With so many active surfers around, you would think Webmasters and site owners have an easy time attracting them. Actually, they face an uphill battle to bring visitors and, more importantly, consumers to their Web sites. And a Web site without traffic is like a store built in the middle of the desert. You could have the greatest products and most attractive Web design around, but they’re worthless if no one visits them.

There is one way, however, to turn your Web site into an oasis of business, a way to drive as much traffic to your site as your server can handle: a classified ad.

More on that later. First, all Web builders and site owners should know the basic and time-tested ways to attract traffic to their Web site. The key to all of these methods is to attract the right Web surfers. You want what experts call “targeted visitors,” or people who are actually interested in what you’re selling. To guarantee that this happens, you should follow this checklist of Web traffic golden rules:

Step 1: Optimize your Web pages. Webmasters in the know take the time to set their meta tags. These tags, or codes, are hidden keywords in the Web page that tell search engines like Google and Yahoo exactly what your site is all about. A meta tag, for instance, could be “designer handbags,” “sporting equipment,” or whatever else you happen to be selling. These keywords tell the search engine to direct all handbag or sports shoppers to your site.

Step 2: List your site with every search engine out there. For this step, you simply need to surf over to Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines. Click onto their customer service page, where they allow Web builders and site owners to manually submit their site addresses.

Step 3. Spice up your site with interactive features. With articles, newsletters, offers, promotions, and discounts, you give your targeted visitors a reason to stay at your site once they find it. More importantly, you give them reasons to come back and tell their friends about the site. Word of mouth is one of the best, and cheapest, forms of advertising on the planet.

Step 4. Exchange banner ads with friends and with other companies that you do business with. Banner ads are those eye-catching designs at the top and bottom of Web pages. They’re like the billboards of the Internet superhighway. But with these online billboards, a simple click transports the Web surfer directly to your Web site.

Step 5. Exchange Web links with friends and business associates. This, Webmasters and site owners, could be the most important way to drive Web traffic to your site. All of the major search engines rank sites by measuring how many links come to and leave from your Web site.

So links are a way to measure how worthwhile and how legitimate your site is. The better this measurement, the better chance your site will have to show up well in Web surfers’ searches. In other words, these links could be the difference between your site being listed on page 20 of a Google search results, or on page 1.

Building better Web links and search engine resultsthat’s where classified sites come into play. Some of the most savvy classified sites on the market now offer Web links in their ads. These links lead right to your business’ home page.

Not only are these links convenient one-click ways for more customers to reach your site. They also boost your search engine rankings.

Of course, for business owners, classified sites have so many other benefits, too.

• Unparalleled exposure. Classified sites are like online malls. Not only will you get exposure from shoppers coming specifically to find your goods. You get “spill over” attention from shoppers who came for another item but then start browsing through all of the other ads in the classified “mall.”
• A new arsenal of Web sites. Having online classified ads is like setting up multiple new Web sites across the Internet. Unlike your own original site, these classified ads come with low-cost IT support, security, and advertising.
• Incredible growth opportunities. Businesses and individuals selling on online classified sites pull in more than $1.95 billion a year, according to the statistics firm Kelsey Group. That figure does not even include money from eBay.
• Money for nothing. As valuable as classified sites are, many of the best ones charge very little or absolutely nothing to set up your ads.

Add up all of these numbers250 million active Web surfers in the world, $1.95 billion in classified sales, and $0 costand your Web business is sure to come out in the positive.

Donald Lee is the public relations manager for Buysellcommunity.com. Buysellcommunity provides free classified listing services for individuals and businesses to market their products and services online. For global and localized classifieds, please visit

www.buysellcommunity.com – Free Buy & Sell Classifieds

Here are some simple strategies that I’ve put together just for you, so you don’t have to go through a hard time testing which strategies work best for bringing traffics.

The first most important strategy in marketing your website is to get a high search engine ranking. Unless your name is already all over the internet, otherwise, search engine is the best tool for customer to get to your websites.

