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Finally; the best kept Internet marketing, website and blog traffic generation secrets are out. With the public release of these guidelines it is fair to say that the Internet marketing and ecommerce playing fields have been leveled.

Everybody from private individuals, to home-based offices, to small and medium-sized businesses all the way up to large organizations, major corporations and government can all avail themselves of these strategies.

Recent Findings

Recent research and consumer surveys conducted by Gartner Research have shown that there really is no single, “magic” formula that is guaranteed to increase the flow of traffic to your website, blog, info site etc.

Most surprisingly however; is that what these surveys did in fact find was that on the whole the majority of large organizations and elite webmasters are in fact already using these traffic generation secret tactics.

With a little work and a multi-strategy marketing plan you will definitely be able to markedly increase the flow of unique visitors to your site(s).

Master Plan

When it comes to improving the traffic flow to your website it is most important that you do have a well thought out plan. This so-called; implementation master plan should involve more than just two to three different traffic generation strategies.

Rapid Response – In the event that one of your preferred strategies proves to be ineffectual you must be able to respond rapidly and address these issues as and when they arise.

Plans B, C and D – It has been proven over the years that having a plan B (or even C and D if appropriate) ready and waiting in the wings contributes significantly to the robustness and 24/7 availability of your website.

Repeat Business versus No Return – Lost visitors are irrecoverable and generally do not return.

Steady State – One more point before I get to the list. These tips are designed to produce a steady flow of traffic rather than intermittent spurts. I have always found it best to start promotional campaigns by getting a hundred or so new unique daily visitors and then building on this rather than a quick thousand today and that’s it.

The Long Run – Big business makes money a bit at a time just like everyone else. It’s just that they do it so many times at so many different sites or offices. Like big business you need to be in it for the long run. If so; this list is for you.

Traffic Generating Strategies

I have not placed the traffic generating strategies contained in the following list in any particular order of merit. The reasoning behind this decision is that this better reflects the dynamics of the Internet today.

Internet Vagaries – This includes the vagaries of the manners and ways in which users surf the Internet today along with any peculiarities directly attributable to search engine behavior or user instigated override of search engine behavior.

This means that the results delivered by a search today are most likely to vary from those returned in a week or so. Thus; you should never put all your marketing and information eggs into the one basket.

Multiple Concurrent Complimentary Strategies – Because; “many hands make light work”, I do recommend that you try at least 5 of these strategies simultaneously. Your chances of attaining greater success increase exponentially as more traffic generating avenues and strategies are added to your arsenal.

Internet Presence – In these ways you can attain a broader Internet presence than would have otherwise been the case. Now for the list:

Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN)

Getting your own Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) is undoubtedly the most important element of all of the traffic generation strategies included in this list.

The reasons for having your very own Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) rather than a sub-domain within a third party’s FQDN are many-fold and include; greater versatility, flexibility, freedom and security. You also get the option to sell your domain “as is” or with value-added benefits to the purchaser.

Domain Name System (DNS) – DNS was established to overcome the problems that people were experiencing from attempting to use long binary strings or even the more user friendly dotted decimal notation system for IP addressing.

This made the locating and identification of end systems (your computer and some website) a very unpleasant task especially for those actively contacting or colluding with many people on a daily basis.

Out of this; arose the need for a more user friendly network and end system identification and management system. This is why the Domain Naming System (DNS) was created.

Hosting Services – If you have decided to use a domain hosting or web hosting service it is imperative that you establish prior to signing up that you can take your domain name with you should you ever find the need to change hosting service providers or to take the plunge and host your own domain yourself.

Child Domains – Once you have a FQDN you can create as many child domains as you wish. Design, coding, building and production implementation are considerably easier and far more streamlined than would be the case of sharing a sub-domain with thousands of sub-domains.

Regionalized Domains – If you intend to promote your wares within a fixed geographical region then you should look into obtaining a FQDN that reflects this. One of the easiest ways is through using a FQDN with country suffix.

User Friendly – Having your own FQDN also results in making your URLs much shorter and easier to remember and manage.

Website Design and Optimization

There are a number of website design aspects that can be optimized to improve your sites traffic pulling prowess. Here are a few of the more productive ones:

CSS Tableless Website Design – Use CSS to organize the layout of your website using div tags rather than using tables. Search engines tend to view your site’s text content with a higher weighting if you do this.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Realize that in the bigger scheme of things Search Engine Optimization (SEO) of your website is a long term strategy and that regardless of how well optimized your website may be you are not going to get rushed off your feet tomorrow. That is unless you are targeting keywords with little or no competition.

