Increase Website Trafficwith OTB

1) Yahoo Answers

You can go through and start answering questions at answers.yahoo.com

You’ll be surprised at the many questions left unanswered in many categories. You can become an “expert” within many fields by answering questions, and having relevant links point back to your site. It’s a quick way to build back links and actually have targeted users viewing your site.

Check it out at  answers.yahoo.com

Be sure to never spam. It’s important to be friendly with your answers, and provide good relevant information. The goal here is to have the user to trust you.

To get started simply browse the categories or you can search for questions. For example you can do a search for “making money” and it will produce questions people have asked about “making money”.

2) Myspace.com

Create a  myspace account and start marketing to the users. Some quick tips for myspace are:

- Never spam

- Join relevant groups and participate within the groups.

- Post interesting bulletins that provide useful information

- Send friend requests to users within the groups you’ve joined.

- Use graphics in your posts to catch the attention of the reader.

- Use catchy titles, anything boring will be ignored.

- For non-targeted friends, you can try friendstorm.net

- To automate friend adding, comment posting and bulletin posting you can check friendbot.com and madderadder.com

3) Yahoo Groups

Join yahoo groups. I’ve joined groups within the “Home Business” section and promoted my products/services to group members. You can also create your own group as well. One of the keys here is to offer free reports and tools to the users, and then use that free report to up sell your main products/services.

You can find home business groups at the link below:

finance.dir.groups.yahoo.com

The marketing/advertising groups at the link below:

finance.dir.groups.yahoo.com

4) Stumbleupon.com

Download the  stumbleupon toolbar and ensure you click “I like this” to all of your websites, and have your friends and family do the same

and click the “I like this” to all your sites. Also create pages specifically for stumbleupon that either is funny and odd, which can range from funny pictures to funny videos. This works well since stumbleupon users love to browse sites that have odd and funny stuff, or even free stuff would work good as well.

5) Forum Linking

Every forum you join, always have a signature file that contains links to your most treasured websites. Be sure to use your preferred keywords within the links or perhaps catchy titles to entice clicks.

Search your own primary keywords in Google to locate forums on topics that compliment your niche or your product. But NEVER post to any forum just for the sake of posting your links. Always contribute good information if you want forum users to click your links, visit your site, and perhaps buy your products and services.

6) Craigslist.org

Submit free ads to craigslist.org. Be sure to read the Terms of Use first, and do not to spam these classifieds.

One or two ads per week in a few select cities are fine. If you submit too often or to many times, your ads can be flagged or you can be blocked altogether as a spammer. Always use catchy titles to ensure your ad is read.

7) Site maps

Always have a site map for all your sites, and ensure the site map is submitted to Google. You can create a free site map using the online software at this website:

xml-sitemaps.com

Once your site map is created, then upload it to your site and submit it to Google using the link below:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/siteoverview?hl=en

8) Viral E-Book Giveaway

If you have an e-book of your own that contains your links, give it away free and allow others to do the same. This also works fairly well when you have another author’s e-book that allows you to brand your own links inside.

Be sure the e-book provides good information to the readers. You don’t want to get a reputation as a junk peddler.

9) CSS Website Design

This is not really a marketing method but I think it’s important. When having your website designed it’s best to use CSS to organize

the layout of the site rather than using tables. CSS can power the layout using div tags instead of table tags. This will ensure your design is tableless. It will allow your textual content to have more weight

when viewed by the search engines. If you have a designer, ensure you request “CSS Tableless Design” for your next website layout.

10) Submit To Directories

Most people already do this, but just in case you haven’t, you should submit to directories. You can find a list of directories below:

strongestlinks.com/directories.php

The above list some of the better directories to submit to. By submitting to these directories you can acquire back links and more traffic to your site.

11) Tell a Friend

You can install a tell a friend script to your site that will allow users to “refer” your site to their friends and colleagues. The downside to this is that some spammers try to manipulate tell a friend scripts. Be sure the one you use actually has “image verification” (like Captcha) to limit form manipulation; otherwise you may find spammers trying to use your form to send spam.

12) Search Engine Optimization

Realize that unless you are targeting keywords that have little or no competition, SEO is a long term marketing method.

You probably will not start receiving traffic from search engines next week – no matter how well optimized your site and webpages may be.

Some good forums to review for free SEO tips are:

http://sitepoint.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=3

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/forumdisplay.php?f=12

http://forums.seochat.com

http://forums.searchenginewatch.com

http://searchengineforums.com/apps/searchengine.forums

I suggest joining each of these forums for the sake of review, and then frequent the ones that you like best.

13) Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com

Create a “lense” for your site topic at  squidoo.com and a “hub” at hubpages.com - This is one of the latest fads but is also in a position to change the way the Net works over the long term – at least as much as YouTube if not more so.

14) Social bookmarking sites Submit to each of these sites. PageRank current on 8 March 2010

http://technorati.com PageRank: 8/10
http://del.icio.us/ PageRank: 8/10
http://www.diigo.com/ PageRank: 5/10
http://www.digg.com/ PageRank: 8/10
http://www.simpy.com/ PageRank: 6/10
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/ PageRank: 7/10 http://www.stumbleupon.com/ PageRank: 8/10
http://www.spurl.net/ PageRank: 6/10
http://faves.com/ PageRank: 4/10
http://netvouz.com/ PageRank: 6/10
http://www.blogmarks.net/ PageRank: 4/10
http://www.blinklist.com/ PageRank: 7/10

15) Article Promotion

Write keyword rich articles relating to your site and product and submit those articles to:

ezinearticles.com PageRank: 6/10
articledashboard.com PageRank: 5/10
ideamarketers.com PageRank: 3/10
articlecity.com PageRank: 5/10

PageRank current on 8 March 2010

16) Site Explorer

Create and submit a sitemap for each website you run. siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

17) Epinion.com

Post your opinion on related products and services at  epinion.com

18) Adbrite.com

Buy text ads and links on related high traffic websites from adbrite.com

Track those ads closely with the tracking software of your choice, so you won’t waste money on non-performing ads, and also to know which ads ARE making money for you.

19) Newsletter Box

Always have a newsletter box on your website that will allow all visitors to subscribe for updates on your site. This can be a real winner, as you’ll be able to market your product or service to these subscribers.

You can use getresponse.com or  aweber.com for convenient but professional online autoresponder service.

20) Pay per Click search engines

I’ve listed this last since almost everyone does this, but I can’t have a list of marketing tips without mentioning PPC. Google Adwords, Microsoft Ad Center and Yahoo Search Marketing are the big three.

Other options are SearchFeed.com and Goclick.com.

For a comprehensive list of pay per click search engines see this link: http://www.payperclickuniverse.com/top-pay-per-click-search-engines.php

21) Blog Comments

Search your own primary keywords on Google to locate blogs on topics that relate to or compliment your niche or your products. Then, begin to visit those blogs on a weekly basis to contribute your on topic comments and worthwhile information, along with a backlink to your own site.

Always be considerate of the blog publisher and other users, avoiding coarse or vulgar language. Never post off-topic comments or you may get yourself banned. I suggest you avoid automated blog posting softwares – as they amount to little more than spam, and you won’t get away with that tactic for long. Besides, if you’re not willing to do some actual work, you’re in the wrong business.