Getting Website Traffic in 2010

It’s 2010 now! It’s time to get real website traffic to your website or blog, or even better, if you have a blog as a “plus” to your website.

I’m going to speak about the most important factors, that generate website traffic today. If you’ve been looking for the most compact article about the modern ways of getting website traffic in 2010, then you’re at the right place. Be sure, that after the information from this post, the only left thing for you would be to start the action.

Let me ask you… what means “website traffic”? How do you imagine that? It’s important, because you can’t start getting website traffic, if you don’t know, what you are trying to get. Take 1 minute to think about it. Really. When you’re done, just go on reading.

So, What Means Website Traffic?

I hope, that you have the answer. Let’s compare. My answer is “you”. What was yours?

Anyways, “website traffic” really means “you”, because there’s nobody else, who can turn on the PC or laptop. It’s you, who looks for the information on the Internet; who votes for someone or something; who buys journals or some food, using PayPal; who sells products; who comments on blogs or on Facebook; who asks somebody to help at “Yahoo! Answers”; who recommends to watch the movie and so on.

Getting Website Traffic Means Attracting Other People.

That’s why it’s so important to understand, that website traffic means you and the other people like you. It’s not a click, nor a number of “views”, nor “5 stars” for the video, nor 1534 “unique visitors”. You’re dealing with real people like you. Remember to ask yourself “Would I like it?” before you show or offer something on the Internet.

I hope that was clear enough for the compact introduction. Let’s get on further.

Design of Your Website or Blog

Do not overdo with design of your website. There are 5 must-be-done things with your website design, that will help you to get more website traffic.

1. Try to make your website or blog navigation as easy, as possible. The deepest page should be 3-4 clicks from your home page;
2. Try to make the look of your website as friendly, as Google’s home page;
3. Use Photoshop (or similar software) to make sizes of your website images as small, as possible, but don’t lose the quality. I’ve used to keep it around 8-30 KB and that’s OK. Mostly it’s 8-12 KB;
4. Don’t make your website or blog look like NASCAR. The fewer ads, the better.
5. Remember to keep your code clean, because it’s your website loading speed, which would crucially affect your search engine rankings in 2010;

Choosing Domain Name

Well.. The shorter, the better. It’s easy, right? No. As the Internet becomes more and more popular with each day, it’s getting harder to pick a domain name, that you like. So.. it takes a little bit of your thinking to find the appropriate name for your website.

Here are 3 tips how to choose :

• Think of your niche.
  Try to get the most important keywords from it. And invent your domain name. For example, you’re going to write about travelling. Your name is Paul. Very good! Make use of it. How about www.TravellingWithPaul.com ? Yes, that was the big one. Well.. what about www.PaulsTravel.com? Not bad.. work on it;
• Use numbers instead of words.
  Example – www.2createawebsite.com. Though it’s rather long, it’s simple at the same time;
• Don’t forget about dashes.
  If you’ve picked www.PaulTravel.com and it’s occupied, try this – www.Paul-Travel.com. Not too bad, isn’t it?

Remember also, that your domain name is the very important part of your Internet face. It’s not the only one part though. And note, that you have only 1 chance to choose the appropriate domain name.

Difference between .com, .org, .net, .edu etc.

There’s no big difference between them at all. Someone says, that search engines would better index .edu sites, or that backlinks from .edu sites pass more rankings to your website. Do you believe it? I don’t, because just think of it.. if that’s true, then what’s the point in .com or .net? There’s no logical explanation, nor physical evidence. The only difference between them is that they’re supposed to help in grouping the growing number of website names:

• .com stands for – commercial;
• .org – organisation;
• .net – network;
• .mil – military;
• .gov – government;
• .edu – education.

Building Backlinks – Get More Website Traffic

Sounds good. Let’s take a look at ways of getting traffic from other sites by building backlinks. Let’s classify these ways.

Submit Your Website or Blog to Search Engines… or Not?

This is in past, when you had to submit your website to search engines. Now it’s different. Search engines will find you by themeselves or through some of your backlinks from other sites. You, actually, can submit the URL of your website or blog to search engines like Google, Yahoo! or MSN (Bing). This would, probably, get your site indexed a little bit faster, but not much.

