subject: Three Great Ways To Bring Traffic To Your Website [print this page] You may be a new comer to website administration and have just come up with a great idea for a new website. Unfortunately, your website will be of little use if no one on the Internet actually visits it. Here are three good tips to follow to help build up your website traffic and maintain it for the long term.
The first step to getting hits on the Internet is to get your website crawled by the major search engines. Most sites will not be automatically added to most search engines. You are going to have to do this yourself. Thankfully, this is completely free and very easy. All you have to do is provide the link to your website and a short description of the website on the website submission page of most search engines. Search engines you should consider include AltaVista, Ask, DMOZ, Hotbot, Kanoodle, and Lycos. However, make sure to definitely submit your site to Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Those three search engines actually power the search engines for many other websites.
However, simply being recognized by search engines doesn't mean you will have decent traffic or even a high search engine ranking. One thing you should certainly do to create interest in your site is to create dynamic and interactive content.
One key to developing sustainable web traffic is giving people something to come back for. Instead of simply making a website about your favourite band with only information and discographies, create a message board devoted to that band. This way, web surfers will continually come back to your website to continue discussions about the band's music. Another option that web masters should consider is adding image galleries. Image search engines pulling up images from particular websites are one way thousands of websites have maintained steady web traffic.
A third possibility you should try is developing a good ranking based on "keywords." Keywords are words or terms that are generally used by search engine users to find websites. The strategic use of keywords to direct web traffic has even become a lucrative business itself that is referred to as "search engine optimization."
The keyword you want to use should be something directly related to the topic that people are likely to put into a search engine. You should try to choose specific words and phrases that are not too general though. For example, trying to compete with millions of other websites for the keyword "clothing" will be nearly impossible. If your keyword is instead something more niche like "Goth fashion," you are likely to have a better shot.
Place the keywords you choose into your website's page name, headings on website content, and Meta tags. Meta tags are kind of computer code that search engines can read. However, don't overdo your usage of a keyword. "Stuffing" your site with the keyword can result in your website being punished by certain search engines and receiving a very poor search engine ranking.
Of course, there are many other things you can do to increase and maintain website traffic. However, following these three guidelines, you should be well on your way to having a successful website.
