20 ways how to immediately increase traffic to any website!

[henrym]

Over the next few weeks I will explain how to maximize traffic from the following sources. Feel free to add anything of interest.


Traffic Exchanges
Email List Exchanges
Safelists
Buying Cheap Traffic
Buying Leads/Subscribers
Free Classifieds
Search Engine Submission
Link Exchanges
Banner Exchanges
Swapping Ads
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing
Buying Links
Buying Ad Space
Directory Listings
Blogs
Forums
Free Submission
Expired Domains
Writing Articles
Offline Promotion Ideas

[henrym]

Traffic Exchanges:
One of the most popular free traffic generation techniques is to use something called a Traffic Exchange. Let’s take a moment to define exactly what a Traffic Exchange is…
Traffic Exchanges are basically what the term sounds like. They are a website set up to allow each “member” of the exchange network to showcase their sites in exchange for viewing the websites of other network members.
Generally, for each website you view as a member you gain a credit of .50 or ½ a credit. This credit “ratio” will vary depending upon which exchange you are a member of. Each full credit means that your site is viewed by another member.
Not all traffic exchanges are created equal. Some outperform others. Some offer better benefits, ratios, and even a downline creation so you can earn credits off of the views of other members you have personally referred into the exchange network.
The biggest mistake most people make while using traffic exchanges is that they send the traffic directly to their website home page or a sales page for a product or service. This is very non-productive.
Most exchange networks run on a 20 or 30 second timer. This means you have, at most, 30 seconds to grab the attention of your viewer and make them want to take some kind of action. Some exchanges will automatically move on to the next member page after the timer is completed, while others (generally the better ones) require you to click on a link, a particular icon or item, or a button to move to the next page. The best ones require the item you click on to match up with what they tell you to click in order to verify you are a real person and are really using the exchange network. These types of exchanges keep “bots” or special software/scripts from running on their networks and showing false traffic.
The best way to get the action you desire is to build a special page that you use for your traffic exchanges. The sole purpose of this page is to capture leads or subscribers.
The primary benefit to using Traffic Exchanges is to get people to visit your
website so that they can be “recruited” to either buy your product(s) or sign up for your membership based website.
Your link on the Traffic Exchange should point to a page on your website that has a “Reach Out and Grab You” headline, a few Bullet Points highlighting the benefits of submitting a name and email address, and an Autoresponder Form to capture those names and email addresses. That’s All. No flashy graphics. No outlandish site design. Keep the page design simple and straight forward.
The only thing you want to do with a traffic exchange is get your prospects
information. There are several things that you can do with a viewer once they have subscribed from the Traffic Exchange:

1. Make a “sales pitch” to the viewer in an attempt to get them to buy your
product
2. Get them to sign up for your membership based website
3. Present information on subject matter that is consistent with, and relevant to the subject matter of the Traffic Exchange category from where your user came

Once you have your viewer’s information, then you can send them more detailed follow-up information.. In the emails you send, you have much more room to “sell” them on your site features, benefits, and so forth. This is where your marketing comes into play.

The primary reason that people may not want to give you their personal
information is because they don’t know what you are going to do with it once you have it.
If you are going to ask people to provide you with their information it is
imperative that you provide them with the promise (that you keep) that you will never sell, rent, share, or otherwise disseminate their personal information to anyone, for any purpose, at any time.
If you are going to ask your visitor to provide you with their personal information it is also very helpful if you clearly state your commitment not to disseminate their information right on the page. DO NOT provide a link to your privacy statement.
Put it right on the page below the autoresponder form.
This practice is significantly more preferable than providing a privacy link
because with the link you are asking your visitor to do something, and take
another action, in order to see the information. In most cases, they will instead opt to not provide you with any information at all.
If your short, simple privacy policy is clearly stated on the page, it is right for the viewer to see. It’s a pretty simple, yet powerful concept when you think about it.

Isn’t it kind of unreasonable to expect that the reader will actually…
· Click on the privacy statement link
· Actually read the privacy statement
· Either click the “back” button or another link to return to the original page
· Fill out your form
· And actually submit the information.