Note, that there are no more different search engines, as many websites scream, offering you to submit to 1000s of search engines only for 5,95$. There was a time, when the number of search engines was huge, but most of them now are parts of Yahoo!, MSN or Google, others are simply dead.

Submitting to Directories

There are 2 general types of web directories:

• Website directories, that still accept sites;
• Website directories, that are dead or not updated.

There are also 4 secondary types of them:

• Paid directories;
• Free directories;
• Directories, that want you to put a reciprocal link to your site;
• Combined directories, that relate to one of the above type only, or two of them, or all of them.

And, finally, there are 3 sorts of web directories:

• Website directory – check out this list of top website directories;
• Blog directory (for blogs only) – begin from these 50+ blog directories;
• RSS directory (for blogs only) – start submitting your blog from these 30+ RSS directories;

The most important are only 2 of all of them by today – DMOZ directory and Yahoo! directory. At the very moment, I’ve submitted my site to both of them a month ago or so. Still no answer. But… I didn’t put any reciprocal link from them, nor pay for submission. May be that’s the reason, may be not. Anyway, I’ll try to resubmit in 2-3 months. I guess, that it’s hard, but it’s worth it. Will speak about it later.

Submitting Articles to Article Directories

I’d recommend to use only 1-3 article directories, because all of them want you to submit the unique content. How do you suppose to do that with 50 article directories?

Anyways, you’ll get very nice amount of traffic from article directories. They rank higher, than your site, when you begin or in the process of growing. So, it’s easier to reach the top of search engines to drive visitors to your own website or blog.

Submit Your Posts to Social Bookmarking Sites

Begin from this list of 70+ do follow and nofollow social bookmarking sites.

There are 2 crucial rules, submitting to social bookmarkers:

• Submit posts, stories, articles with the unique titles and descriptions. Otherwise, you’ll be penalised by search engines;
• Choose the right category for your submission, because this affects on your visitors, that you get.

Getting Website Traffic Commenting on Blogs

I’d recommend to comment on “do follow” Blogs with CommentLuv enabled, if you’re hunting for a big number of backlinks. This way you’ll get a constant and continual website traffic, but not too targeted, because if you comment a lot, then, probably, your comments are short and barely visible.

To get targeted website traffic commenting on blogs, think of your comments. Leave comments, if you really feel, that you’re able to add something valuable or to refute some fact from the commented post.

Decide for yourself what traffic you need.

Backlinks from Social Media Profiles

For example, you’ve registered on Twitter. Put a link to your website in your profile! It should be like this – http://www.example.com . The more, the better. You, actually, could just run through all social media websites you know just to register, in order to put a free backlink. Believe me, all of them will be indexed as an external links to your website.

My result of getting backlinks from social media profiles at Google.

Use Trackbacks

Yes, trackbacking is another way to get backlinks to your website.

How to get a good trackback?

Trackback is a blog feature. In most cases if your blog is powered by WordPress, then you can enable this feature in the admin panel.

If you link to another blog, then that blog can accept your trackback, which means, that you get a backlink to your post. This way of getting traffic is even better, than commenting. Though the trackback link usually appears near comments, visitors understand, that the author trusts this link. This affects readers opinion about your blog, which increases a chance, that they would follow the link and, moreover, would subscribe to your blog or come back later.

Learn SEO to Get More Traffic from Search Engines

SEO is the abbreviation of the phrase “Search Engine Optimization”. Today it’s so popular, that there’s no problems at all, if you wish to improve your SEO skills, because there are thousands or even millions of blogs, that could explain how and why to do this or that.

Why the traffic from search engines is so valuable?

Try to track what you’re doing, when you’re looking for some answers or showcases. Of course, you’re going to Google and type several words, that you think are associated with your problem. Then you follow some of the results, and if that was relevant to your question, you feel satisfied and, probably, you bookmark this site or put it to your favorites. This is the power of SEO, because those sites, that are in the top of search queries, would be most likely followed by you and the others.

Make your aim #1 to get to the top of Google with your keyphrases. In order to do that, learn SEO.

