How to increase traffic in 7 steps

Generating good traffic is essential to ensure your site or blog is kept alive: what's the purpose of a website if nobody wants to visit it? But even more, traffic is important if you wish to turn your site into a money making machine, that will ensure your company and products a large audience, and a larger amount of customers who will be more likely to buy your services or products; or - if your site is a blog - visitors will be more likely to become part of your very own social 'community' on the web.

Now, there are several ways to increase traffic, but for brevity sake, I'll only list the 7 most important ones, which I hope will help you get started with your business or blog.

1) Get advertised on websites and search engines. The first option is available to blogs, the second one is most recommended for online businesses. For instance, you could opt for Yahoo ads, or try out Google Adwords; if you have a blog, you can get free and paid advertising on other blogs and relevant websites; that way, visitors of the advertising site will more likely click on your link and visit your site / blog, and use your services in most cases. Relevance is the key: if your site / blog is about fashion clothes, make sure to advertise on fashion blogs and websites, and/or in the fashion related keywords on search engines.

2) Write and submit articles on article directories. Not just people who like your articles will willingly visit your website, but even when your articles get republished your link will be available for visitors of that site to reach yours. Definitely, article writing is a sure way to get quality visitors.

3) Make blog friends. For bloggers. It's the 'social link exchanging' (see point 1 too), which will benefit both your blog and the other, as visitors of one will be likely to visit the other site/blog as well. Relevant partners links are useful to business' site visitors as well.

4) Join forums and online communities. And put your site link in your signature. Everyone who takes part in your discussions is a potential visitor to your website.

5) If you have the time, setup a newsletter. Everyone who subscribes becomes a loyal daily or weekly visitors, and there's the possibility that each of your subscribers will invite friends to join too, thus your traffic rank would increase considerably.

6) Offer online services. Services attire visitors and backlinks, and they could make most of your traffic benefit. They might require some work, but results are almost guaranteed.

7) Setup a 'Tell A Friend' snippet. If your visitors like your articles, they'll be more likely to use this script and invite their friends to read.