There is no business like the Internet business but there is no business whatsoever without traffic to your web site. This fact alone discourages more Internet marketers than any other. Finding products that fit niches, building a website to display the products and/or to write relevant text on some important keyword subject on the site, does not guarantee traffic. Yes, the spiders will drop by, and when you put the domain name into the search box, up pops your site. Looking good except if you enter the keyword that you are "pushing" into the search engine search box, your site comes up Number 6509 in the rankings.

Yes, we add counters on our pages but looking at them is discouraging. We can get scripts from Google Analytics and put them on our pages but that just tells us what is going on. We need that but we need traffic more. When we get traffic, the Google Analytics will help us determine how the traffic is generated which will help us get more traffic, right? So we need the analytics and if you don't have them, go get them and put them on every page of your site. You need a different script for each site but put it on each page.

Now that we are setup to see what is going on, we need to get back to the question, "How can I increase traffic to my website(s)?" Getting back to basics:

1. We select a niche to "talk to." We can find this niche by going to DMOZ, Amazon, or Ebay. Maybe we know something about some topic and are very excited about it. Maybe we can corner that niche, find a group of hungry buyers (as the gurus say), and funnel them into the website.

2. We build the website loading it with wonderful information that our eager group is interested in. We make the site exciting, add videos that we make ourselves or extract from YouTube (or such), and we gather names and email addresses. Perhaps we design a squeeze page that offers a gift of some value for those who register to receiver occasional emails from you to keep them up-to-date on your niche world. We put affiliate links or product page links on the site. We do not sell or try to sell. Vendors or your product pages do that.

3. We study ways to generate traffic for the keywords in our domain name and other keywords relevant keywords. We make sure these keywords are listed in the meta file on our website. We also make sure there is a good title and description in the meta file. We study the traffic for certain keywords by using the Google external keyword tool or a tool based on the Google tool. I use the tool of the premier Internet commerce training site. We choose the keywords we want to use in our promotions.

4. Now we write articles using the keywords in the title and in the text, not over using keywords but following the guidelines of the article site. We publish the articles and we ping them to ping-o-matic, etc. We announce our articles on FaceBook and Twitter and other such networking sites, "Hey Guy! I just wrote an article called Blah, Blah, Blah (add your article link.)" If your article site allows vidio and/or audio, why not use it? It will double your response. Of course, you tell your email list(s) readers about your masterpiece.

5. When you know what keywords are working, check Adwords or such and see what is going with pay-per-click. Test an ad and see if it is pulling in traffic. (Make sure you look at the Google ads that come up for the keyword(s).) If it is, calculate the value of the ad in dollars. Don't forget the possibility of repeat sales. That may be were the real profits are.

6. Consider offline advertising. If you have a good site, you can generate traffic from small classified ads, direct mail advertising, and even a bumper sticker. I have a sign on the back of my car showing that I sell flagpoles. In the past I have run print ads that simply give a URL. The URL must be descriptive of the business if you want anyone to visit your website.

It use to be that banners were the big thing. They are still useful but just plastering your site with banners is a waste of time. A banner after some enticement to click, can work for you.

You can make up a survey that may help you isolate customers. There are sites on the Internet where you can setup your survey, get the URL, and announce it on your website, in ads, or in emails. Knowing just what your potential customers are hungry for is valuable information. Then you can provide the products or services they need or desire.

Fly Old Glory!