How to Get Traffic for your website.

If you have decided not to wait for visitors finding your site in the maze of the web , go ahead and follow these instructions to get traffic for your site.

First step

Install a tracking software like Sitemeter - If you don't know how many visitors visit your site daily or who is referring them, its a complete waste of highly valuable data. Just sign up with Sitemeter for the Free Basic version and you will get all the important data like

• Numbers of visitors to your site
• IP addresses and Server location
• Referring websites
• Time of visit and duration of stay
• OS and browser information
• Entry pages and Exit pages

Submit your url to search engines - Its like going to them before they waste time searching you out. However If you dont submit it doesnt mean they will never add your site to their index. Most of top search engines will add your site for free. TRY and AVOID
paid search listings. Free directories like Dmoz have such a huge backlog that it would not make any difference if you add your blog there.

Here a few links for submitting your url

Google
Yahoo
Bing




Add your site to Technorati - Technorati is a blog ranking website. More sites linking to your site , the better your blog's rank and more chances of it getting visitors from Technorati. Its a FREE service where you have to claim your blog after signing up with them. You are given a html code to be added in your site so that Technorati automatically knows when you have added a new post.

Submit Article directory - Just go to the Ezinearticles.com and join them for Free. After that Submit your latest post as an article with your site url in the body. They get high page ranking in Google and your article has a fair chance of attracting visitors for your blog. Remember write useful posts and be original , NEVER COPY.

Add FEED BURNER to your website - Here is an excellent Article on how to do it.


Paid Traffic from Search Engines- If you are too desperate to get traffic go ahead and buy traffic from search engines. While a google search on paid traffic will throw up hundreds of sites, sticking to the top three is by far the wisest thing to do. How does Google Adwords / Overture / Msn Adcentral work ? All three work on PPC ( pay per click) model where you bid for keywords and pay for every click on your ad. Things can get pretty expensive if you do not know what you are doing. Bidding on high value keywords can get pretty intense and often prices go north of $50 a click. Try to bid on very specific keywords where competition is low and maintain a fixed daily budget. Also remember to have the target country and age group in mind.You dont want to pay for a 10 yr old to visit your site about stock markets.

While services other than the top 3 will be quite tempting due to the low costs, a quick research showed me that often these services SCAM their clients and use automatic bots ( web robots ) to send traffic to a client's website.They can send a million hits to your website without a human ever seeing your site. SO STAY AWAY is what I'll suggest.

Among the top three Google Adwords is the most recommended due to its vast network and easy to use interface. You can have one account to show ads to people anywhere on the planet. Overture requires you to open different accounts ( seperate deposits required) for different countries which is quite a disadvantage compared with Adwords.

• Google
• Overture
• Msn Adcentre
  

Paid Traffic from social networking sites - With Facebook crossing 400 million active users, possibilities of getting visitors from social networks is only becoming more and more evident. To get traffic from sites like Facebook you have to signup and launch a campaign with keywords just like with Adwords. However there are some concerns that Facebook traffic is non converting traffic.Simply put They Rarely Buy Stuff so think twice before shelling out if you are seeking traffic that will convert for you. Other important sites like Myspace.com also offer to run campaigns.

click here for best practices for Facebook Advertising.

Google Adsense Faqs & Facts

Google AdSense is a advertising platform for publishers. If you own any kind of website ( blog or an independent website) you can join Adsense for Free. If your site is approved, They will start showing Ads on your site (remember those 'Ads by Google' things you see all over the Internet).

There are two ways in which Adsense can display ads

1. When you search for Something on Google.com and along withe the results, the page displays Ads on the right hand side and often on the top of the results
2. Ads are shown on websites who have signed up with Google Adsense. Below is an example of Ads being shown on a website.




Whenever a visitor clicks on the ads , the site owner (who signed up for Adsense) makes some money. Google has another program called Adwords where people who want to sell their products signup so that their ads get displayed on Google network.

Imagine Mr. X who wants to sell his toy. and Mr Y who has a website about Toys. Both have signed up with Google. X has signed up with Adwords and Y with Adsense. Google charges X Rs 5 whenever someone clicks on ads about toys and gives a Rs 3 to Y, keeping Rs 2 for itself. Ofcourse these figures could be different, as this is just to simplify things.


Adsense Signup - Its a fairly simple process , requiring you to fill up a form with your Full Name, Website Address, your physical address etc. Try to be as honest as possible because your primary goal is to get approved. You dont have to worry about your website for the moment, even if you have just one post, you will get approved. Dont start a website dealing in pornography or Illegal stuff because these kind of sites are often rejected.

It usually takes about three days to get approved. Once approved you are free to add the adsense codes to as many sites as you want.You dont require an approval for every site of yours.

Ad Formats - Once approved you have to decide which formats you want to use on your site. You can have three ad units and one text link unit for one page. Not more. Although people find different results, according to me


# 300*250 small rectangle works like magic
# Never use Image ads, Text ads are the real money makers.
# Place one 300*250 above your post and one just before the comment section.
# Link unit can be used below the text ads.


How much money can you make from AdSense. - As much as you can. there is no limit. while 90% of Adsense users make below 1 $ a day, there are people who make significant amount from it.

Plentyoffish.com owner Markus Frind Makes around $ 4 million a year from Adsense

Shoemoney.com owner Jeremy Shoemaker made $ 132,995 in a single month

AmitBhawani.com claims to have exceeded $60,000 in Adsense earnings in 2009.

There are thousands of other bloggers making $million+ every year from Adsense but they havent disclosed their income. So the opportunity is there and everybody is invited to TRY. So ARE YOU GAME ?