You might be wondering the reasons your web site is not getting much internet traffic. After all your web site took lots of financial and human resources, but unfortunately like so many web sites, it is quite unknown and as a result it does not get enough internet traffic to make it financially viable.

Did you know that about 80 percent of all web site traffic originates from search engines? Yes, it is true! Listing near the top page of search engines and obtaining the attention of your target audience should be a main priority for any web site internet promotion.

And the good news about this is that improving a web site position in search engine pages may be done for free. How? Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

There are many ways to promote a web site. Some promotions are paid and some are free. Among the free ones, the search engine optimization techniques enable web sites to become search engine friendly. In other words, it makes website pages to accept the search engine crawler in a friendly way. These techniques will be some of the steps one will have to use to obtain a better position in search engine’s pages, when searching for specific keywords, related to services or products offered by a web site.

Search engine optimization steps for a web page:

Title:
The html Title tag is a very important element and must include the most important keywords or phrases, which best represent the products or services offered by the web page. It should not contain more than 60 characters.

Keywords:
The html meta Keyword tag should have all the keyword phrases which best represents the products or services offered by the web page. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 250 characters.

Description:
The html meta Description tag is a description of the web page, which will be displayed by the search engine. Make sure it contains keywords phrases. Avoid repeating keywords and bad use of capital letters. It should not contain more than 200 characters.

Keywords in Headings:
Keywords in Headings tags (h1) will be interpreted by search engines as being an important keyword relevant to the web page, and it should be looked for and indexed by the search engines.

Web page text:
It is a good practice to include informative text one every page, using natural language and appropriate keywords. It should contain more than 200 words. Informative text should be placed in the html Body section of the web page.

Keywords in Alt Tags:
Every html picture “img” tag should contain an ALT tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.

Keywords in Anchor Tags:
Every html hypertext link “a href “ should contain a TITLE tag with an appropriate description. Keywords should always be used when appropriate.

Robots.txt file:
Make sure there is a robots.txt file in you web site directory. This is a text file created by the webmaster, which will guide the search engine´s crawler when indexing a web site.

There are some cases in which one might not want to have some web pages indexed. This way thru the use of robots.txt, one will have control over which pages will be indexed and made available to the search engines.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /tmp/
Disallow: /data/

HTML code validation:
Search engine’s crawlers become more efficient when indexing web pages with no html errors. Beware that some html errors can make search engine crawlers to give up indexing web pages. So it is recommended for those web pages to be indexed, there should be no html errors.

Links:
Links are very important to search engines. The quality of links and whether it is reciprocal or not, are important factors in evaluating the importance of a web page. Links from web sites with higher page ranks are a plus.

Registering with Directories and Search Engines:
It is very important the registration of a website with directories and search engine web sites. It is a way of telling the world that your web site exists. Avoid using automatic search engine/directory registration.

Search engine optimization has become a very important set of procedures which helps web sites to become more relevant to search engines. To obtain an increase in internet traffic will take some time. It probably will take some kind of additional promotion too. But anybody in need of higher internet traffic, free search engine optimization might be considered his first option.

This article is under GNU FDL license and can be distributed without any previous authorization from the author. However the author´s name and all the URL´s (links) mentioned in the article and biography must be kept.

Twitter took a while to grow on me because I did not quite understand the concept. Is so simple and powerful, it is easy for you to overlook. Twitter gives you the opportunity to communicate with people of the same interest by writing short messages to are viewable by all your followers. The important part is to make sure you develop a system that you can create followers and you in exchange follow them for updates also.

The question that most people ask is; How do I increase my followers? I use forums myself. Forums like Conquer Your Niche have several threads with internet marketers like myself who are eager to reciprocate twitter links with other internet marketers. I have also created a group on Facebook called “Follow Me On Twitter”. Whatever niche you belong to use Google to find if there is forums already created in that niche, If there is then join the forum to search for followers on Twitter.

Other ways to find followers on Twitter is to search on Twitter for people you would like to follow, many they will also follow you, thus creating a huge following for yourself also.

The advantages of creating a huge following on Twitter is a no brainer, it doesn’t have to be a spam fest. In fact you are allowed so many words it is actually difficult to really promote any product effectively. However, it is very effective if you are trying to announce a new blog post or want to send a quick comment. Staying in touch with your followers in this arena gives a personal relationship with them without the constant sales pitch. It has become a very addictive way of creating traffic to my blog.