Now how would you like to increase your effectiveness and efficiency of the traffic your Traffic Exchanging generates? I’m talking about exponentially.
There is a way to do this that very few people take advantage of. Remember how I told you earlier that most traffic exchanges let you build a downline and gain extra credits for the site views of your personal referrals?
Well, believe it or not, most people do not do this. However, the people that do take advantage of this opportunity generally build up a huge number of credits, very quickly. Ultimately, these extra credits will result in the traffic exchange referring a larger number of visitors to your site over the others. Give me the results of many others’ efforts over just my own any day. Be sure you understand the terms, conditions, and policies of each specific Traffic Exchange before you join so that you may derive the maximum amount of benefit from the relationship.
Another incredibly effective way to increase your efforts is to use one traffic exchange to promote another traffic exchange.
I personally do this using a few different exchanges I am a member of. One of them is a manual site view exchange and another is a tool bar exchange where I view ads in my browser. This works on the same premise as the original exchange concept, except that instead of viewing ads in a browser window, it is a bit less intrusive. The concept of promoting one exchange with the other and vice versa is simple. You build a downline in both traffic exchanges at the same time. This can build traffic extremely fast and allow you to not only build your leads, but also generate additional traffic in record time.

Email List Exchanges:
Along the same lines as traffic exchanges, email list exchanges are another very effective method for drawing additional traffic to your business.
There are a couple of types of list exchanges that are popular and they both have their merit.
One type is a Safelist where people sign up to allow anyone on the list to send them email as long as they can send email to the entire safelist as well.
The other type is a Matrix-Based List Builder. This type of list exchange is much more effective for a couple of reasons. I personally prefer the latter to the former and I will tell you why as I discuss each type in more depth.
The great thing about email list exchanges is that unless the person using that particular exchange wants to lose their place in the network, and also lose all of the people they want to email their offers to, they will not remove themselves from the list exchange, and they will also continue to allow your offers to be sent to them.


Safelists:
Safelists were once a very good opportunity to reach out to others with your message, your offer, your website information. Unfortunately, somewhere along the line safelists have become no more than a safe haven for SPAM.
Don’t get me wrong, there are safelists that are more controlled by their owners and actually serve the purpose they were set up for; but these are few and far between.
The original premise behind safelists is that you could join a list agreeing to
receive offers from others and you could email the list with your own offers.
They were designed to be controlled in the amount of email you could send and the amount you would receive from each member.
Now, when you join a safelist in most cases you are allowed to send out as many emails as you would like and so can every other member. As you can imagine, you can receive enough email in one or two days to fill up most email quotas. The sad part of this is that the majority of these emails are absolute Junk!
Safelists just do not perform as they once did and they probably never will.

Matrix-Based List Builders:
Matrix-based List Builders are the future of Safelists. By far, this is my most
preferred tactic in list exchanges and I use these list builders a lot. After the corruption of the safelist idea, a few forward thinkers came along and decided that the original idea was a great one, it was just dropped along the way. Great idea, huh? It gets even better.

Here is a quick run down on how these list builders work. When you sign up, you get access to the list you are offered. They work on a matrix that allows you to receive people in your list that were not personally referred by you. You are usually only allowed to email this list one time per week (unless you are a paid member). This allows the control we talked about earlier and keeps members from abusing their privileges.
You can also build a downline in these matrices by referring new members, just like in traffic exchanges. For these referrals, you get bonus members in your own matrix to email to weekly. As you can imagine, this can add an alarming number to your email list possibilities in a short amount of time.

Another feature offered is an upgrade package that allows you to export your list from the list owner to your own files for you to add to your personal autoresponder. The upgraded package will give you other additional features, but just having the ability to export your subscribers is well worth the upgrade fee.

[henrym]

Buying Cheap Traffic:
There are many sources for buying traffic. Not all sources are created equal, but
most will deliver traffic to the site of your choice for very minimal costs. The one
thing to keep in mind is that the better traffic resale sources are generally the
most costly. Do make sure to research your reseller prior to purchasing from
them, or at least purchase a smaller package first to limit your losses. You
should also pay attention to whether the traffic you will be receiving is Targeted
or not. There is nothing worse than sending someone looking for golf information
to a site about women’s beauty products.
This traffic can come in several forms, such as pop-under traffic, email blasts,
guaranteed signups, expired domain traffic (talked about in more detail later in
this manual), and other options. Pop-under traffic works just like it sounds. It is
traffic that you receive to your site via pop-unders from other sites.
Email blasters or Traffic Blasters are heavily pushed in safelists and traffic
exchanges as a traffic generation tactic. I have not used these methods
personally, because they do not fit my business structure to do so; however, I
have known other people to use these with mixed results. Some people swear
by them, others swear them off. You should definitely do your own due diligence
to see if these tactics are designed for your business or not.

