5 Free Ways to Increase Your Website Traffic

by: Suzanne Morrison

Copyright 2004 Suzanne Morrison

I don't know about you, but when I first entered the world of internet marketing I thought I could just submit my newly finished website to a few search engines, then sit back as the visitors flocked to my site.

I imagined that people would arrive on my website, as if by magic, purchase goods, and perhaps come back again for more.

A week or so later I came down to earth with a big bump.

I realised that it would take a bit of time and effort to see the results that I was dreaming about!

Since my reality check, I have learned all about the weird and wonderful ways of internet marketing.

In this article I will tell you about my top 5 free ways of increasing website traffic.

All these methods are completely free and if you spend some time on them you will find that they work consistently.

(1)Writing Articles

Writing an article on a subject related to your website and getting that article published has two major benefits:

- People who are interested in your article will read it and often click on the URL in your resource box find out more. This gets you another free targeted visitor. Targeted, because that reader wants to find out more on the subject of your article, which is hopefully related to the subject of your website.

- Every publisher of your article must also publish your "resource box". Adding a resource box with your URL to all of your articles will increase the number of links leading back to your website, which in turn helps to increase your search engine position

For a list of directories to submit your article to, see Article Submission Directories

(2)Forum Networking

There are many discussion forums on the internet, on every topic you could possibly imagine.

Most discussion boards allow posters to attach a "Signature" with their post containing additional information about themselves, such as their name, URL and sometimes even an advertisement.

By visiting a few forums regularly and participating in the discussions, asking and answering questions, you can build up trust with other forum members, whilst at the same time getting free exposure for your website.

Just try to make a useful contribution to the forum - be sure to read the forum rules and don't spam!

(3)Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking has two main benefits for you.

Firstly, the more links that you exchange, the more chance there is that someone will follow a link from another site and land on your website.

Secondly, your website will be perceived more importantly by search engines.

The more links you have from other sites, the greater your chance of getter ranked more highly by all the search engines.

Here are some Dos and Don'ts to help you get more out of your link exchanges.

- Do link with sites that will be of interest to your visitors.

- Don't link with pages that have unorganised link directories with hundreds of links on each page. This won't benefit you with increased traffic or search engine rankings.

- Do link with sites that have a clearly labelled "Link Directory" from their main page. You aren't likely to get much traffic from a hidden or hard to find link directory.

- Don't use link farms or FFA pages. You are unlikely to get extra traffic using these methods and the search engines may penalise you.

- Do use link directories to help you find link partners. You can find some Link Exchange Resources here

- Do stay organised. Use link exchange software, or a spreadsheet to keep track of the link exchanges you have requested and the contact details of the webmasters.


(4) Email Signatures

This is a very simple, but often forgotten way of increasing your website visitors.

Most of us are sending lots of emails a day, but many of us just sign them with just our name, or perhaps nothing at all.

Instead, why not end your emails with a short signature containing your name, a bit about your website along with the URL?

Keep the signature short (4 lines), to the point and avoid hype or SHOUTING.

You may be surprised at the extra visitors you receive through doing this. It's amazing how curiosity will lead the recipients of your email to click on your link!


(5)Using Traffic Exchanges

Finally, this is one easy way to guarantee instant hits to your website. You can build up credits for free by surfing or building up a downline to surf for you.

The downside of this method is that the visitors you receive from traffic exchanges are not as targeted as the visitors that you will receive via the other methods that I have described.

The reason for this is that people surf traffic exchanges for one reason - to earn as many credits as possible in as short a space of time as possible!

This gives you a challenge - how do you attract the attention of someone who is looking at your web page for 20 seconds or less?

Here are two tips -

- Know your market - spend some time surfing on the exchange that you are advertising on and pay attention to the types of web pages being advertised. Make sure that the pages you advertise are going to interest your target market.

- Use a short, simple attention grabbing page that can be read in a few seconds - there is no point advertising a huge page of text that takes 5 minutes to read. The chances are, your visitor will get bored and click on the "next" button without giving your page a fair chance.

Regularly invest some time in each of these 5 traffic generating methods and you will see your web statistics moving in the upwards direction before you know it.


About the author:
Suzanne Morrison is the webmaster and owner of How to Start an Internet Business To learn more about how to promote your website download your free 30 Days to Success Ebook

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4 Ways In Which You Can Achieve Critical Mass

by: Jack Humphrey

Copyright 2004 Jack Humphrey

Critical Mass Website Promotion is the elite goal rarely attained by website marketers in any industry. Reaching critical mass and getting targeted website traffic on autopilot (meaning you don't have to promote your site for 6 months and the traffic NEVER declines) is the Holy Grail of internet marketing.

