4 Methods That Increase Website Traffic

There are many methods that work to increase website traffic. Unfortunately, a number of the techniques being promoted are known as "black hat" and will either ultimately get you in trouble, or will only work for a very short period of time. Since you want your Web business to be around for a long time, it might be a better move to spend your time on something more lasting.

Some of these tricks will work, but I'd like to discuss several "white hat" methods that result in lasting traffic. They're not exciting, and they're not kept under lock and key by any guru, but they're being used successfully by many webmasters. In fact, it's a way to future-proof your Web business. These methods will work to produce free traffic for any site you choose for many months and years to come.

Article marketing -- Using article marketing to increase website traffic offers several major benefits. The article marketing sites themselves often have high authority with Google and offer excellent backlinks, which can drive up your search engine rankings. In addition, because of the authority that these sites have, your posted articles will often rank high in the engines.

In addition to the above, the article directories may also send direct traffic to your site. Since those clicking through to your site have already read your article, they're highly targeted visitors. There's a viral effect that occurs when other websites republish your article with a link back to your site. You can continue to get new backlinks without any further effort and this effect can last for months or years.

Bookmarking the social way -- By placing icons on your site with links to popular social bookmarking sites, you can encourage your visitors to social bookmark your pages. Try adding the code for addthis.com or sharethis.com to your site. With minimal effort, you can significantly increase your backlinks using Getbookmark.com. Don't overlook the value of bookmarking your link partners. If you bookmark sites that link to yours, you can increase their exposure, and improve your search engine ranking at the same time.

Adding pages -- You can never go wrong by building more content. More pages not only means more value for your visitor, it also means more linking opportunities, more PageRank, and more hooks for the search engines to bite into. The long term result, of course, is increasing website traffic. Many sites will come and go, and it's important to create content so that your site becomes a valuable resource. Content equals staying power.

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.

These methods each work well on their own. Yes, if you understand simple SEO principles you can simply build content and eventually you'll have a successful site. You can write articles and drive traffic, and you can bookmark and republish your content on various social networks. If you combine these techniques, however, you'll see results much more quickly. While these are not the only methods to increase website traffic, they are safe, effective, and produce lasting results.

About the Author

Kurt Schmitt publishes several Web properties serving thousand of visitors a month, and writes about the benefits of social bookmarking, article marketing and other Web promotion strategies. See his website for at least 3 more ways to increase website traffic .