7 Steps Any Business Owner Can Take To Increase Website Traffic

Chances are if you own a business you own a website. Who could pass up the opportunity to reach thousands of potential clients...right? Well...maybe. Using a website to market your products and services is a great, but have you given any thought to your websites daily, weekly, or monthly traffic? Without traffic (that converts to sales) your wasting one of your best marketing assets.

There are steps that you can take to improve your online exposure and traffic without ever looking at a line of code.  Each step, in one way or another, focuses on your niche or location which will not only increase traffic but should also yield a higher ROI because you'll be putting yourself in front of people who are looking for your services or products.

I mentioned "ROI" so you're probably thinking that there's a fee of some sort.  We'll, there is...your time.  Each step outlined is free but some work (albeit minimal) is required from your end.

Submit to directories - Your best bet would be to submitting to directories relating to your niche...or otherwise known in the directory industry as "niche directories". There are a few reasons for this: they tend to be better manage because the owner is familiar with the niche, there's typically less spam associated with niche directories so the search engines crawl them more frequently, and niche directories receive targeted traffic looking for information relating that vertical market, which usually results in a small amount of traffic being directed to your site. Below are a few niche directory resources:

• Directory Critic
• Web-Directories
• Directory Rate

Leave comments on blogs - Find blogs relating to your market and become active in their community.  Comment frequently on posts that interest you and provide assistance, insight, and information to other people commenting.  Over time, you'll become known as an expert in your field (Online) and likely generate some business. Below are a blog resources:

• Blog Catalog
• BOTW
• Technorati

Write an article and submit it to an article directory - This approach is edgy.  Some call it "Bum Marketing" others simply call it "article marketing".  The idea is to write an article, about anything but the more closely related to you business the better, and then submit it to any of a 100000+ article directories.  The benefit to you is that there's a byline at the bottom that includes a link to you site.  In the past, people would write one article and submit it to thousands of article directories.  Google didn't really care for that as it created tons of duplicate content and now frowns upon (and penalizes) those who use that approach.  The better method is to write an article and then submit it to one article directory and then repeat as time permits. Below are a few article directory resources:

• GoArticles
• EzineArticles
• iSnare

Do follow the directions when submitting articles. If you don't, your article won't be added and you'll have wasted your time.

Add your website to your email signature - It only takes 5 minutes to add a link to your website in your email signature. If you gained just one client it would be worth the time spent.

Add yourself to Google Local - Google local provides business listing at the top of common searches. Take a minute to look at this example, you'll notice a map at the top of the results page with several business listing to the right. You WANT to be there. You'll need a google account which requires 15 to 20 minutes to set up.

Research your competitors - I could write a series of post relating to online competition and competitive analysis, but for the purposes of this post - just have a look around. If you're a home security company in Dayton, Ohio, search for "home security dayton ohio" and look at the listings on the first page. Are you there? Who is and what are they doing differently...or the same? As I mentioned earlier, this is a fairly complicated topic and something that I'll cover with more depth soon.

Ask for links - Don't be afraid to ask people to link to your site. Truth be told, some people/organizations would happily link to you if they only knew you existed. Just fire off an email introducing yourself and kindly ask for a link. This approach doesn't always work but I guarantee it will never work if you don't make the effort. Try your local chamber of commerce, local associations, local business directories, etc. This article is along the same lines and a pretty good read.

Wrapping it all up - You'll notice that 5 of the 7 steps resulted in gaining a link back to your site.  The more links you have point back to your site the better.  Link popularity is a broad topic and deserves some explanation but that will have to wait until next week.

Keep in mind that using the steps outlined above is NOT a substitution for professional search marketing guidance. Providing the resources are available, consider hiring a professional SEO who has the expertise to optimize your site, keyworks, link portfolio, and other factors that effect search ranking. By using the steps above and hiring a competent professional, you should see gains in rankings and traffic in a fairly short amount of time.