There are certain rules to get your website to rank high in search engines.

1. Stick to the subject. Always keep everything on your site relevant to the subject. This obviously makes a pretty good sense for search engine to index you and refer to a group of niche targeted traffic to your website, and only brings in quality prospects to you instead of just load of useless traffic which will only waste your website bandwidth.

2. You may also want to spend some time to choose a domain name and website title that fits perfectly well with your business keywords. Always make your title easy to be remembered.

3. Link popularity is definitely going to help your website rankings, so do also spend time find and contact websites that offer information complementing yours and ask for reciprocal links.

Important: Be aware that this information can change as search engines redesign their methods for relevant results.

4. If you have some money to spare for advertising your websites, pay-per-click advertising will be a cost effective method to market your website fast. A very well-known online advertising program is google adwords; but I would highly advise you to master its feature and secrets before you start using it. You can find various of courses and tutorials online.

5. Web logs or blogs are the latest trend for internet marketing. Many blogs rank well on the search engines. This is the best method to market your products and ideas especially if you are a darn good writer that can provide content that ’suck’ readers into your articles. Blog can be written in both formal and casual. You can even use blog as a business journal for public. And if you have any event coming up in your business, your readers will the first to know through your business blog.

If you have any fantastic ideas and marketing strategies for your online businesses, always keep in mind that the core purpose for applying all these strategies is to increase your website traffic and hence online profits; otherwise, this isn’t marketing anymore.

Aim for success when marketing your online businesses. Use the above methods and watch your traffic grow.

Copyright (c) Edwin Lim

About the author:
Edwin Lim is a freelance copywriter living in Malaysia. For more article writing and marketing insights, visit his Website at http://www.webblogerz.com

This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

I’ll list some traffic generating methods that may be effective for certain or all types of internet businesses.

1. There are the good ole search engines. Search engines are a good way to get traffic to your internet business. But you have to find out how to get good rankings. Getting listed into free search engines and getting good rankings usually takes time and a lot of people don’t have the patience. Once you’ve built your website you want hits and you want it now, which is understandable. If you have good content and patience or have the funds for top ten rankings, search engines are always a good way to get unique visitors. This is effective with any kind of internet business.

2. You can always use articles to build your link popularity and traffic. No one can argue about the effectiveness of using articles to build link popularity and gain some additional traffic. Write a good article for ezines and so on. The problem for some is that they may not feel that comfortable with writing. There is always the option to hire writers. I like using articles because it is a good way to increase your credibility and build trust with potential customers. If you enjoy writing, articles are another free method to increase visitors to your site and gain credibility, writing articles is also effective with any kind of internet business.

3. I’ve come across auto surf and exit exchange programs that bring hits to your website. Some are good and some are bad. Auto surf programs usually work like this, you spend time surfing other people’s website and in turn you earn credits for hits on your website. Some auto surf programs do a good job with bringing unique and targeted visitors to your site, but it is not guaranteed. Your traffic would increase, but purchases may not. People on free auto surf programs or anything free are usually looking for free stuff. I recommend auto surf programs as a traffic generator for your internet business if your online business offers a lot of free things to help build customers. If your internet business solely sells products or is an infopreneur site then placing your website on auto surf programs might not be the best approach. Yes, you may get some hits but most likely no purchases because others on the program may have just clicked your website to get credits for their own site. You want real targeted unique visitors.

4. Viral marketing is another free and effective way of generating traffic to your internet business. If viral marketing is used right and done correctly, it can be a powerful way to increase your traffic exponentially. Some viral marketing programs offer ways to get targeted visitors while others just bring in visitors. When I mention viral marketing I’m talking about the possibility of receiving thousands to millions of visitors per month. Of course you have to let a few people know about your business virally. For example, you get ten people on your viral website or email, where they view your website, these ten people each get ten more people to view their website and yours and it goes on. As you can see, viral marketing appears to have no limits. I recommend viral marketing as a way to get traffic to your business if you just want to get your business out there to let people know it exits. Click here if you want to learn more about viral marketing.

