The idea that you must earn and deserve your traffic isn’t a very patient or pleasing notion, and it seems harsh to most people after they have selected their website hosting and labored to put a decent site up.  I’ll share with you all of the honest ways of speeding up the process, of getting traffic to your site as quickly as possible, but at this point in the process, most people, honestly, are wanting to figure out how to “game the system.”  If you can only remember one thing from this article, I hope it will be this: what you get but don’t earn you don’t really have.

Here are the 5 foundation blocks for building traffic:

1)  Selecting the right website hosting.
2) An acceptably designed site (doesn’t have to be great).
3) Real and useful targeted content.
4) An honest and comprehensive marketing plan.
5) Dedication and patience.

1)  Selecting the right website hosting.

So that is the primary intent of this website.  I’m not going to repeat everything I’ve said before.  I’ll just direct you to the initial post:  How to Choose the Best Host.

2) An acceptably designed site (doesn’t have to be great).

Your site, depending upon its purpose, doesn’t have to be the snazziest site on the Internet; however, if you are selling a product, it does need to look as professional as possible.  People are very hard to part from their money, and they are even less likely to part with it if your website looks like it has been haphazardly put together.  For an information or blog type site, this is far less important.  Go around the web to other sites that are doing what you are doing and get some ideas.  Strive to present as good, or better, a face as anyone in your field.

If you can’t do anything else, at least make sure the site is easy to navigate and that the front page reflects what you are trying to get across to your visitors.  If people have to scan all over your page for relevant information, you may lose them.

And don’t kill your hosting company.  If you’ve picked a cheap (affordable) host, don’t try to run your own version of YouTube there, or have a page with endless drop-down boxes and cute effects.  If your site is bogging down, scale it back.  You can have a very good site without every nifty thing you’ve seen elsewhere.  If people have to stare at a blank screen and wait for 15 seconds for your site to show up, they’ll leave.  They’ll never see what you have to offer.

3) Real and useful targeted content.

Share what you have, not what other people have.  If you are doing an informational site or blog, do the work yourself rather than borrowing from article directories.  You need to be original.  Find a hook, that part of your knowledge or product that is special and use it.

I would suggest that every site, be it an artist’s site or a site selling tee shirts, have a blog section.  People love fresh content.  Search engines love fresh content.  Find some way of incorporating this into every sort of site.

4) An honest and comprehensive marketing plan.

Do your research–thoroughly–and develop an honest and comprehensive marketing plan.  Avoid all temptations to pay out money to people who will “get you to the top of Google!”  There are many things at your disposal.  From link exchanges and posting on do-follow blogs to submitting your site to directories and writing articles for other people with links back to your site.

We’ll get into this section more with other posts, but you need to compose a list of everything that can build your search engine status and begin to methodically work that list for as long as it takes.

5) Dedication and patience.

Speaking of “for as long as it takes,” plan on it taking awhile.  Search engines like Google penalize new sites, so all of your work will initially bring very little return in all likelihood.  Plan for that and keep going.  Don’t stop updating your site.  Don’t stop improving your site design.  Don’t stop marketing.

When should you finally give up?  Well, if it was a good idea to begin with, then the answer is never.  Just keep going and plan on taking the long and leisurely route.  Whether you are trying to run an Internet business or a blog, good things come to those who persist through the dry times.

I can’t begin to name the number of sites I’ve seen that have started and then ended right before one could reasonably expect them to begin to be successful.  If you can get to the point where you are thrilled with your traffic in the first six months of your site, then you have done an extraordinary job and are definitely the odd case.  To be sure, you can do some things that make that sort of quick growth possible, but if you don’t succeed initially, just keep going.  On the Internet, time is on your side.  The longer you stay at it, the more likely you are to get significant kudos from search engines and return readers.

Out of the five foundation blocks for building traffic, the patience and dedication block is the most important.  Don’t quit.

Traffic Building Brainstorm for Later Expansion:

Traffic Building

Proper Site design, without frames, with meta tags and internal, keyword links, proper

tags.  How to determine keywords.

Submit site to search engines.
Comment on related blogs.
comment on do-follow blogs
social bookmarking : main site and all posts/pages, plus give your readers a chance to do

the same for things like facebook and twitter.

creating a social following

build reciprocal links with like sites, including deep and contextual links.  Link pages

are not as helpful.  Complimentary but not competitive.  free link exchange.

write a great article, with a backlink as part of the author bio, and ask a blog owner if

they will accept a  guest author.

“”"” same as above but submit it to an article directory.

Consider a newsletter.

If this isn’t a blog you are publishing, then publish a blog to promote it and give

yourself frequently updated content.
Consider adding a forum depending on your topic once you have significant traffic.

epinions?

Advertise with Yahoo, MSN, and Google3.Consider Paid Search
For new websites, the day when you receive all the traffic you need for free from search

engines and other referrals is a long way off – if not just a pipe dream altogether.

Often times paid search campaigns are a great way to get your site in front of your

target market today. Be sure to keep your budget modest, though, until you’re confident

in your ROI. Be sure to do your keyword research to find lower-cost “long tail” keywords

- going after the big traffic keywords might be tempting, but it gets expensive and the

ROI is often not the best.

Have contests.

Offer something free

Directory submission, including DMOZ and Yahoo.◦Business.com◦JoeAnt.com◦BOTW.org

Tell all your friends and family and your email list.

Keep an eye on special keywords when you are writing and titling your articles.  Don’t

compromise the quality, but if you can work the keywords you are looking for in, then do.

 Remember that you can and should use a good variety of keywords, also.
Claim your blog in Technorati

Keep spam out.

Linkbaiting

It never hurts to ask, well just a little, but you’ll get over it quickly.

get INTERESTED people following you on twitter.

Press Releases

Give awards.