[henrym]

Buying Leads/Subscribers:
Another cheap method for building web traffic is through purchasing leads or
subscribers to your email list. A lot of people use this method to build their own
lists, although you must take caution in this method. With the current SPAM
laws, it is easy to generate a SPAM complaint about your business or site and
that can cause you undue headaches.
I have purchased leads myself in the past and the best method I found for using
these leads is to send them an offer to join my mailing list through double opt-in
request. This has helped me pick up some loyal subscribers without having to
worry about any SPAM problems. The ones that did not opt-in were not good
leads and I did not have any reason to email them again.
There are a few options to purchasing leads. You can get them cheaply at a few
dollars per 1,000 or so. You can get them by category, and they may be
purchased either with or without physical address and phone number.
There are so many options available and it can be difficult to weed through your
options and make the right choices; but if you choose to buy leads, you do need
to make sure to use them the best way possible for your business.
For those of you that may be unfamiliar with the term “Double Opt-In” lets cover
that for you. For those that already know what “Double Opt-In” is please move
on to the next section.

Double Opt-In Request
One of the best ways to avoid SPAM complaints is to use something called a
Double Opt-In Request. A Double Opt-in is exactly what the name implies. It is
basically a double confirmation system. You are going to require the user to take
two separate confirmation actions before you add them to your mailing list.
The first action requires the user to click on a link. The link may be on a
webpage on a link exchange, a link in a search engine, or even a link embedded
in an e-mail message. This link will open a browser window and take the user to
the sign-up page where they can fill out the sign up form.
Once the user fills out the form and clicks the “Submit” button their request to be
added to the list is added to your database in a “pending confirmation” status.
The system then forwards an e-mail to the user requesting to be added at the email
address they just provided.

The e-mail that is sent to the user says that this is a confirmation request. The email
message also contains instructions to click on a confirmation link contained
within the e-mail message.
All the user has to do in order to confirm that they really do want to be added to
the list is to click the link in the e-mail message.
The user receives the e-mail message, opens it, and clicks on the enclosed link
to confirm that they truly do want to be added to your list. This second
confirmation will cause the user’s entry in your database to be changed from
“pending confirmation” to “confirmed”.
You may now begin sending messages to this user.
You will find the use of Double Opt-In confirmations very useful. Particularly if
you are working with affiliate program(s) that pay sign-up and recurring
commissions when you refer subscribers to someone else’s subscription
website(s), of refer a consumer wishing to purchase product(s) and are to be
paid commissions.
This system is also extremely valuable in protecting yourself from SPAM
allegations/complaints under the new anti-spam laws when a user, who used the
double opt-in system to subscribe say a year or so earlier wakes up on the wrong
side of the bed one morning, is having a bad day, and decides to accuse you of
“SPAMMING” them.
If you have the record of the date/time the original sign-up form was filled out by
the user, as well as the proof of the date/time that the user was sent the
confirmation e-mail, and the date/time they clicked the confirmation, then you
have what is necessary in order to defend yourself from a false accusation.
Before some of you decide not to implement a Double Opt-In system, let me
remind you of some very important facts:

· The anti-spam laws are FEDERAL laws, and these laws have teeth. Obey
them. We’d like to keep you as a customer for a long time and would
prefer not to send your Christmas card to you at “Club Fed”.
· Some states may have their own anti-spam laws in addition to the federal
laws. Run afoul of these and you may face additional charges on top of
the Federal ones.

In any event, ignorance of the law is no excuse (in other words, not knowing the
law is there won’t get you out of trouble if you break it). Therefore, we highly
recommend that you speak to your attorney and make absolutely certain that you
understand all of the Federal anti-spam laws before you begin doing any
significant mass e-mailing.

Co-Registration Leads
A few people I know are having good luck through Co-Registration leads. Co-
Registration leads are basically where one company has a membership
database that has opted-in (single or double) stating that they wanted to receive
email from others and allowing their information to be shared with other lists that
may be of interest to them. This allows others to purchase those leads for their
own programs and build up their own lists very quickly.
I have not actually had a chance to use this method yet, but I am very close to
actually giving it a go.
With co-registration leads, I suggest using the same method as buying regular
leads by sending them an offer to join your newsletter or mailing list. Again, this
will weed out the people who are just not interested and help you build a more
profitable list for yourself. The great thing about co-registration lists though is
that you can use these leads without as much fear of SPAM issues because the
leads have all already opted to receive information through the original list and
agreed to contact by more than just one list owner.

