Congrats on making it this far and getting a website up and running. This is no easy task as I’m sure you’ve learned from first hand experience. Now it’s time to put some use to your new website and get some website traffic started. So you ask…”how does one get website traffic?” We answer, “It all depends!”

Depending on what industry you are in or what your website is about will determine your exact way of building traffic but there are two general ways of generating traffic for a new website that you should be aware of.

1.) Search Engine Optimization or SEO
2.) Paid Advertising

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Let’s start with search engine optimization. Basically, seach engine optimization is a method to drive organic (meaning natural) and free traffic to your website. SEO is a very complex subject and we definitely can’t hit on all points within this article but having at least an understanding of what it can do for you will give you a head start.

There are two methods of SEO. There is on-page SEO and there is off-page SEO.

1.) On-Page Search Engine Optimization
With on-page SEO, you have more control over the outcome and can adjust this to what you think the seach engines want to see. On-page SEO is the part of SEO that is performed on the website or website files during development and often after a website is build. Some more important on-page SEO tactics include: writing customized and unique title tags, creating unique content that provides something of value to your website visitors, developing the site with clean code so the search engine spiders can index your website properly, creating the correct page structure with H1, H2, H3 tags as well as proper anchor text for internal linking strategies and there many other ways of creating a successful on-page SEO strategy. These listed are the most important that you should focus on and should be implemented when you are building your website but many people don’t realize this is essential and have to go back and do this once the site is complete. SEO is ongoing and should constantly be revisited to make sure you are optimizing everything properly. In future posts, we will go into more depth within each of these tactical SEO methods but this article is focused on giving you a broad idea of how to generate website traffic.

2.) Off-Page Search Engine Optimization
Off-page SEO is SEO performed “off” of the website. This part you do not have as much control over but off-page SEO is where you will gain the most benefit. Two of the most important off-page SEO tactics include link building strategies and content strategies. If you do nothing else for yourself, it’s essential to get links from other website directing people back to your website and creating great content. Link building campaigns can become tedious and are rarely fun but once you get some inbound links to your website, your seach engine rankings will move up and in return you will see more traffic on your website. So, now you’ve gotten people to your site. What will they do? How will you keep them occupied? You only have a couple of seconds to catch their attention. This is where original content comes into play. Provide the web user with something that will help them out. Help them learn something new. Show them something they haven’t read or seen on 1 million other websites. Provide a unique experience for your web traffic and they will reward you by coming back…time and time again. I cannot stress how important UNIQUE content is. It’s better to take one month and write one unique article for your website than to cram your site full of unoriginal content you have found on the Internet somewhere else. Unique content will make you stand out. Seach engines LOVE unique content. They will reward you for providing unique content by ranking you higher in their search engine and this will bring even more traffic to your site. Do yourself a favor and put the time in to create great content that people will pass on to their friends.

Remember organic traffic is free and that is what search engine optimization will do for you.

PAID ADVERTISING
The second way to bring traffic to your website is to start a paid advertising campaign. There are many forms of paid advertising but we will only talk about the ones that you should focus on until you get more in tune with web marketing.

1.) Pay Per Click
Pay per click advertising is a bidding system where you bid a certain amount of money for your primary keywords and in return you get targeted web traffic when someone clicks on your ad copy. The most popular of pay per click programs is Google Adwords. If you do a search in Google, these are the ads that appear at the top of the page and on the right side of the page. The often have a very light background to differentiate them from the organic search results. There are many other programs such as Yahoo and MSN but Google is the big dog that you should focus on to start. If you can master Google Adwords, then the others will be easy. Pay per click is nice in that it allows you to pick what you want to spend. If you have a budget of $5, the Google will let you spend only $5 if you like. If you have a budget of $1,000/day, then Google allows you to spend $1,000/day. It does take time to learn and master this bidding system but once you do you can maximize your ROI by spending less on clicks, getting more targeted visitors and increasing your return. Pay per click is something we will go much more in depth with in later posts. This just gives you an idea of what it is and how it can impact your web marketing plan and provide a great bang for your buck.

2.) Banner Advertising
You can also purchase banner advertising on websites to drive traffic to your website. For example, if you have a site about dogs, you might want to think about purchasing banner advertising on a pet food website or possibly a veterinarian site. People visit these other sites and see your banner and in return could be possible traffic for your website. Banner advertising ranges from $10/month as high as you can imagine. I don’t suggest going and purchasing a bunch of $10/month banners. You should first check with the site owner to see how many unique visitors and pageviews they get per month. You can also negotiate these banner deals with many websites so try and work out a deal that benefits both parties.

3.) Text Link Advertising
Text link advertising is the same idea as banner advertising except it’s a plain old text link. Instead of putting an image banner on a website, you put your keywords as a link to your website. So, if you own a website about cars and resources for cars, you could purchase a text link that reads “Car Tips and Resources”. This text link would then lead to your website. In essence, the web visitors see the keywords, “car tips and resources” and if this is what they are looking for, they are potential web visitors to your site. A good place to get text links is Text Link Ads.

With paid advertising, it’s good to set your budget and try a few things until something sticks. Not everything will work for every website. You have to be open to trying new avenues until you hit the magic button. This is a great place for a beginner of web advertising to start. Learn as much as you can and try to soak in all of the information available. If you need help, there are many reputable web marketing companies that can help.

Happy Web Marketing!

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