Twitter has so many uses as a marketing strategy to generate traffic that It was impossible for me to list them all in one blog. There so many marketing strategies that it would have been hard for me to list them on 5 blog entries. I decided to share with you the the one strategy that I enjoy the most, which is announcing my new blog post with just one click. But, you don’t have to worry I am not going to leave you empty handed. If you are really interesting in exploding your traffic with Twitter

1. Create an account.  Use the search feature of Twitter to see what your competitors are doing and read and learn from them.

2. Add a picture of your company/logo or yourself.  People like to see who you are and that way they can relate to you a bit more easily.

3. Talk to other people on Twitter. Even if it doesn’t help your business it shows you are human and are interested.

4. Point out interesting topics on your space and don’t just put things about yourself.

5. Share links to interesting places / websites / blogs.

6. Be careful about always promoting your own stuff.  Your fans will like it but not everyone else will.

7. Talk about things that are not business related as well.

8. Try to answer questions like “What has your attention?” instead of “What are you doing?”

9. When promoting a blog post, ask a question or explain what’s coming next, instead of just dumping a link. (this point is in bold because its very important for marketing your blog on Twitter)

10. Ask questions.  Twitter is great for getting opinions.

11. Tweet about other people’s stuff.  This doesn’t directly help your business but show you care about others.

12. When you DO talk about your stuff make sure it is useful.

13. Don’t toot your own horn too much. (I know sometimes I do this but try to stay away from it some of the time if you can)

14. You don’t have to read every tweet.

15. Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.
16. Twitter helps with business development, if your prospects are online (like my blog readers)

17. Remember that Twitter doesnt’ replace direct email marketing.

18. Twitter works well as an opinion poll.

19. Have favorites.  When you are new to Twitter you may not have noticed but there are little star icon next to each tweet.  Watch what new followers favor and build off of that.

20. Avoid spammer stats.  Its not good to see that you have 3 followers and follow 150 people.  If you do this it shows that you haven’t revealed anything about yourself and in turn makes it so that people are unlikely to follow you in return.

Now you may be asking why is it important to have a good Alexa rank?  Well there are many reasons why you would want to increase your Alexa rank however, the main reason why you want to increase your Alexa Rank is because advertisers and advertising services like ReviewMe and Text Link Ads use your site’s Alexa rank as a way to determine the worth of a link on your website.

So the question now is how can I increase my Alexa rank? There are a lot of ways to do this but the two main ways I have done this are:

• place a Alexa Traffic Rank button on your site
• install the Alexa toolbar or Firefox’s SearchStatus extension

By adding these two things to your website you will certainly see an increase in your Alexa rank.  And as mentioned before this is important because many advertisers still use this number to determine the worth of advertising and links on your website.   So try and constantly increase this Alexa rank and if possible get into the top 100k would be a good goal.  This is a goal of mine and I am slowly working my way towards it and will hopefully reach it in the next few months.

So consider these two ways of increasing your Alexa rank.  You won’t regret it!

Submit your blog to Directories
This can have a huge effect on your blog. Submitting your blog to directories will boost your blog traffic and improve back-links to your blog. Its also important not to submit to to many directories at once as it will harm your seo. I would recommend to submit to about 5 directories per day! I have put together a list of directories which can be located HERE

Comment on other blogs similar to yours
This method, if done effectively can bring you a lot of traffic. When commenting on someones blog you must not say “Nice Site, Visit Mine” You must write a little sentence or 2 complementing them on there site and saying how you found it useful then say you found a site similar to theirs and you think it would be useful. This will also give you some good back links but only comment on sites which have high amount of traffic flowing through them, because you’ll be wasting your time otherwise!

Link Exchanges
Offer to link exchange with other webmasters of similar blogs to yours to try and gain a little more traffic. This traffic would be targeted as there coming from a niche similar to yours so are more likely to stay on the page rather than cross it down! Don’t go overboard on this as you don’t want a blog roll off about 100 Links! try and keep it to sites very similar to yours that are getting a but more traffic than you so you benefit more!

Social Bookmarking
You can use this to generate huge amounts of traffic. Sites such as Digg.com are built for users to post their news articles on them. Post up a new article about your new website, If you have got some friends with digg accounts then get them to digg you. If you reach the digg homepage then expect your traffic to go of the scale. Generally you need around 50-60 diggs in a day to get to the homepage. You can also get little widgets that you can post on your blog with a digg me button. This can interact your users into digging you!