[henrym]

Free Classifieds:
Everyone who has ever been online for any length of time has seen them. Free
classified ads can be found all over. Why are there so many of them? Well, for
one thing, there are enough visitors to most of them to keep them going. If there
are enough visitors to keep them afloat they must be generating some traffic,
shouldn’t you be using this too? ABSOLUTELY!
Do a search for Free Classifieds and find a few sites to check out. Look to see
how many ads are placed there. Also watch them a few days to see what kind of
movement you see in the ads. Are they changing a lot? Are new ones being
added often? Chances are, people are using them for a reason and you should
be too. Besides, it’s free, right?

For best results with free classified ads, I suggest that you use the same
methodology that you used for Traffic Exchanges. Remember, with traffic
exchanges that you could only have a small text ad and then draw people to a
landing page and collect email addresses for leads.
Classified ad readers, although more targeted than traffic exchange viewers,
tend to not buy on their first visit. Unless you have a reason for them to come
back to your website over and over, you will more than likely lose that visitor after
their first stop.
This is why you should collect their information on their visit instead of sending
them strait to a sales page.

[henrym]

Search Engine Submission:
Unless you are breaking the Terms of Service (TOS) of any search engine, you
should be manually submitting your sites to each one. This will tell them to take
a look at your site and add it to their listings. This doesn’t happen overnight, of
course. It can take quite some time to get in their index, but when it does you
pick up extra traffic. I will go into more depth on search engines in a few
minutes, but I could not move on from “Dirt Roads” without mentioning that you
can submit your sites to each search engine for extra results.
A well known marketer that I receive emails from recently shared with me that he
submits many of his sites monthly. Is this required? No. Is it necessary?
Probably not, and it varies from one search engine to another. On some,
submitting your site too frequently can get you blacklisted, so make sure you
read the Terms of Service.
But let me ask you something else…if you wanted someone to notice something
and remember it, do you think they would do so after telling them about it only
once? I look at it as insurance. You are just making sure that the search
engines pay attention and you definitely were able to get your link to them.
Below are the “Big 3” search engine submission pages:

Google
Yahoo
MSN

There are also websites that specialize in search engine submission to more
than the “Big 3,” but you really should do your research prior to using one of them
and be careful.
For every valid, reputable firm that does this type of work there are several others
that just take your money and submit your site to only to a couple of the
supposed hundreds to which it will be automatically submitted.
There are also free services that will do this same process for you. Do a quick
search, where else but on a search engine, and you will find many sites with this
specialization.
Here again, be very cautious and do your research. Whether a paid or free
submission service, some follow the rules and some don’t.
Some automatic submission services are considered by the search engines as
“Search Engine SPAM” and if your domain is submitted via one of them it may, at
minimum, be given a lower priority for being indexed, and if the service is a really
badly behaved one your domain could be blacklisted all together.

[henrym]

Link Exchanges:
Link Exchanges have been around I think since there were more than 2 or 3 web
pages on the internet. Until a few years ago, Link Exchanges did not have much
bearing on anything except to say “Hey, here is another site you might want to
visit” and they were usually put up by people that were “linking to” a friend or
family member.
Over the past few years though, with new search engine strategies coming out
every day; link exchanges have become a very valuable tool to have in your
online marketing arsenal. Having links coming to you from other sites, especially
sites that are relevant to the same topic as yours is, will boost your position in the
search engines significantly and help to increase the overall rating of your
website at rating sites like Alexa.com
Note: Alexa is a website that specifically ranks webpages based on their total
traffic as reported by all users that have the Alexa toolbar installed in their
browser. For each visit to a webpage with the toolbar, it counts toward the
overall ranking of this site. This explanation if in layman’s terms and is in no way
as complex as how the rankings are fully determined. For more detailed
information you can visit Alexa’s homepage.

There are a couple of ways to use link exchanges and I want to mention two
terms briefly so that you understand the good and the bad of this practice. The
first term is Reciprocal Linking.

[Solicitors Mortgages]

Have to disagree with your last post -

There's no need to submit your site to search engines - they will find you as soon as you have a few incoming links to your site.

[Brian Turner]

Oh dear, henrym - you started off well enough, but now you're just rehashing old content that has no place in modern internet marketing.

As SM points out above, if you're promoting the idea that anyone needs "manual search engine submission" than you're already 10 years out of date.

[henrym]

A bit like you Mr Anderson, you're too late for the Matrix, that was so 90`s, i see you`re even still wearing Morpheus sunglasses. Get a life. Im just trying to spread the info, did you know,theres approx 500,000 people siging up to the internet everyday worldwide looking for info?, prob not, cause your too busy nosing on me!!!!!!!..

Anyway where was I...