There are numerous sites dedicated to the topic of SEO as well as thousands of online SEO forums so if you want to check them out further just search using SEO as the keyword.

Newsletter and RSS Feeds – Have a newsletter subscription form that your visitors can use to subscribe to prominently displayed on your website. Incorporate the capacity for visitors to subscribe to RSS feeds.

Both newsletter and RSS feeds work best when you use them to attract visitors to your site in order for you to have a shot at selling them something. Make both your newsletter and RSS feeds free to subscribe to. Use a professional online auto-responder service such as aweber.com or getresponse.com

“Tell-a-Friend” and “Share This” – You can also install scripts that will allow you to exploit the standard Share This button. It is an easy way for visitors to send articles or website information that they found enlightening, entertaining or useful to family and friends as well as to work colleagues.

Site Maps – It is important to create site maps for your website and to submit it to Google. Visit xml-sitemaps.com to create free site maps for all of your websites. Once done upload it to your website and then submit it to Google at: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview?hl=en

Alternatively you can create and submit a sitemap for each website you run using Site Explorer: http://www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

User Comments – In today’s Web 2.0 world it is important to include some user interaction features in your website’s design. Viewer comments and forums are easy to implement and do add significantly to your visitor’s overall experience. You might even consider a short but funny video. Starting a blog or user’s forum on your website are options worthy of consideration.

Back Links

There are a considerable number of ways in which you can use back links to increase your sites traffic.

Blog Commenting – Search your own primary and preferred keywords to locate blogs relevant to your website. Visit select blogs every week or so and leave short comments along with the occasional back link. Every now and then contribute a longer more detailed piece with top quality, well researched information about the topic that is not to be found anywhere else on the blog. Insert your back links into the additional information you have contributed rather than with your comments.

Epinion.com – Visit epinion.com and post your “opinion” on products and services relevant to your website. Don’t forget to include back links to your website in with your post. Try to have your back link in the body of your comment. Most viewers will judge your post to be spam if all you do is leave a five word sentence with your link at the end. Here is an example of what not to do: “Awesome dude. Have you seen the green ones over at spammer.com?”

Forum Linking – Prepare a signature file containing links to your websites or to web pages within a web site. Use catchy titles and your preferred keywords within your links. You can search Google using your preferred keywords to locate forums on topics relevant to your site.

Yahoo Answers – Visit answers.yahoo.com and answer some questions remembering to include back links to your website in an appropriate manner similar to epinoion.com. The important thing with this Yahoo site is that your answers should be relevant and correct. So research and verify that you have indeed got it right. If you make a boo-boo here other users will shoot you down in flames and there goes you and your sites credibility. Don’t spam. Users visiting your site from here are considered to be qualified targeted users (the most valuable kind).

Articles and Directories Submission

One option that most people know about but may overlook is to make sure that you submit your website to directory services as this well help generate a lot of back links. Check out the strongest links site for a fairly extensive list of the more predominant directory linking services on the net. strongestlinks.com/directories.php

You can also submit keyword rich articles to various sites to gain back links. Don’t forget to submit your article’s URL to social bookmarking sites such as Simpy, delicious, dig, Furl and bluedot etc.

Social Networking and Social Bookmarking Sites

There are untold numbers of online communities that you can join to promote your website. Some of the possibilities include: Hubpages.com Myspace.com, Squidoo.com, Stumbleupon.com, and Yahoo Groups to name but a few.

The basic idea here is to join groups and start dropping back links or in the case of Stumbleupon.com to thumbs up your site.

Most social networking sites have some form of “friends” arrangement. You join the site, make friends with others of a like mind and then start recommending them to your website. Free reports are big with Yahoo groups.

Social bookmarking sites are another option that you should be using. Links to articles on your website seem to be the most productive in this arena. Sites such as Digg tend to send visitors in bursts. You may get a bunch of visitors now and then zilch. Do not expect any traffic from Digg after 24 hours from the time you posted an article/story.

Giveaways

Giving away free reports in order to get people to sign-up and join your mailing list is another tried and true marketing strategy. Viral eBooks loaded with your sites links are a favourite.

Advertise

Using Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines to generate traffic may be worth considering. They may also be worth considering as a means of monetizing your website or blog. Google Adwords, Microsoft Ad Center and Yahoo Search Marketing are the big three here.

You can submit ads to craigslist.com for free but don’t overdo it as you can get yourself banned for spamming.

Newspapers and the media are possible places for you to advertise but you need to have extensive turnover to make them a viable and profitable proposition.

You can buy advertising on high profile websites from adbrite.com considerably cheaper than with the mass media (TV, radio etc). Just be selective of the sites that adbrite.com places your ads.