Internet. Business. Profit. To successfully merge all three, you will need another word: Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful online always includes the importance of generating traffic.

At the core of it all, traffic is the most essential ingredient to a successful internet based business. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell and you have your company’s internal organization well taken care of, it is time to get to generating traffic.

If you already have a site and not getting much traffic, then its time to revamp your strategy. If you are in a very competitive business, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow is vital to your success.

To help you out in generating traffic for your website, here are seven surefire ways to increase your traffic immediately.

1) Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising tools that are very popular and assures great targeted traffic immediately. Although this way to increase your traffic costs money, if your business relies on generating sales online this is one surefire way to do it. While some would not spend money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture are proven to drive targeted (you bid on keywords that are typed into the search engines and your ad appears in the search results) traffic to your website in whatever quantity you can afford.

A good method of using AdWords, aside from hiring seasoned pros (contact us for a free quote on your project), is as follows:

• determine what each sale is worth to you after you figure in your costs | ie: your widgets sell for $25, your cost is $5 + $4 s/h, your potential profit is $16 per widget
• research relevant keywords using the Adwords Keyword Research tool to determine how many searches are being performed and how many people are bidding for the keyword- this determines your bid | ie: “widgets” is a very popular term with lots of searches and lots of bidders
• set your bids fairly high at first to drive traffic for a day or two and determine your conversion rate | ie: you set your PPC (pay per click) to 50 cents when the range is 10-60 cents and drive 1000 clicks to your website
• determine how many sales you’ve made and subtract the amount owed to Google | ie: you made 50 sales out of the 1000 clicks, for a total profit of $800, you owe Google $500 Gross Profit = $300
• decide if it is profitable to continue and/or lower your PPC bid and see if you can keep traffic/sales stable | ie: you have shown you can make a $300 profit selling these widgets via Adwords, with a little massaging, tracking and improving your sales copy, perhaps you can make this much more lucrative by paying less per click, improving your conversion rate or changing the price of the widget.

If you’ve made ZERO sales, you can see that it can be a fairly expensive way to find out that your website is not converting visitors into customers. Consult with experts to improve your website since it can be far less expensive way to increase your conversion rate prior to launching a significant Adwords campaign. A plan of action with detailed tracking is essential. You must identify your buyers and taylor your sales page to that demographic.

You could see for yourself that the success of this search engine advertising methods has reaped financial rewards for many companies- just do a Google search for ANY keyword and see who’s still advertising (and making money) doing it! All of the top selling e-commerce websites utilize these advertising systems. Do not be left behind your competition, as every penny spent using Google and Yahoo’s advertising can be multiplied in return while also giving you an edge and the financial resources to leap ahead of your competitors.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

Exchanging links with other relevant sites is a win/win proposition. Both websites will benefit from the efforts that both of you make to enhance your websites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with additional traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial when both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic that could be expected. Don’t trade links willy nilly, though, and make sure that every webpage that features a link to yours is reputable and does not contain spam, malware or viruses. Google penalizes your website for being affiliated with known bad websites, so be careful where you do link exchanges.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or very low costs. This is a marketing method that can be quite effective; you attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get excited with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people, with your business message along for the ride! Make sure to provide valuable or entertaining content, and do not spam, as this will have the opposite effect for you. Post legitimate content that YOU’VE created to legitimate websites using your businesses online profile (On YouTube for example) and then share the link in relevant forums or social networks. Sit back and watch the magic unfold (if you’ve truly created something compelling- if you need help, Netcetra can be quite creative this regard!)

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire us to do it for you. (602) 410-4727

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link to your website.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.

Can you accomplish this overnight? No! This takes consistent effort, however it pays off BIG TIME. A high traffic website is often worth more than the underlying business. Remember, let your website support your business and grow it until it IS your business.