How to Increase Traffic On a Budget
Traffic is the life blood of all websites – business or otherwise, on the internet, and unless there is a steady flow of unique visitors, no website can be termed a success. All the efforts that go into SEO – link building, getting a huge page rank, coming onto the first page of Google, writing excellent content, getting the right meta tags in place, socialbookmarking, viral ads, CPC, PPC, affiliate marketing, and anything else we may have missed out, have one single purpose – to build a steady stream of traffic to the site. It is traffic which will make the site get monetized better and increase the brand value of the website.
There are several ways in which traffic can be built for a website, and while some of the oldest techniques cost a bomb, some of them are absolutely free – especially the new-age techniques of building traffic are either free or are extremely economical.
Traffic Techniques such as:
- Social Bookmarking
- Building a Blog Farm
- Link Exchange
- Viral Ads
- Promotion through Videos
- Newsletters
- Cross Linking
And many more, are the modern generation’s answer to the websites of those days, which spent a bomb on pay per click ads and banners on leading websites. When you look at these techniques you will realize that probably you have been using some of those already, and that is good for you! But if you are serious about business online, you can probably survive on free traffic, but you certainly will need to invest into your business.
For instance, using premium templates for your websites and blogs will cost you some money. Getting a professional content writer will cost you some money. Hiring an SEO expert will cost you money. Maintaining your website and making your visitor feel welcome there will cost you money. But since all these things are in your control, you can simply decide when you’d like to increase / decrease spending on each of these categories.
Coming back to the issue of traffic, if you go up and read once more, we used a term called ‘unique visitors’. Over a period of time, we notice that more and more people coming onto a site are repeat customers. While that is good for your brand recognition, it does not mean you are getting more popular (and making more sales). So finding new pockets of customers is a constant endeavor and though it does not cost too much money, it certainly requires quality time spent by the owner. If you don’t have that time, it would need you to hire an SEO expert. Else, all the hard work is going down the drain!
