Getting visitors to your web site

Getting visitors onto your web site is essential if you are running a commercial web site or affiliate schemes. Without visitors, your site is dead.

There are a multitude of methods of increasing web site traffic, some of which we touch on here. Some are "free", others cost a little, others cost a lot. Returns from these will vary between providers and depending on the content of your site.

"Free" methods of increasing web site traffic

Search engine optimisation

Search engine optimisation is the most obvious method for gaining more free traffic. If you maintain the web site yourself, then look around for web sites with search engine optimisation tips and carefully look through your pages to see which can be applied. Our google ranking factors page gives a summary of some of the most common tips.

If this sort of information is beyond you, then please be wary when paying for search engine optimisation experts. Check that their site appears well in the search engines and demand to see previous sites they have worked on. Google provides plenty of tips for when you are approached by these sorts of people as some employ very devious techniques, not all of which benefit the customer.

Link Exchange

Depending on the content of your site, you might be able to gain more visitors to your web pages through appropriate link building. For example, property sites sharing links with finance web sites, hobby sites with providers of accommodation for suitable holidays and a big area for this is dating sites.

Top Sites Directories

Similar to link exchanges, but the site you link to counts the number of visitors you send to it and then ranks web sites in order of hits in. The theory is that the sites that send most traffic then receive the most visitors back. This works well for sites where people might visit several sites, for example interests.

Banner Exchanges

You place a small banner on your web site and in return another site places a banner on theirs for you. Hopefully visitors will see your banner and cross to your site when they have finished on the first site. Usually for every 10 displays of banners you will receive around 7 or 8 in return, probably best for interest sites, e.g. dating, hobbies, casino.

Exit Pops

When a visitor exits your site (or when they arrive) you force a new window open to advertise another web site. Again, in return, another web site forces a visitor to your web site through a pop up window. Expect about 7 to 8 in return for every 10 visitors you send. Probably best for interest sites where people want to visit several sites.

Paid methods for more web site visitors

Pay Per Click

If you can't get a good search engine ranking, why not pay for the search engines to send traffic to your site? The main disadvantages are that is can cost a lot of cash, can take a up a lot of time and can be difficult to monitor. But you can choose keywords carefully. Don't go for the obvious keywords, these may be more expensive and actually less often use. Think carefully about what terms people might be searching on and you may be able to gain more visitors for a lot less than you first find.

PopUnders

First these generated lots of traffic, then people implemented popup blockers, now it's claimed that the new generation of popups are unblockable. In short, you can purchase a popup so that when a visitor enters or leaves another site they are also forced to visit your site. But many of these schemes use large networks of independent sites that cannot be controlled and you don't really know the value of the popup and how many popups are being delivered. Also, with the amount of popup blockers, this is now becoming harder to deliver. The visitor has also seen the generating site, so in some cases won't be as interested in your site.

Expired Domains

Cheap, cheerful and large volumes can be delivered quickly. Not as well used in the UK as in America, because not many people have heard about it, therefore not many people use it, therefore the traffic services don't buy many domains to provide the visitors. But it's growing and the delivery is speeding up. Again, success depends on the topic of your site but at all visitors are sent straight to your site and haven't seen the generating site. If you can turn US traffic into income, then the visitors to your site should be delivered quickly.

Affiliate Schemes

If you have a product to sell, then an effective method of selling can be affiliate selling. Here, affiliates drive more visitors to your site and in return you pay them for every completed sale. Can be difficult to run, but there are many third parties that can help you and provide all of the services you need, including promotion to potential affiliates. Check out ClixGalore Affiliate Networks for starters. They offer an affiliate scheme for merchants that does not have a startup fee and is easy to manage. Also a very good offer if you want to display affiliate adverts.

And finally

There are many more schemes and methods available, we have only scratched the surface here. Feel free to send us details of other schemes to add to this page. And if you are a provider, send us the link you would like displayed.