Article 2-
2.0 GETTING TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE
One of the most frequent questions I am asked is “Will your eBook teach me how to get more traffic to my web site?”
Lots of people have written books — and series of books — on generating traffic. The focus of this eBook is to show you how to maximize the traffic that you already have. And while tips for building pages through forums and free content are excellent ideas, they are no replacement for a solid course on how to get more people to visit your site. Because this question is so common though, I will address it briefly in this chapter. I’ll give you the basics, describe some unusual ideas that some people are using and tell you where you can get all the information you need.
In the next chapter, you’ll also find a quick run-through of search engine optimization and the in the chapter after that, I’ll talk about one of the most effective — and enjoyable new ways of promoting a website: social media.
16.1 Advertising
Let’s start with the obvious: buying advertising. We’ve already talked about AdWords/AdSense arbitrage but exactly the same principle applies to buying your traffic from other sources too. Whenever you run a pay-per-click advertising campaign to bring traffic to your site, the amount you pay for the traffic has to be less than the amount it earns for you, regardless of the source.
One of the advantages of following your AdSense stats is that you can estimate how much the clicks on your ads are worth. That can tell you how much you can afford to pay for clicks from other sites when you buy advertising, keeping your clickthrough rate in consideration.
It might well pay to advertise, but before you buy make sure it pays a profit.
2.1 Reciprocal Linking
Many people focus on linking in order to improve their search engine rankings. That’s important but don’t forget that the links themselves can be one of your biggest sources of traffic!
Probably the easiest way to invite links (apart from searching out related sites and writing to each one) is to add a “link” section to your pages where webmasters can choose a banner, button or text link to place on their site. On the same page, they can also submit their own site for linking. That should help you swap links without being swamped by sites looking for free placement.