How to Get Traffic to Your Website
Want to drive people to your website? Increase traffic with these tips.
Up next in How to Make a Website (7 videos)
Learn how to make a website with the step-by-step instructions in this Howcast video series.
You Will Need
- Quality content
- SEO
- Money
- Social networking
- Traditional advertising
- Analytics
Steps
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Step 1
Create quality content
Fill your website with high-quality content. Make information, games, or tools engaging, unique, and easy-to-use. Update your content regularly and monitor and respond to your site audience to boost frequent return visits.
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Step 2
Optimize your site
Refreshing and adding content also helps with search-engine optimization. Use SEO, which includes practices like using target keywords in your site copy and metadata to boost organic search results -- what search engines bring up based on user queries. Optimize further with coding methods that make it easier for engines to crawl and index your website's content.
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Many search engines have free tools to help identify SEO issues you can correct for better results.
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Step 3
Use search-engine marketing
Don't want to rely solely on organic search results? Pay to advertise your website in prime areas of search engines when people search for related terms.
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If you have a small marketing budget you can use pay-per-click advertising to pay only for the ads that people click.
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Step 4
Get on social networks
Use social-networking sites to build a community of users interested in your website and share information on your content. Encourage followers to share your content with their networks -- they'll drive traffic to your website for you.
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Step 5
Go traditional
Consider other methods to get website traffic: advertise using traditional media, display banner ads on other websites, send out press releases; engage with other websites to exchange high-quality links -- anything that spreads your URL to the world.
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Step 6
Stay updated
Once you've established a presence, use online analytic tools to learn about your website's traffic and visitors. Then, let these statistics help you refine your strategies and drive even more traffic over time.
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In 2009, the average internet user spent 13 hours per week online, excluding checking e-mail.
