Website traffic is the key ingredient to generating revenue from your online business. The good news is that there are many different strategies you can use to increase traffic. I am going to highlight 3 proven strategies for increasing overall traffic to your website, and all of these strategies are free to do.

1. Social Bookmark Websites

Using social bookmark websites such as Digg.com and Reddit.com to build links to your website can really help increase your traffic. The biggest thing you need to do to make social book marking effective is to have good content for them on your website, and also write an enticing headline to encourage more clicks. If you can be somewhat controversial or make a bold statement that will encourage more clicks.

When writing your headline just think of wording that encourages you to click on something. You want the potential visitor to think they would be missing out on something if they did not click on that link.

The other benefit that social book marking has on your website traffic is that it can bring you both short term and long term traffic. The link on these websites typically stays live for a long time, and also many of the social book marking websites pass page rank. This basically means that search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN consider that a positive link to your website, so it can have a positive effect on improving your websites ranking.

To get a larger list of social book marking websites you can visit www.socialmarker.com.

2. Articles

Writing and submitting articles is an old, but often overlooked method for both driving traffic and increasing your businesses credibility online. When you write the articles you would write them based on your industry. For example if you have a website selling computers, you could write articles related to computers in anyway. Just make the articles informative, and use the about the author section to direct them to your website.

You gain visitors that read your article online and click on the link in the resource section, and also because you get a link back to your website that can help you improve your search engine positioning which translates into more long term website traffic.

To get started write a 500+ word article on a topic related to your business. Once you are complete you can go to your favorite search engine and search for “article directories” or “submit article free”. This will bring up plenty of websites to submit your content to.  Two good websites to submit your articles to are www.ezinearticles.com and www.articledashboard.com.

One great tip you can use to find articles related to your niche is to input the follow search string: “submit article” your main keyword. For example if you have a website that sells home interior products you would search for “submit article” interior design. The number of niche specific article directories and websites that accept articles is different for every industry, but you should find some no matter what industry you are in.

3. Online Press Releases

Submitting press releases online is an effective method for building links to your website and also traffic. Most business think of just submitting a press release to your local newspaper, but when you do that you are really limiting your potential.

Most places that allow you to submit your press release online also give you a link back to your website. This link again will help improve your overall search engine rankings, and will also have an impact on building long term traffic.

The other positive note of an online press release is that it gives your business credibility. These online PR websites that you submit to carry so much weight in the search engines that a lot of times when you have your company name in the title of the release your press release will come up along with your website in the search engine results.

This is an excellent method to control all of the information about your business that shows up. You want to make sure that your business looks good online, and this enables you to do that.

Your press release doesn’t have to be huge, but over 300 words will do. Finding places to submit press releases online is simple. Just go to Google and search for “submit press release” or “free press release submission”. Make sure to search in quotes so that it returns that exact result.

If you utilize these tactics above you will get targeted visitors to your website both in the short term and in the long term.

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