Post on Similar Forums
This isn’t possible for ever subject but try and find popular forums on your subject and leave a link to your site in your signature. It possible posts links to it if someone is asking for a site like yours! This will get the word out into communities that use sites like yours so should have a very positive effect on your traffic

• Submitting your site in Free or Payable Directories
• Buying PR links
• Reviewing your site in high PR sites
• Posting guest posts in other blogs

In this topic i will show you some high PR Free Directories, which are good to “run” your site and increase PR. There are thousand of Free Directories, so I will show you just the most popular and Directories with high PR. Read on.

First look this two sites, thatI think are worth looking. You can see a lot of popular Directories here.

• Directoryrate
  
• Directorycritic

And here is the list of Free Directories that I found on forums and other blogs, so take some time and Submit your site:

PR1
www.excellentweb.info
www.goldlinks.org
www.simpledir.com
www.suredirectory.com
www.quickdirectory.biz

PR2
www.best-net-sites.com
www.cachedirectory.com
www.directoryworm.com
www.dynn.org
www.irkawebdirectory.com
www.iwebinfo.com
www.placeyourlinks.com
www.properdirectory.com
www.purple-directory.com
www.riodirectory.com
www.urlblend.com
www.urlshack.com

PR3
www.directmylink.com
www.ewebindex.com
www.findtoplinks.com
http://directory.helpedia.com
www.klik-klik.com/directory
www.kingoftheweb.net/directory/
www.opendirectorys.com
www.registerlink.info
www.sitesdirectory.info
www.visitalink.com
www.another-directory.com
www.gimpsy.com
www.w3dot.org
sphericom Directory
www.a2zwebindex.com
www.cyberbilt.com

PR4
www.ezeindex.com.
www.directoryvault.com
www.littlewebdirectory.com
www.prolinkdirectory.com
www.samsdirectory.com
www.zunchdirectory.com
www.3windex.com
www.aaawebdirectory.com
www.addnewlink.net
www.addsitelink.com
www.flesko.co.uk
www.yhay.com
www.slackalice.com
www.abydir.com
www.amray.com
http://www.turnpike.net/directory.html
A Free Directory
Directory Link
www.munkoo.com
www.qoobe.org

PR5
www.freewebsitedirectory.com
www.info-listings.com
www.urldirectory.org
www.webworldindex.com
Greenstalk.com
Consultant Directory
Add Link Directory
SoMuch.com
Tsection Web Directory
Hedir Web Directory
UK Directory – Business Listings
Megri Web Directory

PR6
www.mygreencorner.com
www.ezilon.com
Iozoo Web Directory
InfoListings Directory
All Links Directory
Joe Ant
Weblog Directory
High Class Blogs
Sootle Web Directory
BusinessSeek.biz Business Directory

PR7
Webmaster Resources
Level10s Internet Sites

PR9
Open Directory Project

1. Increasing visitors requires both a technical approach and some direct marketing. You’ll want to start by making sure you are hosting the blog or website on your own domain; this makes it much easier for search engines to find, and also makes your URL much more credible. You can then use the URL name itself to promote it, adding a ‘www’ tag to your postings, e-mail signatures, and other information that you share on the web.

2. The next step is to write good titles. Even people who are already subscribing to your blog may not actually click on the information you have written unless they are compelled to do so. Make sure your titles are on topic and describe the content you are posting. Using keywords in your titles makes it much easier for search engines to discover them as well, and you can use tools such as Overture and WordTracker to generate some keywords that work well with your site.

3. Another effective way to start generating visitors is to participate in discussion groups, forums, and even other blogs. Taking initiative with your own social networking can help you gain a steady audience very quickly; try participating in online communities related to your industry, or run some keyword searches yourself and find out what your prospects are talking about within your niche.

It’s likely that you’ll stumble across a few different discussion forums and groups, many of which that can get you instant traffic by clicking on your signature each time you participate. I’ve read a good report called “the business owner’s blogging guide” (www.ResellRightsLimitedOffers.com ) that’s helped me a lot with social networking and other ways of bringing traffic to my blog. I hope it helps you too.

4. You’ll always want to tag your content as often as possible, since many people run searches based on tags and keywords, larger sites including Digg, Technorati, and StumbleUpon use tags to sort all content published on the web, and you can reach a larger audience simply by breaking apart your content and submitting it to the appropriate categories.

5. Another simple and effective way to increase traffic is to simply write quality content; the more quality you provide for your readers, the higher the chances that your audience will link to you and share the information you are presenting to others. This is word-of-mouth marketing at its best, and you can create some very unique articles over time. Visitor traffic increases dramatically when your posts are submitted to larger directory sites and social bookmarking networks; think of ways that you can start developing some very unique articles, content, and posts.

By Diana Tudor
http://amazines.com/