Lots of Traffic

Getting lots of traffic to your webpage is very important. You have spent hours writing quality content to show off your knowledge of your chosen topic. Now you want people to see what you have written. But how do you do this? Through this hub I will try to show you some free and easy techniques for increasing traffic to your webpage, whether it be a blog, hub, article or website.

IMPORTANT!

It is important to note that the first thing you should make sure of is that the page you are trying to promote contains quality content. There is no point driving thousands of people to your page if it is full of rubbish.

Please note I am not a marketing expert. I am still quite new at this and am trying out the techniques myself. The techniques that I will describe I have discovered through reading hundreds of articles and hubs about generating traffic.

So what is the first thing you need to do to generate lots of traffic to your page?

The simple answer to this is to choose good keywords that are specific to your topic. Choosing highly searched keywords is a good idea but they must be specific to your topic. There would be no point in using the keywords "hot babes" if your page is about gardening. Using keywords that are searched by lots of people but have nothing to do with the content of your page is a great way of making people angry, also few people will actually click onto your site if you do that. If your page is about hot babes then using the keywords "hot babes" would be perfectly acceptable.

If you choose your keywords correctly you can get your page indexed by google and hopefully, if you work at it you can get it near the top of page one of Google for your chosen keywords. I mention google because virtually everyone uses Google as their search engine. They basically hold a monopoly in the search engine market so aiming to get to the top of page one on Google is what most people hope to achieve (google may be the industry leader but do not dismiss completely google's competitors such as yahoo, bing, and ask.com)

Another thing to consider when choosing your keywords is how much competition there is for that keyword. The higher the competition the less likely it is that your page will rank very high on google. Let us take the "hot babes" example, I typed hot babes into google and got 12,000,000 results so getting a new page anywhere near the first page of Google with those keywords would be very difficult without investing loads of money.

So what can you do to increase your chance of getting to the top of Google?

There are loads of articles out there that go into great detail about this so I suggest that you seek them out for details. But, basically what you can do is try to use longtail keywords. An example of a longtail keyword would be "hot babes with feather boas" which when typed into google gives out about 19,500 results. This is a lot less than the 12,000,000 results that "hot babes" give out. This means that there is a lot less competition for those keywords so you have a better chance of getting to the top of Google.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Lots-of-Traffic

You've got your quality content, and you have got your keywords now you can just sit back and wait for people to click on your page.

Unfortunately not! Unless you are very, very lucky you are going to have to promote your page. Promoting your webpage is a very tedious and quite annoying activity. But when you see hundreds of people viewing your page you feel a great sense of satisfaction and the hours of work you put into promoting your site definitely pay off.

Important!

Getting lots of traffic to your webpage can be a slow process. It can take hours upon hours of work to do it. You must have a lot of patience. If you don't see results straight away just keep plugging away. You will eventually get there.

Go on then, how do we proceed?

As I mentioned above getting to the top of Google is the ultimate aim. Every page that google indexes is given a rank. I will be completely honest here now, I am not entirely sure of the parameters that Google uses to rank its pages. What I do know are the most important factors. Basically, the more popular your page is the higher it ranks on google. I know this seems a bit like a catch 22 situation. You are trying to get your page to be more popular, so you are trying to get it to rank high on google, but in order to do that, your webpage must be popular. Do not worry though, there are ways to make your webpage popular and thus increasing the google rank of your page.

Ok, how do we do this?

One word that comes up often when reading about getting lots of traffic to your page and that word is 'Backlinks'. Google considers backlinks to be quite important when deciding how to rank a page.

But, what are backlinks?

Backlinks are basically any link on the internet that points to your site. Google decides that the more links there are pointing to your page the more popular that page must be. An example could be that you notice a small fire has broken out in a shop, you stand there and shout "fire!" Nobody pays any attention to you. But if lots of people are stood shouting "fire!" Somebody is likely to pay attention to this and take action. (I know it is not the best example, but it is the only one is could think of).

If backlinks are so important then I should post them everywhere on the internet. Right?

Wrong! If you start posting links to your site in every corner of the internet google will consider this spam and will penalize your site, thus ranking it very low. You must only post links to inappropriate places and in places that google considers to be trustworthy. Again there are hundreds of articles out there that go into great detail about which specific sites are the best for posting backlinks. I am just going to give you the basics.