When you hit critical mass in your market, things change drastically for you and your business. Your marketing efforts go down in direct proportion to your customer support and sales going up. It sounds awesome. It IS awesome. But only a tiny fraction of websites on the net every achieve critical mass. Here's a nutshell version of what it takes.

1. Work Hard

Internet marketing is no game to be manipulated by using software and quick fixes to a very large problem, which is long-term, steady traffic coming to your site.

There is no magic pill, silver bullet, or guru secret that will help you to achieve critical mass in your market. Hard work and intense study of the internet and how people surf, what they want, and how you get in front of them while they are surfing is the only answer.

The internet marketing game is for professionals and you MUST make yourself a professional marketer of your "shop" just as you would in the real world.

2. Understand Your Market

Understanding exactly who you are selling your products or services to is the crucial first step in achieving critical mass.

The worst thing you could ever do is put the hard work in and achieve critical mass in the wrong market for your products and services!

Know your market. Know your best, ideal customer inside and out. Get your links in front of them, ideally, everywhere they surf for related information to your site.

3. Be Vigilant

Over the years I have watched people listen to what I have to say about website promotion and then take one of two paths:

1) They work their tails off and do what I tell them, with great results and rewards for their efforts (more sales, more traffic, more branding and recognition).

2) They buy my book, take a half-hearted shot at the easiest things in the book, get bored, tired, or impatient, and then they go back to chasing down quick fixes.

I have watched people who had the answers they needed in their hands, and drop them for more glamorous-sounding, fast solutions. Which we all know don't work.

I will say this again - THERE IS NO WAY TO TO QUICKLY OR INSTANTLY ACHIEVE CRITICAL MASS IN YOUR MARKET!

You must work like anyone in business who is in it to succeed works. If you do not know everything about your business and how to market it, your competition will eat you alive because they WILL know everything, I guarantee it.

Just like in the real world, the one who works harder, smarter, and is vigilant about his or her business is going to come out on top every time.

You owe it to yourself and your family to learn your craft and do it better than most people in your market if you want to succeed.

4. Achieve Critical Mass

In order to hit critical mass, you must be everywhere, or nearly everywhere your best customers surf.

This means linking back to your site from reciprocal links, articles, press releases, joint ventures, forum participation, and good search engine positioning for your best keywords.

In order to have literally thousands of links pointing to your site in high-profitle areas where human beings actually go and read/surf, it takes pure time and effort.

You must submit your articles to the best free content directories. Over and over until you have published everywhere you can that is relevant to your market.

You must secure deals with high-profitle sites in your market to swap QUALITY links. I am talking about links that people will click on, not just links that only search engines will see.

You must be everywhere that is a good place to be on the net in your market. This takes time. This takes hard work. This is what it takes to have a viable, long term website traffic solution for your business.

Reaching critical mass, or even sitting down and deciding a plan of action to pursue critical mass in your market takes maturity and a final realization that you can have anything you want in the world if you want to work for it. The day you stop chasing quick fixes to drive spurts of unqualified, un-targeted traffic to your site is the first step in achieving your goals as a professional internet marketer.

About the author:
Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking 2: Evolution. He is an internet marketing consultant and copy writer for major online clients.
http://power-linking-profits.com

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3 Ways To Swarm Your Website With Highly Targeted Traffic For FREE!

by: Andy Murray

Copyright 2005 Andy Murray

Targeted website traffic is the lifeblood of any website looking to generate revenue. While FREE traffic from the search engines seems the most logical way to go, actually staying ahead of the game can be tough. Here are my top 3 ways to send your traffic counter spinning without the headaches.

1. Trading Links With Other Webmasters:

By mutually agreeing with another webmaster to trade link exposure on each others site, you're expanding your market reach significantly. Not only does this generate instant traffic from the link partner, but you'll also BOOST your Google PR and link ranking with other search engines as a bonus.

This helps you rank better in the listings, generating even more FREE traffic, without doing any complicated SEO.

There are some great tools to help you get started trading links. Some of them are even free. I don't recommend them personally because annoying banners or other types of ads compete for the same space, doesn't look very professional.

Alternatives to FREE software worth checking out are...

