Basic Strategies for Increasing Website Traffic

There are many different strategies for how you can increase the traffic that your website gets. Increasing website traffic though isn't rocket science, and there are no magic tricks that are going to instantly turn your site into a powerhouse. Instead, you have to use a combination of many different tried and true strategies that combined can offer significant, incremental and long term increases in your website traffic.

Onsite SEO

Onsite search engine optimization refers to everything you do to help get your website listed prominently in the search engines directly on your own pages. This starts from the beginning of your online business when you hopefully pick a domain name with appropriate keywords and phrases in it. It continues as you develop page names with keywords, use keywords in your content, your internal links, your META tags and so on.

The most important thing is researching the correct keywords that you should be targeting. Some may be popular but may be dominated by strong competition. Others you may be able to easily get the number 1 spot for but they are rarely used by actual searchers. Therefore you need to research which keywords offer the best combination of popularity and weaker competition, allowing your site to quickly jump to the top of the list.

Offsite SEO

Offsite search engine optimization refers to everything you do to help increase your website's SEO elsewhere on the Internet. This includes:

* Social networking: With social networking you can distribute your content to members of various communities, hopefully building your presence, increasing your direct traffic and building up incoming links in the process.

* Article marketing: The main benefit of article marketing is that for every article you create you can include links in the resource box to your own website. This helps your search engine standing greatly. If you take the time write high quality articles and to do so frequently, you'll also build up a reputation as a knowledgeable member of your community and a trusted source of information.

* Video marketing: Video marketing is the new wave of article marketing, basically capitalizing on the same benefits but through the means of the creation of videos. An added benefit is how much more engaging and interactive your content can be when presented in video form.

* Forums and blogs: Posting on forums and leaving comments on blogs is one way to help get your website noticed by other people and other websites within the community. If you make intelligent and thoughtful comments people will respect what you have to say and will visit your website or reach out to you when in need.

* PPC Campaigns: PPC advertising isn't technically SEO, it's actually SEM or search engine marketing since it's a paid form of promotion. Still, it can be an extremely powerful tool to have to help increase your site's presence and traffic.

The right combination of all of the above strategies will lead to great boost in the amount of website traffic that you see and enjoy. Not everything works for all businesses or markets, so always be sure to evaluate your strategies and campaigns for effectiveness.