Getting quality traffic is the most important part of achieving your online dreams.

It really isn't that hard to create a website these days.  There are many point and click tools you can use to create a site within a few minutes.  It also isn't very hard to place advertisements and affiliate marketing links on your site.

The difficult part is generating enough quality traffic to your site.

The focus has to be on finding quality traffic.  Many companies will be willing to send you thousands of visitors for a few hundred bucks.  However, these visitors are worthless if they are not targeted to the topic of your website.  Use your tracking software and statistics to understand if the traffic you are getting is quality or not.

Focus on getting traffic that is not only targeted, but super targeted.  Instead of buying traffic from a search engine for people searching for "computers" start bidding on keywords such as "buy a computer online" or "buy Toshiba Satellite M115".  The more targeted your traffic is, the better your conversions and revenue will be.

FOCUS ON BOTH LONG-TERM AND SHORT-TERM STRATEGIES

Anyone who spends time and money buying traffic from search engines will tell you that revenues are much easier to attain if you have traffic coming to your site that you don't have to buy on a daily basis.   You will need to use the short-term strategy of buying traffic from search engines, but never forget the goal of cultivating a steady flow of long-term traffic.

LONG-TERM TRAFFIC STRATEGIES

Your most important long-term strategy is making a good site people will return to and recommend.  You don't have to pay for return visitors.  Return visitors already know what your site is about and how to navigate through your pages. They already have a certain level of trust associated with your site which leads to more sales and activity.

Stay in touch with your best customers by building a customer list.  Allow your visitors to sign-up as members of your site or join an email list.  Use online services such as Constant Contact to manage your email marketing and newsletter efforts.

Newsletters are a great way to keep in touch with people.  Most people will forget your web address or never cross the path of your site again considering all the choices they have.

This isn't spam email because you only send your email newsletter to people who have requested it. If they no longer want to receive your newsletter, they simply follow the directions on the bottom of your newsletter to request their removal from your list.

Focus on good search engine optimization.   As you make new pages for your site, remember that the title of your new page will be the text used in the search engine listings.  Also, the words on your new pages will be used to tell the search engines what your site is about.  Make sure to use good keywords throughout your site.  Before making a new page or writing a new article, do a little keyword research.  A travel writer will find that more people search for the phrase "Pacific Northwest" instead of the phrase "Northwest United States" so "Pacific Northwest" should be used in the title and throughout the article. 

Continue to add fresh content.  Every page you create is a potential link on the search engines people can click to enter your site.  A site with 10 pages will have about 10 possible entry points on the search engines.  A site with 1,000 pages will have about 1,000 possible entry points on the search engines.  Continue to add qualtiy pages with quality content to your site.  The search engines will visit your site often in order to detect new content.  You won't need to submit each new page to the search engines.

Ask for and attract links to your site.  Create a good site and be impressive.  That is the best strategy for attracting quality links.

Links tell search engines that your site is good enough to have other sites linking to it.  This is one metric search engines use to rank sites.  Don't fall for offers where online companies say they will place links to your site on thousands of sites for a couple hundred dollars.  The idea is to get quality links instead of a bunch of worthless links that will probably end up hurting your search engine rankings. 

Also don't forget to promote your website through traditional promotional techniques such as putting your web address on your marketing products and printed materials.

Try to think of ways to create excitement about your site.  If you have a unique product or if you have a promotion that people will get excited about, you will experience the wonder of exponential growth from grassroots word of mouth.

Keep an eye on your statistics so you know where your traffic is coming from and which pages are your most popular.  Use the statistics information to adjust your website and improve your pages. Begin to see each page on your site as a potential doorway and stop thinking that everyone will visit your homepage first.

SHORT-TERM TRAFFIC STRATEGIES

Short-term traffic strategies can include press releases, special events, etc...  However...

The main short-term strategy for generating traffic is buying traffic through pay per click (PPC) marketing programs.

PPC marketing is the paid advertisements above and to the right of the free search results on most search engines. PPC marketing can also include contextual ads shown on relevant web pages.

Your ads appear on the search engines and the search results pages of your choice.  You choose the keywords and phrases you want to advertise on.  You only pay when someone clicks your ad and enters your site. People will find you exactly when they are looking for you.

PPC marketing allows a highly efficient, cost effective, and budget friendly means of driving traffic to your web site.

You have the ability to put your link in front of people who are actively searching for your product or service.

You can start to place ads on search engines with PPC advertising programs such as Yahoo Search Marketing and Google Adwords.

Buying PPC traffic from search engines is covered more in depth in the next section.

If you have any questions, ask them in the forum

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