The ALMIGHTY Zeus - The one I use. Tough to get used to, but an excellent piece of kit. The darn thing learns and just keeps getting smarter the more you use it. (And a FREE trial so you can become a master before you buy)
http://www.cyber-robotics.com

Reciprocal Link Manager - Not as sophisticated as Zeus but much easier to learn if you're pressed for time.
http://reciprocal-manager.com/

Axandra's Arelis - Lots of great reviews for this one and more in the Zeus mould.
http://www.axandra-link-popularity-tool.com/index.htm


2. Writing Articles to Publish Online:

This technique is a very close second to my favourite one which I'll share in just a moment. The amount of exposure you can get from writing a simple article is astounding.

After you've written it up, you submit to the major article directories, then just sit back and watch the traffic stream in.

As an added bonus you start to gain more respect within your industry. Articles have this uncanny knack to create an aura of expertise around the writer.

You also benefit yet again with search engine ranking, as other webmasters with mailing lists publish your article on their site. Creating yet another link back to you.

Articles are a VERY effective pre-selling technique too.

How much more targeted would a prospect be arriving at your website after reading one of your articles in an email or on another site?

Not only did you get the recommendation from the publisher, but if they enjoy reading your article and get some value from it, you've already broken down one of the main barriers of selling...

TRUST!

Here are some cool resources to get stuck into:

Editorial guidelines:
http://ezinearticles.com/editorial-guidelines.html

Some great "How To" advice:
http://www.promotewitharticles.com/howto.html

And a nice BIG list of directories and announcement lists:
http://www.marketingchick.com/howto/article-marketing.shtml


3. Viral Marketing:

Viral Marketing is defined as “Any advertising that propagates itself the way viruses do”; E.g. When Hotmail users send e-mails, they “infect” the recipients with the tagline at the bottom of their messages.

If you UNLEASH a 'Viral Marketing' campaign, it will just keep on multiplying, spreading your message around the web like wildfire. I absolutely LOVE this method of sending quality traffic to my website for FREE.

Generating free traffic with 'Viral Marketing' is easily the most rewarding use of your time. Taking good steps to craft the right offer and layout of your 'Viral Marketing' message is essential. But get it right, and not only will a truck-load of qualified visitors come to your website, but an air of respect and expertise is generated around you and your business.


About the author:
Andy Murray is a marketer and publisher writing informative reports to help grow your online business. Get his latest offering "Unleash Your Viral Marketing Potential" for FREE by simply following this link: http://www.zerohourmarketing.com/Viral-Marketing-Report.htm

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25 Things Mapping Software Can Do For You

by: Joe Miller

1. With mapping software you can create a report that tracks your retirement plan for you.

2. Use mapping software to create an Executive Dashboard, which tracks the bottom line.

3. Use mapping software to find the snowfall reports for your favorite ski resorts in Idaho.

4. You can even use mapping software to explore an interactive map of India for school reports, business, or travel.

5. Track your store incoming and outgoing inventory, including shipping information and warehouse location, mapping software.

6. You can conveniently book your own airline seat, so you don’t need to worry if you are a “window person” as opposed to an “aisle person.”

7. Know the who, what, when, where, and how of your department by using mapping data to interactively manage your department.

8. Receive production information in real-time reports.

9. Look up CIA World Facts online to see how you can look up virtually everything you wanted to know about geographical and population statistics.

10. Get your daily stock quotes, or track their changes over time.

11. Create interactive marketing reports that can be “drilled down” from general to specific trends and statistics.

12. Track and manage personal, department, and company budgets.

13. You can track sales and revenue trends for multiple stores on a national or even global scale.

14. Create managerial and employee training using mapping software. Learn processes and procedures in an interactive setting.

15. Create interactive documents. This is especially helpful in examining large documents with various notes and headings. The U. S. Constitution is available in an interactive online format with mapping software.

16. If you are interested in researching national cancer rates, they are readily available in an interactive format with mapping software.

17. Land developers can find latitudes and longitudes, as well as other helpful geographical information on interactive maps.

18. Using mapping software, customer trends can be tracked, even down to the zip code.

19. You can track your monthly expenses, such as phone bills.

20. Track store receipts for company or personal records using mapping software.

21. Access executive dashboards, as well as other interactive maps on a PDA or other wireless devices.

22. Are you traveling to another country? You can look up cultures, government information, climate information, and anything else you need to be prepared.

