Your website ‘door’ is wide open and nobody’s walking in. Here are 5 ways to generate more traffic.

As I entered Grand Central Station a few years ago, I was literally overwhelmed. I wont mention my crowd issues at this point. But suffice it to say that when we walked into the lobby and my mind registered all of those people, everywhere, in one place I had to take a few seconds to regroup. Some sat and some stood. Others were moving through the Station with a purpose and on a mission. No time was wasted.

Wouldn’t it be ‘grand’ if your website generated steady traffic like this? Targeted traffic from every direction with a distinct mission and purpose. Traffic that had in mind the purpose of finding you so they could get help accomplishing a task or reaching their goal.

This is definitely possible. Best of all it can be done for F*R*E*E.

The traffic sources are only limited by where and how you choose to market yourself and/or your products.

Social sites can be effectively utilized to market yourself, your business, or your product. Sites like:

1. Facebook - This is the #2 trafficked site just behind Google. People by the thousands are joining every single day. You do want to remember not to use your personal page to conduct business. But you can create a fan page. Joining groups and talking to like-minded individuals or at least those who have similar interests is a key to this strategy.

2. LinkedIn - This is a professional site. Not one for family pictures and witty statuses. People are about business and professional matters on LinkedIn. You want to respect that and use it to your advantage. The median income of LinkedIn users is ~$109,000 and about 40% of the members are business owners.

3. Youtube - Video marketing is huge. Youtube is another top 3 trafficked site. Whatever can be said with words can be said even better and more readily with a video. People like videos. If you check out youtube you’ll see that the quality of the video is really irrelevant. The content is what matters. Virtually everything you’re looking for can be found on youtube. Why not include your business in the line-up?

4. Twitter - You can update your followers all day long with your tweets. This site currently holds the #5 ranking for amount of traffic. Because it processes millions of tweets daily, it’s a great place for marketing.

5. Article writing - This is one of my favorite. You can write about whatever topic you choose and publish your articles on free article sites, LinkedIn, and/or your blog. Article marketing is great because the written word is eternal. Be sure to have value-based content. Give people what they need. Be concise. Don’t pitch your business in the article, though. Use your resource box for that.

This list is definitely not all-inclusive, as there are many other options. You can use myspace and free classified ads, to name a few more. In each of these aforementioned venues, you have the opportunity to tailor your profile to inform your visitors about you. Be sure to add a nice professional picture of yourself because people like to be able to put a face with a name.

All of this generated traffic is to be sent to your primary site. You want to be sure to update it regularly and make it inviting and easy to maneuver. Driving traffic to an outdated site is like marketing suicide.

Arlissa Pinkelton

Find Out The 7 Mistakes Most Network Marketers Are Making And How To Do It Right And Increase Your Leads. Arlissa Pinkelton is a leader in the area of Internet Marketing Via Social Sites. You can find additional articles on this subject written by her at Arlissa Pinkelton Blog.

The problem that most people have attempting to get high search engine rankings is the fact that they can waste months or even years of your life trying to get higher rankings and actually never achieve the results they are looking for.! In this article I want to explain to you exactly how to use these 3 key strategies to get much higher rankings for your website so you can really increase your profits.

Key #1

Make sure that you stay away from the big keywords. This is the biggest mistake that people make online when they are trying to get their website to be ranked higher. You really need to realize that just because a keyword has a lot of traffic does not mean you should go for it.

The reason is that it is probably very unqualified if it is only a one or two word term. So even though you work really hard to get the rankings, you will soon discover that your conversions are usually pretty bad.

Due to the fact that those keywords are able to generate high volumes of traffic, you will indeed discover that your competition is pretty tough.

Key#2

The next key is to ensure when selecting your keywords is that you are very broad. Personally I prefer niche markets that have a broad selection of keywords to offer. To date I currently am receiving traffic from literally thousands of different keyword terms or phrases in a single market. This happens due to the fact that I focus on the lessor terms that generate smaller amounts of traffic.

