How To: Build Web Traffic

This post has been updated: See the latest version of Building Website Traffic in 2024

Well this is one of the most desired topics on the web today … Everybody that has a website wants more traffic. But how do you build traffic to your website? I’ll tel you what has worked for me and what has not.

Build Web Traffic Now?

Notice the now? Well that because this subject has an ever changing answer. As search engines change the way they index, and website change the way they post content, and users change the way they browse … Traffic Building is not easily defined. Here are a few things that are working for me right now (Early 2013)

Building Direct Traffic:

This is the easiest way to get traffic. Once of the easiest way to build direct traffic to your site is drive them there directly. There are a few ways to do this.

Direct Traffic by Email:

Sending an email directly to followers of your blog usually has up to a 10% return on the amount of visitors. What does this mean? The number of people you email, 10% of them will usually visit your site. I have design and developed sever email campaigns the have had up to 60% open rates, and 20-30 click through rate. These terms may not mean anything to you but let me explain,
Open Rate: The number of people that open your email.
Click Through Rate (CTR): The number of people out of the open rate that actually click through and visit the page your sending them to.
For example – If you send 1,000 emails and 600 people open it … that a 60% Open Rate. If 200 people click a link in the email that is a 30% click through rate (CTR).

Responding to posts to build traffic:

This is a pretty good way to get traffic, although it requires quit a bit of leg work. I usually can get a pretty good amount of traffic using this method, and I believe it is the most personal and effective way to get “good” traffic … I do this several ways, one being responding to posts on Craigslist. There are many people looking to get things done on CL, and emailing them to let them know you can help will drive them to take a look at your site. There is work to do to get your site to convert sales, but thats another topic I cover here.
Another way to get this sort of traffic is Forum posts. Responding to actual people looking for help on certain subjects. Posting replies with links back to your site answering their needs has been a proven method for me to get traffic.

Search Engine Optimization:

SEO moves your site up the rankings. Whatever content you have on your site should be relevant to what people are looking for. There are tools that will help you decide what to write about and help you figure out what content people are searching for. Once you have this figured out you can optimize your site for that target keyword. This also requires your site to convert, and is also known as organic traffic. Organic traffic is something I refer to as random traffic. The visits you get to your website from this type of traffic building is very unpredictable but when it hits and is relevant to the search the ability to convert this traffic to a sale is pretty high.