23. Convert all HTML documents to PDF for easy printing and paper records.

24. You can track inflation and deflation, as well as other economic variables.

25. Anything Else You Dream Up

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9 Steps to Protect your MS Windows System from Viruses

by: Evgeny Kovalenko

Nowadays as the Internet and other networks are greatly developed computer viruses are distributed rapidly and intensively. Everyday several new viruses capable to damage considerably your computer system arise. Anti-virus specialists work hardly to make updates their software against new viruses as soon as possible. The viruses can get inside computer in different ways. That is why there is no simple method to protect system. Only series of measures can give you reliable protection from the infection. Below are 9 steps to protect MS Windows based PC system from viruses.

1. Make regular backups.
It should be said that there is no absolutely safe way of protection. Virus creators regularly find holes in new computer products to use them for infection of computer systems. Some dangerous viruses can considerably damage data files or even erase entire file system. Make regular backups of your data files to separate file storage device. It can be separate hard drive, flash card, compact disc or another file storage device which you choose. To ease the procedure you can use some automatic backup software. And be ready if the system will die because of virus infection.

2. Be ready to reinstall your system if it dies because of viruses.
Get distributives of your operation system and distributives of software which you use and keep them together, for instance, on a set of CDs not far away from you. In this case if virus infection will cause unrecoverable system failure you can rapidly reinstall your working medium.

3. Protect your network connection with Firewall.
Firewall is a software which blocks suspicious potentially dangerous connections to preventing viruses from network to penetrate into your system. Windows XP system has quit simple but reliable built-in firewall. You can enable it as follows. 1) in Control Panel, double-click Networking and Internet Connections, and then click Network Connections. 2) Right-click the connection on which you would like to enable firewall, and then click Properties. 3) On the Advanced tab, check the option to Protect my computer and network.

If you need more flexible control of connections with network you can get and install more advanced firewall software like Norton Personal Firewall or Outpost Firewall. If you use this software you have ability to permit or to block particular connections and to monitor network activity.

4. Use antivirus software.
Install antivirus software which will scan your system searching and erasing viruses on a regular basis. Leaders in antivirus software products for Windows systems are Norton Antivirus, McAfee, Kaspersky Anti-Virus and PC-cilin.

5. Regularly update operating system.
Windows XP has built-in automatic update service. It regularly contacts Microsoft server to find updates and notifies you if updates are ready to be installed. Updates are important because hackers regularly find holes in operating system which are often used by virus creators.

6. Don't install and don't run suspicious software.
Check new programs which you are going to install with anti-virus software. Don't download software from suspicious websites. To download software always seek website of software creator or official distributor. Do not open applications received by email from unknown persons.

7. Limit access to your computer.
Protect enter to system with password.

8. If you use Internet Explorer, consider moving to another browser.
As IE is the most distributed browser today virus creators actively use defects in its security system to infect computers. Infection may arise if you will visit webpage which contains invisible harmful code. You are more safe if you use less known browser only because virus creators do not pay much attention to it. Major IE competitors Firefox and Opera browsers provide now the same comfortable interface and range of services for working on the Web.

9. Use spam protection.
Viruses are often distributed via email. Switch on spam filters in your email box to block spam receiving. If you need assistance with using of the filters you can ask your email service provider.


About the author:
Evgeny Kovalenko is the Editor of FSSD computer software directory with free submission service for software developers and distributors.

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7 Tips for Choosing the Right Blog Software for Your New Blog

by: Michael Turner

Choosing the right blog software for your new blog requires that you ask yourself some questions and make a list of all of the features and tools you need as well as your budget. Once you have this information written down you will be prepared to start shopping for blog software. However, keep in mind the following seven tips for choosing the best software for you.

Tip #1 Ping Updates
These allow you to update your blog and are very important in blog software. Make sure the blog software you are interested in provides automatic ping updates.

Tip #2 Comments
Whatever blog software you choose, you'll want to make sure that it has an area for comments from visitors. This will help you understand what is successful in your blog and what is not, as well as guide you in future blogs. This is a really great tool and should be part of your blog software.

Tip #3 Trackback
If you are discussing your blog on another blog, or simply adding information to another blog, trackback will allow you to update this information. This is a little confusing, but trackback allows you to talk on your blog about information on another blog and ping the writer of the other blog to let them know what is going on. Trackback is certainly a feature you want in your blog software.

Tip #4 Pingback
Pingback is similar to trackback, but it just sends a URL to the other blog to let them know you are talking about their blog on your blog. This is not used as much as trackback, but you will want a blog software that has at least one of these two functions.

