There are nearly as many websites as there are stars in the universe, or so it seems when you begin a new search.  So how do you make your website stand out among all the rest?

Let's discuss some dos and don'ts of increasing your website traffic.

1. Free For All (FFA) Programs.  You've heard of them.  You sign up, they send you a set of pages to place on your website.  They guarantee an increase in your website traffic.  Several problems with this technique.  Everyone else in the program has the same pages, with the same keywords.  Search engines may decide to penalize you for duplicate content.  They keywords and content on the pages give you invalid search results and invalid clicks.  You want relevant keywords and valid prospects.

2. Reciprocal Linking Services.  You add a page of links, they add a page of links and pretty soon, you have traffic, right?  Wrong!  What you can end up with is people getting to your site only to have them leave once they find the graphic from the reciprocal link.  Again, just like above, everyone who subscribes gets the same pages.  Everyone gets linked with everyone else.  Great, especially when you're linked with a competitor or a site you don't want associated with your site.

3. Exchanging Links with Webmasters - Similar to above, except its done individually.  Find where your competitors are featured, ask to be featured as well.  Find similar sites that don't compete and ask to be featured on their site.  Works great, but its a manual process and time consuming.

4. Buy advertising space - A great way to get out there, but it can be expensive.  Start small, find sites that don't charge for advertising or charge very little.  Find an ezine and offer to exchange advertising space in your ezine with them. 

5. Message Boards, Discussion Lists, Commenting Guestbooks - Great, if you are really offering your opinions, reviews, insights.  Terrible and downright sleazy if you're just spamming to get your name out.

6. An Affiliate Program - Terrific if you have a following, not so good if you have no wares and you aren't a pied piper.  People don't want to represent something no one is buying.  So wait a bit on this one.

7. Directories - Do this one now.  Find as many directories as you can on the internet, especially those that pertain to your particular niche.  Get listed in them.  The big search engines rely on the littler ones for submissions in bulk.  If you aren't on DMOZ, get on there as soon as you have a viable website.  Its a manual process, so be sure the site looks like you want it to before you submit.

8. Articles - This is the best way to get your name out.  People love content, its the Elvis of the web.  Write as much as possible and post them on your website.  Submit them to various article engines (we have a list of them in the resources section).  They republish the articles (that's why you need to make sure you have a resource box on yours when you publish it).  The resource box tells people who wrote the article, how they can reach you and the conditions they can reprint the article.  Expertise isn't the only thing you'll gain, you'll gain exposure, readers and content.

(c) 2004, Kimberly Black

Kimberly Black, “The Business Agility Coach,” is the owner of http://KimberlyBlack.com, a network of websites, including http://Coachizer.com and http://BusinessAgilityCompany.com.  To view all of her sites, visit her at http://www.kimberlyblack.com.

You are more than welcome to reprint or publish this article as long as its content remains unaltered, you leave this section at the bottom about me in place and you send a copy to me at contact@coachizer.com.