Webupon

A common perception of many people who make a website for the first time is “if I build it they will come”. Sadly, after making their website, they discover that no one comes to visit it. Very often the site gets parked and fades into obscurity. In other cases they spend more money on internet marketing and it becomes moderately successful, only to be shelved due to a lack of funds.

Luckily, it’s not necessary to spend a lot of money on your site for good internet marketing; all you need is some time, some effort and the following five-step plan to increase traffic to your website.

This plan is 100% free. That’s right, it will cost you no money, only a bit of your time and will wean you off of the pay-per-click schemes promoted by Google Adwords, MSN Adcenter and Yahoo Searchmarketing (just to name a few of the better known ones).

Undoubtably, pay-per-click advertising campaigns do work for internet marketing. They will rapidly build traffic and attract eyeballs to your site, but keeping your site up in the higher rankings of the various search engines and further increasing traffic to your site requires you to take some active steps such as the ones below.

You must keep your website fresh and up-to-date. Nothing hurts a website more than missing or broken links. Keeping your site current and interesting will bring you good reviews, drive traffic to your website and get those all important repeat viewers who will put in the good word for you.

Second, is PR. Public Relations is not some arcane art that’s only practiced by people wearing designer suits. It can be as simple as writing a short article and then posting it on article directories, with a link at the end back to your site.

An excellent method of internet marketing is posting to forums or blogs relevant to your website. A simple search engine trawl will produce thousands of potential hits for you to choose from.

Once you find a forum or blog that matches your needs, it’s time to indulge in a little viral marketing. First, is to create an interesting signature, be sure to include your website’s address in your signature. Second is to make sure your posts are useful and informative. By doing this on a regular basis you will earn the trust of the members, create back links to your site and encourage them to visit your site. As you become popular, the members will spread the word about you and your site. In short, your internet marketing will go viral.

The third internet marketing method is blogging and being active in groups, social networking sites and online clubs and organizations.

Creating a blog of your own is an effective method of internet marketing. Posting on other people’s blogs is also good; this creates activity that is picked up by search engines like Google and Yahoo. Remember, in any signature that you use, add your website’s address. In this way as the blog rises in ranking your site will also rise.

The fourth method of internet marketing requires a little detective work. Check out online directories and free advertising sites you can find useful resources such as URLs and free software to increase your internet marketing. Caution is suggested here as some of the sites may get little or no traffic or the software may be of little or no use to you.

Fifth, use Search Engine Optimization for your internet marketing. Optimization is usually done by adding targeted keywords that are based on research, usually done by specialist companies, as to viewer behaviour and how, where, when and why they visited your site.