Key#3

Never loose sight of the importance of link building…Never never stop building your links! The large majority of of folks tend to make that very mistake of halting their link building to stay focused on their other activities. Be very careful to keep this in mind and and don’t make the same mistake. If you stay focused you will see that indeed it will pay off and will bring you the rankings that you are wanting.

Want to find out more about Keyword Marketing, then visit Patricia Hedge’s site to get the best information onAffiliate Internet Marketing for your needs.

Alternate Title: How To Write An Article To Increase Website Traffic, Kick Off A Viral Marketing Campaign And Increase The Number Of Websites Linking To You

If you write an article correctly, you will be able to increase the number of visitors to your site, the number of websites linking to your site, and will be able to ignite one of the web’s most cost effective and potent viral marketing strategies currently available.

Those are some pretty good benefits of writing articles, aren’t they?

And, as always, time is of the essence – so let’s dive right in.

First of all, if you don’t feel you’re up to writing your own articles, you can hire a ghostwriter from a service provider such as elance.com. Most articles cost between $5-$10, and if you use a service like elance, you can set your own terms and budget.

Ok, so everyone who’s still reading this article wants to know how to write a great article themselves in order to claim the benefits we listed above, right?

Perfect.

Let’s look into what makes a good article.

Format

People can’t read as much or for as long on the internet as they can when they are reading regular print.

With that in mind, keep your article relatively short, between 500-700 words has been found to be the most effective.

If the article is too short, you may not cover your topic in enough depth and leave the readers a little disappointed. If the article is too long, you risk losing their attention halfway through the article, as they realize that they see the staggering pile of paragraphs left.

Be sure to break up your article to make it scannable (easy to read), varying your sentence and paragraph lengths to keep the article looking interesting. Nothing is more boring to internet users than big huge blocks of text.

Keep things on the short side, getting right to the point as quickly as you can.

Be sure to leave a blank space between each paragraph. You want your article to be as easy on the eyes as possible, and one of the ways to do that is by the amount of white space that you have.

A few other things to keep in mind that affect the readability of your article include: the font size, the font style (make sure it’s simple), the html styles used such as bolding, italics, underlining, the use of bulleted lists and so on (if html article submission is possible).

The Parts that Go Into Making a Great Article

In order to write a fantastic article, you need the following sections:

1) A Headline

A headline should grab the reader’s attention and get them interested in reading the article. You need to tell them what they’ll get out of reading your article by listing some of the benefits that will come from reading your article.

2) Introduction

An introduction needs to get the readers interested enough to read the whole article – that’s the only way that they’ll ever get to the end of your article and see the link to your website at the bottom of the page.

3) Body

This is the content of your article. Make sure you use a fairly conversational writing style, getting right to the point with clarity. Avoid the use of jargon (terms that your audience may be unfamiliar with).

Edit, edit, edit. Then use the spellchecker. Then edit some more. Webmasters are looking for professional articles to post on their website, and basic spelling mistakes don’t present a very professional image.

Don’t write an advertisement and call it an article. If your article is seen as being just an advertisement, it will probably be ignored by most webmasters. Your goal is to provide some sort of value to the reader through your article, while subtly promoting your website – which may only take the form of a link at the end of your article.

4) Closing

The closing section wraps up the entire article, summarizing what you have talked about, re-mentioning some of the benefits associated with following or reading your article, and having some sort of call to action.

Tell them to visit your website, check out product X, or something along those lines.

5) Resource Box

This is where you need to get the reader excited. Offer them something free – a free e-course, other articles, a free sample of your product – something to get them to go to your website.

Now that you know how to write an amazing article to increase website traffic that could help kick off an incredible viral marketing, all you have to do is market the article by adding it to sites such as http://www.isnare.com, or using a distribution service such as http://www.automaticarticlemarketer.com, or the one available through http://www.isnare.com.

About the Author: Tim Wright is an SEO Expert, and author of “White Hat SEO Revealed” (it’s available for FREE at http://www.phase1.ws), which includes all of the tips, tricks and techniques you need to know in order to dominate the search engines.