4 Methods That Increase Website Traffic

4 Methods That Increase Website Traffic
by Kurt Schmitt
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Methods to increase website traffic are being spun, packaged, wrapped up in e-literature, and sold for a price. Some of these methods work. Unfortunately, a number of them are also known as "black hat" or are borderline black hat and will only work for a short period of time. They'll probably stop working right about the time you buy the ebook, or get around to reading it and implement it. Since I'm sure you're taking a long term approach to your website, you'll want to dedicate your time and effort to creating a less risky, and more lasting traffic strategy.

While the tricks might work for a while, I'd like to talk about some "white hat" methods that result in lasting traffic. They may not be sexy, and they aren't "secrets" or anything mysterious, but they work. In fact, these methods will work to produce free traffic for many months and years to come.

Article marketing -- There are a number of benefits to using article marketing and other than building pages, it's the number one method I use to increase website traffic. If written correctly, your posted articles will often rank high in the engines and you can end up with several top listings. The article directory sites have a lot of trust and authority with Google, and provide an excellent backlink to your site.

The article directories can send you direct traffic. This traffic is normally very targeted delivering visitors who already trust you and are often warm to becoming loyal visitors and customers. Once your article is published, other websites will republish your article with your backlink. Your job is done as soon as you publish, yet the viral effect created by republishing can live on for years. You can continue to get new backlinks without any further effort.

Social bookmarking -- Social bookmarking is an activity that can have great rewards for your site. It's easy to create a number of links back to your sites by social bookmarking a few pages. You can also encourage your visitors to do this for you by placing icons with links to popular social bookmarking sites. In addition, you can increase traffic to your own websites by bookmarking sites that link to yours.

Creating content -- The more pages you have on your site, the more PageRank your site can accumulate. A higher PageRank value for your site will get your site spidered more often, keeping more of your pages in Google's index. It also adds to your site's overall authority. More pages also equates to more value for your visitor, more keywords for the search engines to chew on, and additional internal linking opportunities. All of this results in an increase in website traffic. Building a large content site is not only a proven Web business model with staying power, but also adds real value.

Social media and community sites -- Many people think of Reddit and Digg, but forget about repurposing their content on other social media sites. Instead of trying to play the very difficult game of who's going to Digg me, you should look at user generated content sites that allow you to post a link to your site. Start with the biggest ones first, as they offer great backlinks and the potential for high traffic. These include Hubpages, Squidoo, and Buzzle, as well as a number of up and coming community sites published on the Ning platform and others like Tumblr.

Increasing website traffic with these methods will produce lasting results, as opposed to some of the risky, flash-in-the-pan methods that so many are suggesting these days. Start incorporating one or more of these techniques, and you're sure to see an increase in visitor count.

About the Author:
Kurt Schmitt explains how to use article marketing and other Web promotion strategies to increase website traffic .

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