably heard of the term, “search engine optimization” or SEO. This is where people design their webpages with the intent of ranking higher in the search engines, particularly Google. Many online businesses push this way too far. Their sites end up being demoted or even banned from the search results because the search engines view their efforts as spam. Over optimizing pages also makes them less likeable and readable by real human beings.

7 – Do Not List Your Website In Bad Neighbourhoods

For a long time, it has been well-known that Google and other search engines look at how many links there are to a website as one important factor in determining how to rank that website in the search engine results. This has prompted online business owners to want to get as many links as they can. Sometimes they even pay for links in directories and blogs. However, in most cases, these paid links are sites that are known as bad neighborhoods by the search engines. In other words, they are spammy sites and having your website listed in them can actually hurt you, not help you!

8 – Maintain a High Quality Mailing List

Ask your visitors to sign up for your newsletter when they come to your online business site. Give them an incentive to do so such as a free report or free e-course on a topic related to your business. Having said this, respect your visitors and their time. Be sure not to send out your newsletter too often, perhaps once a month and occasionally send a special announcement. Also, make sure to put quality content in your newsletter and give your subscribers an easy way to opt out.

9 – Remember At The End Of The Day Your Customers Are STILL Real People

A lot of people forget this, they are not treating their customers as real human beings and are not putting themselves in the customers shoes. Customer service will always be around, that’s why we need to stay good at looking after our clients. If you can’t help them with their request, get back to them and let them know that you have exhausted every avenue to find a way and maybe even refer them onto someone who can help them. Even though you may not be able to help them at that very point in time, they WILL remember you went the extra mile for them and will tell their friends via word of mouth or by social media (which would be great promotion for you), either way, you can rest your head at night knowing that you are doing everything you can to hold a good name for your business and that every one that deals with you is satisfied. Tony Hsieh has his staff at Zappos practice this commitment with their customers and he has managed to build his online retail store to a $1.2 Billion Dollar company. This is how you secure yourself as the “go to guy in your industry”, and as time goes by and all these “short attention span, new comers” are so use to ONLY dealing with their customers over a keyboard and text conversation, they will be skimming over life long customers and potentially huge clients for the future. No matter how digital the business world gets, you are and will always be DEALING WITH REAL PEOPLE. Reputation is everything, don’t forget that.

http://addicted2success.com/startups/9-prime-rules-for-running-a-successful-online-business/