Feedback form and guestbook do not give enough qualitative information to these questions.

Statistics give us information on the quantity of visits more than on the quality. Although we can estimate the average length of visit, the number of page views or the most popular paths, we still don’t know for sure what the people think of the site.

The best way to get an answer is to ask the site’s users in a direct, simple and convivial way. The online survey give us a precise estimation of the site users opinion that no other tools can match.

However a few requirements must be met in order to get valid information:

The choice of the questions is essential. List your priorities first. What do you want to get from the survey ? Focus on your priorities. Do not ask questions that won’t help to fulfill the goals set.

The questions must relate to a significant part of the audience. If the site is about cars do not ask question about trucks unless you want to create a new “truck” section.

The questions need to be as precise as possible in order to get relevant answers and useful information.

Too many open questions will not allow to see the significant trends of the audience because the answers will be too diverse. An open question is where users are free to give the answer they want.

Too many closed questions will not allow you to know very precisely what the people think of your site. A close question is where you give a choice of answers to.

A good qualitative survey is a balance between open and closed questions to meet your goals.

It is necessary to limit the survey to one response per IP address. This way the survey is clean and is not perverted by many answers from a same unique user. A good online survey software should have the functionality to identify an IP address and to block it after a survey is filled.

Online software help you to build, manage and analyze a web survey.

Some run on the same server as the analyzed site’s. Others work on a third party’s server.

Some are free, some are limited by a number of surveys or questions, or answers.

In order to get the best information as possible in the most tailored way, the best option is to install a software on your server and to customize the survey to your own need.

I recommend CsPoller, a cgi-script, cheap, customizable, easy to use.

Other choices are SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang as third-party online survey software.

A good qualitative survey should have:

Less than 10 questions: people do not have the time. They only have a few minutes spare to spend on the survey.

An estimatation of the time needed: give the people an idea of how much time the survey will take to complete.

A mix of open and closed questions: A closed question gives quantitative information. Example: Please rate the usability of the web site ? Very good – Good – Average – Bad – Very bad An open question gives qualitative information. Example: What subject would like to see on the site ? Users are free to answer as they want to.

Closed questions are much easier to analyze. With an open questions you may get as many different answers as respondents. It is sometimes useful to mix open and closed in the same question. Example: What subject would like to see on the site ? Answer: News – Interviews – Pictures – Games – Other, please specify. Therefore a good ratio is one open question for five closed questions.

No personal information that are not necessary: do you need the snailmail address or the phone number ? The more personal information you ask, the fewer the responses you will get as people will give up along the way.

Ask respondents to leave a comment at the end of the survey. Inform them that you can use a comment as a testimonial.

Let users enter a sweepstake, offer exclusive content, give them a giveaway, anything to motivate people to take the survey.

When you write the questions and answers, always have in mind what it will take to analyze them. Do not offer too many answers. Do not ask too many open questions. More answers mean multiple different results and a risk that the trend that should be there is diluted and cannot be seen.

The best tool to analyze the answers is a spreadsheet such as Excel. Although some online survey tools are able to analyze the answers.

It is not recommended to give the results online to the users as it can influence people who have not taken the survey yet and inform the competition.

Some suggested questions to ask in a survey are:

What do you think of the web site content ? Very good – Good – Average – Bad – Very bad

Rate the usability of the site ? Very good – Good – Average – Bad – Very bad

Is it easy to find relevant content on the site ? Yes – No

Do you like the design of the site ? Yes – No

What content would like to see on the site ? Open question, users are free to answer what they want to

After 100 or 1,000 surveys filled and analyzed, you already have a good snapshot of the users’ opinion. The next step is to adapt the web site based on the survey’s results and satisfy the users.