Tip #5 Web-based
The point of a blog is you can post information instantly online, so you want your blog software to be similar to a word processor and web based without a shadow of a doubt.

Tip #6 Archiving
You want a blog software that supports archiving, and most of them do. The reason for this is you will want to save all of your past blogs by the date they were published and archiving allows you to do that.

Tip #7 Categorize
Another great tool you will want in your blog software is the ability to categorize. You want to keep your blogs organized and in categories, if you have them, so this option is really a great one for most bloggers.

There are lots of types of blog software available. You just need to do the research and compare what you find with what you need and then... start blogging!

About the author:
Michael Turner reveals step-by-step how you can increase search engine traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

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5 Minute Guide to Video Editing for Beginners

Getting started with video editing is very simple you only need a few items and you can be producing quality movies at home that you will be able to enjoy for many years to come. Maybe even produce a hit Hollywood movie.

The basic items you need are a video capture card, the software to edit, your computer, storage space on your computer and a camcorder, VCR, or you can display your movie on your computer screen.

The process is effortless, all you do is capture the video to you computer using a capture card, then edit your video with video editing software and then download the video that you edited to either tape or burn it to a VCD, CD, or DVD.

Let’s look at your computer first. You will need a minimum of a Pentium II 300 or faster, a minimum of 256 Megs of RAM, but you will get better performance with 512 Megs. You will also desire to have a 30GB drive that is split into 2 separate partitions. This means that you will have a C: and a D:. The C: should be given 10GB and will have all of your software stored there and the D: will be where your audio, video and editing projects are stored. Your graphics card should be a 32 Meg AGP. You can have an 8 or 16 Meg but the quality will not be as good.

Storage is probably the most confusing thing about video editing. Video makers have many choices for storing their digital video files and this is why it can be so confusing.

If you desire creating your own DVD’s then you are going to need lot of storage. The most you can get out of a single sided 4.7 GB DVD is around 2 hours of video. If you are using DV footage you are going to need 13GB per hour of video, this means you will need 26GB of storage and remember you always have extra footage that you need to factor that in as well so you are now up to 39GB of storage space needed. If you are adding other options such as graphics, MPEG2 footage for the DVD and the folder to hold it all then you are now up to 50GB. So, for your 2 hour movie you will need 50GB of space at least.

So, when you begin be sure that you have enough storage on your computer for the type of video that you wish to store.

On to the video capture card and the video editing software. When you first visit the electronics store you will find many manufacturers that create video capture cards. The most popular include
Some of the reputable video capture card manufacturers are: Pinnacle, Matrox, Dazzle, ADS, Canopus, and Digital Origin.

What video capture cards do to put it in simple terms is that these cards use hardware or software compression to digitize your video onto the hard drive on your computer. This way you can edit your video and play it back onto tape or display your movie on your computer screen.

Some times, you can purchase the video capture cards along with the video editing software that you choose. Some of the most popular video capture cards that are packaged with video software include the Pinnacle Pro One which comes with the Adobe Premiere 6 full version, TitleDeko RT, DV Tools 2.0, Hollywood FX, and Impressions DVD. The Dazzle DV NOW AV can be purchased along with the Premiere 6 full version and the DVDit LE.

Having music along with your video can also be accomplished with a MP3 Converter that will allow you to convert your MP3 music into a wav file or the format in which you need for your video. You may also wish to purchase a MP3 Encoder which will allow you to Wav or other formats into a MP3. A CD ripper is another item that you may wish to purchase that will help with converting your CD’s to MP3, WAV, WMA type files.

One other software program that will make you life easier when you begin video editing is a MPEG Encoder which is a very easy to use program that will make converting several formats easy than you can imagine. Many of these MPEG converters will aid in converting DVD, VCD, AVI, MPEG, GIF, Flash, WMV, WMA, WAV, MP3, MP4, M4A, OGG, AAC, 3GP and even more/

So, now all you need to do is to find the best video editing software that you feel comfortable with and off you go. You can find several different video editing software companies that offer their software on a trial basis, this will let you try out the software so you can see if it is the perfect software for you. But, remember with the trial version you will be receiving the video capture card. You will have to purchase it separately.


About the author:
Natalie Aranda is a freelance writer. She's been experimenting Audio & Video Editing with MP3 Converter http://www.blazemp.comand MPEG Encoder http://www.blazemp.com/mpeg_encoder_software.htmon many ecommerce websites.

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