Having an attractive and great looking web site is only half the battle. You need people to visit your site to make it valuable.

If you are business owner, you have probably been confronted with the problem of having to choose which marketing strategy to use. You have perhaps continuously leaped from one marketing idea to the next in the hope of making greater sales and greater site visits. But the measure of real success depends really on the how you have created your marketing tool not merely on your choice of strategy. Surely, using posters can be better than flyers depending on your type of business. But your choices of words and content will still be the determining factor whether your target customers will patronize your products or services.

Increasing revenue for online businesses is quite easy. There are a few things you need to consider when driving traffic to your site as you probably know by now that the more traffic you have to your site the more money you will have. Hence, to increase traffic to your site, take note of the following considerations: utilize data feeds, blogs and e-books. Data feeds are used for creating a specific content page listing of each product and their descriptions and prices. They are specifically good for getting search engine traffic as they list detailed information about the product that people are looking for.

Blogs, on the other hand, have been used by many businesses for quite a while. It has been one of the most loved marketing strategies of people and search engines because they offer readers new information in an easy-to-read layout and in an entertaining manner. Equally, e-books can be used to dramatically increase website traffic. E-books are usually messages in PDF format that contains a business promotional message. You have to keep in mind though that before you create your own e-book you have to create an effective reason why recipients would like to pass it along to their friends and colleagues. If you can effectively create this reason, then it will be easier for you to campaign your products or services.

Nevertheless, having the right website design and the getting graphic designer is crucial in boosting the success of a business. There are many tips that different graphic designers offer to businesses. As far as your web site is concerned, it is up to you to choose which you think will work for you and which will not. Hence, the bottom line for success will still depend on good content and hard work.

Let’s face it; the Internet is cluttered with all sorts of guides about increasing traffic to your web site. Unfortunately, most of these guides are outdated or incomplete. In fact, many of the techniques being touted in them will get you in serious trouble. Wouldn’t you like to build up quality traffic that will stand the test of time? The key phrase is “test of time”. You don’t want to be a flash in the pan.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Before you rush out to tell the world that your brand new web site is open for business, set it up properly. Do not even start to think about traffic if your web site still has broken links, empty content, and other unfinished business. While patience can be a hard thing to control, having some will pay off later. Once your web site is completely operational from top to bottom, you are ready to flood it with traffic.

SEARCH ENGINES

While there are many web sites out there which claim to be search engines, you only need to be concerned with a few of the major ones like Google, MSN, etc. You do not need to submit your web site to these engines—they will find you on their own once your web site is being linked from other web sites. Never pay for a service or software that does this function because it will be a complete waste of money. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either trying to sell you a product or lacks real experience on the matter.

The goal is to get your web site linked on other related web sites, which will cause the search engines to index your web site and visit somewhat often to look for changes.

DIRECTORIES

Your first step to building a solid traffic foundation is to submit your site to good directories. Doing so will increase your incoming links, page rank and traffic. Many directories charge a fee for a listing—most are one-time fees. Following is a breakdown of some of the more important directories to get listed in.

The ODP (Dmoz.org)
Submission to this directory is free and it is one of the best to be listed in. It is extremely important that you read their guidelines. All submissions are reviewed by an editor and the approval process can take weeks to months. Many web site owners have waited a long time before having their web site added. It is worth the wait.

Yahoo.com
Adding your web site to this very popular directory will cost $299 annually. Because of the price, you will want to think about this one. Experiences with Yahoo listings are on both sides of the aisle. The best thing to do is see where your web site will most likely be listed and evaluate the conditions for that section.

sbd.Bcentral.com
This is Microsoft’s business directory and it will be a solid listing for you. The current listing fee is $50, which includes the use of their web site tuning service. This service will evaluate your pages and let you know if the page is ready to submit or contains errors such as under-optimization and spam alerts. It can help you optimize your pages for the keyword phrases you are interested in.

SevenSeek.com
This directory has a great page rank and many back links. As will all directory submissions, pay attention to the guidelines. The fee for submission is $40. Seven Seek is a general directory so just about any web site will fit here.

GoGuides.org
Go Guides is another great directory to get your web site into. Their web site is crawled by all the bots daily, which is a great plus. Submission is $40 for this general directory.

Wowdirectory.com
Wow Directory is a large general themed directory. Web site submissions are free but approval can take some time. They offer an express submit for $20 that will ensure your web site is listed within 24 hours.

There are many more directories out there but these are some solid ones to get into first. In time, your web site will begin to appear in the major search engines. Most directories that charge for submission have adopted the policy started by Yahoo where the fee is for “review” only. It is absolutely vital that you read over all the guidelines to be certain that your web site will be accepted.

ARTICLES

A great way to generate traffic and back links to your web site is by writing articles. Here is the general process of how it works:

1. You craft a great article.
2. You submit that article to web sites geared towards web site owners needing content.
3. Owners grab your article, which contains a link to your web site, and use it on their web site.

As you can see, the process is very simple. When other web site owners place your article on their web site, you will be generating incoming links all over the Internet with no work at all. This will not only lead to possible traffic but help to establish the value of your web site to the search engines—so better rankings.

It is very important that your article is written well. If not, quality web site owners are much less likely to use your article and it makes you look bad. Most web site owners skip this important step in traffic building because they can not craft effective articles. If this is you, do something about it—visit Jason A. Martin right now and click on the “Articles for your web site” link. For a small fee, articles can be generated for you—and you retain full rights. Once received, simply slap your name on it and submit to places like  Ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, etc.

This is perhaps one of the most important steps of all and after your article is written, it takes no work. The results can be extremely fast. Many articles out there are not crafted well so it is important to not formulate your writing style and perception blindly on the work of others. While many web sites that offer articles claim to “edit” them, it is more of a casual edit.

TEXT LINKS

The goal here is to increase the number of links from related web sites. For example, if your web site is about hot dogs, you will want to obtain links from web sites that are about such topics as: hot dogs, eating, hot dog buns, hot dog toppings, hot dog contests, etc. Obtaining a link from Joe’s Engine Parts will not help much and may actually hurt in regards to search engine rankings.

After thinking up words and phrases that are related to your main topic, visit your favorite search engine and search for those items. Visit the web sites that come up and try to get your link on them. Some might exchange a link with you, some might offer a link on their web site in exchange for payment, and some might simply say no. Keep at it.

Remember to always keep a sense of pride about your web site. Resist the temptations to do actions which will hurt your web site and build it with the future in mind.