Ways to Make Your Traffic Come Back

This is the most interesting part :) OK, you’re already getting traffic. But if you analyze it, you, probably, can see, that there is a huge bounce rate around 70-90%. This is no good. You must make it different. Make another aim for you to decrease your website’s bounce rate, which would help you to grow your audience.

15 tips to make your traffic come back:

• Make your RSS feed buttons visible;
• Publish a new post as often, as possible;
• Create contests and think of good rewards;
• Don’t make posts or articles too big;
• Use images;
• Use CommentLuv for your comments;
• Make your blog do follow;
• Track your most popular posts and use it for your future posts;
• Make “Tops” of your posts, articles or podcasts;
• Refresh your old posts and mention that in your latest posts;
• Make your pages full of things to click. People love it;
• Make your website or blog look alive;
• Differ from others to make your traffic love you*;
• Try to express your thoughts simple;
• Be the first in everything**;

*What means to be different from others?

That’s your key to success. If everyone screams, that they could help – scream, that you can show. If everyone speaks about how cool is using Feedburner – write a post about Feedburner minuses etc.

**How to be the first, if there are so many competitors?

It’s not that hard, as it may seem, because it’s about understanding the meaning of being the first. You can be the first with your own way of expression. If you’re late with some news, look at the news from the original side and bomb it out. You’ll be the first.

For example, Robert Pattinson is being awarded for something. Ok.. you’re not the first one, who announced it. Not a problem. Write about his top 10 latest awards, including this one. People would, probably, be interested in this kind of info, because he’s currently being discussed in news. See? That’s way simple.

Paid Ways to Get Website Traffic – Worth It or Not?

Though it’s still popular today to buy traffic, I won’t ever recommend you to do that, unless you’re working online just in order to sell big stuff.

This is about your reputation. So, if you’re niche is about travelling or blogging, then don’t use this method. Would you like it, if you’d knew, that you were bought…? Disgusting, isn’t it?

There are tons of free ways. The only thing you have to do is to think a little about your own way through all of the known ways.

What Web Traffic Do You Need?

This is as important, as knowing the meaning of website traffic. So, let’s look at the main types of web traffic:

Social Media Traffic – Those are people, who surf through sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Propeller etc. They submit your stuff, if they like it. They comment, they ask. Mostly, these people are curious about all latest trends in social media.

Silent Readers – This group of people are those, who just read something, that they are interested in. Don’t expect them to comment on your blog. “Silent readers” come from search engines. Most of them won’t subscribe to your website or blog, but they would bookmark it or put to favorites if your post or article is what they want.

Traffic from Banners – Or in other words, paid traffic. This type of website traffic is risky. From one hand, you’re the guy with money for them. From the other hand, you have some default respect, which could become a wall against your personality. So, think twice before buying places for your ads (banners).

Real World Traffic – The precious one. They come to your site directly. They’ve heard about you from their friends or from the news. You have a high default respect from them.

Bad Traffic – They’ve heard some bad things about you. Their opinion about you is below the normal level. But still.. they are your website traffic. So, when they come, be ready to change their mind. That’s not easy though.

Return Traffic – You can easily call this type of traffic – your readers. There is a big chance, that they will subscribe to your blog, because they’re on the way to get used to visit your blog.

Think of your own ways of converting one type of website traffic to another.

New Ways of Getting Traffic

Of course, most of the known ways can bring you some constant amount of visitors. But.. you know, the Internet and its social media is crazy today. Each and every day there’s a new way for anything. I look for 2010 and I’m so excited about what will happen with the usual ways of getting traffic. So.. follow the trends. Look for extraordinary ways of getting traffic. Because if you’re the discoverer, you’ll get the best award for it.

For example, I’ve recently discovered for myself, that a simple button “I like it” at Google Reader could bring some nice number of visitors, which means that the more subscriptions I have, the more traffic I can attract just by clicking the single button “I like it”. Check it out yourself and find out how it works.

The Conclusion

Well.. I hope you’ve loved this article. I’ve reviewed all of the most important aspects of getting website traffic for the beginning of 2010, and I hope, that you’ve found for yourself something useful here.

If you’d like to add something, make sure to leave a respond below.

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PS. Here’s another amazing article to get more web traffic in 2010. You’ll find there some kick-ass methods, that are used today.