What Should I Be Doing While I am in Google’s Sandbox?

“How can I increase traffic to my website” has got to be the biggest question of the new Internet age. Whether yours is a one man/ woman show or a large corporate website, traffic is the need of the day. Most websites fail for lack of adequate traffic, but you can avoid this fate if you follow sound Internet marketing methods. Here are five methods that you can use to increase traffic to your website

1. Optimize your existing site. If your site is already up and running and you are not getting any traffic, one of the possible reasons for this is that your site is not adequately optimized. In order to get a good search engine ranking in queries related to your site, your web pages must be focused on your target keywords, and these keywords need to be placed strategically in the meta tags (title, description and keywords), in the headlines of your page, in the opening paragraph of text, in the anchor text of links on your page and even in file names. Thorough and proper placement of key words and phrases is what optimization is all about.

However, one thing to remember, if you target the wrong keywords you may not get any traffic. Do some keyword research and find out how people actually search when looking for products or services such as yours. What words or word combinations do they use? Your pages should be optimized to highlight these proper combinations. You can see which key words and key word combinations are used by visiting Overture’s Search Term Suggestion tool located at: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

2. Add more content to your website – This is the method of increasing traffic that is most ignored by website owners. Many people don’t realize that each of the inner pages of any website functions like a mini-website, in that they are doorways through which the site will be found in search engines and through which people will enter. If you add more pages with optimized content you will increase the chances of being found in search engines for a wide variety of search terms, and this will result in an increase in traffic.


3. Increase the number of inbound links to your site – If other sites around the Internet link to your site this will increase traffic to you directly and indirectly. The direct boost is given because surfers who see your links may click through and visit your site. The indirect traffic boost given by link popularity is that your site will get a higher search engine ranking in search engines which measure link popularity as an index of a website’s value. The search results in Google are based in a large part on this factor. You can increase the amount of inbound links by engaging in reciprocal links campaigns or by looking for directories where you can add your url, usually through a form on the site.

4. Publish your content on other websites with a link back to your site. This method also works in a direct and an indirect way. Whenever an article by you is published somewhere, with a link back to your site, you can expect that some people will click through and visit your site. Many webmasters and ezine publishers are hungry for good content and if you provide it, then you have a good chance of being published.

Suppose you have a website promoting your ebook entitled “A Step by Step Guide to Internet Marketing”. If you write a 600 word article on “The Basics of Search Engine Optimization” and get it published in high volume ezines or on a well visited website, then you will get a stream of targeted traffic, people who are already predisposed towards buying your product.

This method also helps indirectly in that it builds up the amount of incoming links, and boosts search engine ranking. You can get your material disseminated to other webmasters and ezine editors by posting your articles at http://www.articlecity.com, http://www.ideamarketers.com or through the many free article groups at Yahoo Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/)

5. Don’t forget Offline Advertising: Most people still spend most of their time offline. Put your url in your print advertising, TV advertising, on your stationary and in your brochures, on your vehicles, in your shop window, on T-shirts and other apparel and any other place where it will be seen. When it comes to offline advertising, an easy-to- remember url is an advantage.

6. Try Pay Per Click Advertising: Search engine optimization, reciprocal linking, content creation, and publishing all take time to deliver traffic to your site. If the main sections of your site are ready for public viewing and you want to see how well you can do, then buy some traffic. The most popular and probably most effective pay per click advertising program is Google’s Adwords. It only takes a few minutes to set up an Adwords account and you will get traffic immediately. But remember, your site has to be good enough to convert this traffic into orders if you want to recover the cost of the advertising.

So, roll up your sleeves and start working. Choose the website promotion methods that are most appropriate for you and you will be well on your way to providing the answer to your own question about how to increase website traffic.