What are social networking sites?

A social networking site tends to be a site that has the main focus of building communities with similar interests. These social networking sites rake in millions of dollars mainly due to the revenue generated from adverts posted on their sites. Two of the most famous social networking sites are facebook.com and twitter.com

Fine. I know what a social networking site is. How do I use them to generate backlinks?

Basically, it depends on the site you choose. The way you use these social networking sites is you sign up for an account with them (don't worry they are free to sign up with). Then you add your friends, and you chat with them. Let us take twitter.com as an example because when creating backlinks Twitter is one of the quickest and easiest options. With Twitter you sign up, then you are able to post 150 characters about what you are doing/going to be doing/have done. Twitter is a great way of finding out what your friends are up to. Once you have signed up with twitter.com you are able to invite all of your friends from your various email accounts to join. You can also search through the Twitter database and add people to your network that you think have the same interests as you (do not just start randomly adding people though because you will end up seeming like a spammer and that is very bad!). Once you have your account and a lot of Twitter friends you can post links on Twitter to your webpage. All of the people in your Twitter network will see the post and will be able to click on the link to your page. This is a great way of getting some traffic to your page.

All of the social networking sites can be used in a similar way. Obviously, before creating an account with them make sure to read the terms and conditions so that you do not do anything which could get you banned.

Basically, you use social networking sites to tell as many of your friends as possible that you have a great webpage that should be viewed.

Below is a list of great social networking sites that you could join.

Go on the, what are social bookmarking sites?

Social bookmarking sites work in a similar way to the bookmark feature available on you internet browser. With the bookmarking feature you are able to save a webpage that you liked and are able to go back to it whenever you like with just a click of the mouse. Social bookmarking sites act in a similar way.

How?

With a social bookmarking site you are able to post a link to a site that you have found and other people on the social bookmarking site are able to see that link. For example, you found this hub (the one you are reading), you decided you like the hub and found it very informative and interesting. So you decide you think other people should be able to see the hub. Social bookmarking sites are an easy way to show people the things you have found on the web.

If you use a bookmarking site or several bookmarking sites and you bookmark your webpage not only do you get more backlinks to your site, you also get more traffic because more people will be able to see your webpage. Below is a list of some of the best Social bookmarking sites to sign up to and increase your backlinks.

What is article marketing?

Article marketing is quite simple. You have a webpage, the webpage is about a specific topic, with article marketing you write articles about said topic and post a link from that article to your webpage. For example, I wrote a Hubpage about Children's Drawings. I then wrote several articles around the subject of children's art and drawing, pretty much anything to do with art. Then I posted a link within the article to the Hubpage (just like I did above).

This means that whoever sees this article is able to click on the link and view the original webpage. Basically, you write an article expanding on your chosen topic and post a link to your page from that article.

IMPORTANT!

Do not just copy content from your webpage and paste it into an article. The article has to have original content otherwise google will rank the page really low.

If I was going to use article marketing to promote this page I could write articles reviewing social bookmarking sites. In fact, I could write one article review for each social bookmarking site that I can find (this would end up being in the hundreds). Each article would contain a link to my original webpage. You could potentially end up with hundreds of backlinks this way. There are loads of sites you could use to write articles and promote your webpage for free.

What is a blog and what is a forum?

A blog is basically like a mini-website, they tend to be set out in a journal style. Most blogs tend to be about a particular subject and are regularly updated. Blogs are becoming more and more popular.

Blogs are a great way of adding more backlinks to your webpage (You will have to update the blog regularly though). Basically, you would use a blog in a similar way to the way you use article marketing. You write a couple of hundred words, every now and then, around your chosen topic. Each post you write can include a backlink to your webpage.

A forum is basically a collection of people who can come together to discuss various topics, usually offering advice or news about that particular topic. You can post questions or answers. You must not post links to your webpage willy-nilly in a forum as this will be considered spam. Each forum has its own rules that must be followed. When choosing a forum make sure you choose one that discusses your chosen topic.

With the higher-quality forums, you are able to create a signature. The signature can be a message or a link or a smilie which will usually show up at the bottom of every post you make in that forum. So every time you post a message in a forum your link is displayed in your post for people to click on.

I hope you have enjoyed this article. If you have please feel free to post links to this site elsewhere on the net (that is another way of generating backlinks, getting people to post the links for you. lol).