The Creative Design Blog

There are three key areas to concentrate on when trying to boost the amount of traffic you are getting to your website.

1 – The mechanics of the website itself. Is it search engine friendly. Does the content match the URL? Are the expectations of your headlines and banners met by the actual content of your site?

Getting your site user friendly is not that hard. Having a well structured menu system,, site map and links is important. Having relevant headers and providing information in a way that can be easily read. It’s not rocket science. Have a site map both for users and for search engines (they are two different things by the way). It can all be achieved with a little fore-thought.

Optimizing your site is not as hard as some would make you believe. Having a sensible page structure, a user visible and search engine visible site plan. Correct use of expected keywords, and content that is arranged in a user friendly way is just about all it takes to begin with.

You can automate the link building process, and some of the methods for doing this are ethical and fair. However, at the start it is possible to get a few good links using free and simple techniques.

While there are methods of automating some of this. Early in the process you simple cannot beat actually going to other people’s sites that relate to yours. Joining in conversations on forums and blogs, and generally being an asset to the discussions going on. Using your name and selectively a link back to your own site where possible.

A note of caution. If you go to these sites just to add a ling back to your own. Adding little to the ongoing conversation in the process. It will likely be deleted – and you may well end up being labelled a “troll” and unwelcome. This could be a disaster for your site in the long term.

3 – Use social networking sites. WEB 2.0 sites such as Youtube, Facebook and Twitter are full of literally millions of people with desires and questions covering just about every possible niche you can think of. Having a presence in these areas is a great way to communicate.

Having some simple skills in video production – remembering that both Windows for the PC and Snow Leopard fo0r the Mac come bundled with some perfectly adequate and simple to use video editing software for free.

Being a “name” joining discussions, posting informative articles and videos. Giving samples of your work or site content for free. There are many many ways to get noticed. The best for you will depend on your niche. But if done well they can all be very effective techniques for getting more traffic to your site.

Using these three techniques you will soon be making a name for yourself, and your website.

Your website needs to generate internet traffic. gain internet traffic now.

Content along with internet traffic is the absolute lifeblood of the internet. Whether it’s a case of getting a message out to as many people as possible, or advertising a product or service, you need as much traffic to your site as possible.

Outside in the real world, an enterprise may only need to exist and open it’s doors for visitors to start coming in, looking around, and maybe buying. This will not happen on the internet.

With many billions of web pages out there, why would anyone just chance across yours? The chances of an un-marketed web page being found are about the same as finding a grain of salt in the desert.

It can seem very depressing. If you work out the odds of someone finding your message by accident, well it’s billions to one.

But new websites do succeed. In fact many thrive and grow, spreading their message or selling the products they were built to. There are ways of marketing your message that really work.

If you scan the internet you will find many ways that people recommend to drive traffic to a particular site. Let me tell you now, that most of these are not very good. They either fail to deliver on their promises, or deliver un-targeted traffic (i.e. people who are not looking for what you are offering).

Amongst all this though, there are some great ideas and methods. Many free and ideal for beginners. Many costing a small amount and ideal for those who are looking to increase the traffic flow to a site.

In the last ten years there has been a growing market in ideas and systems that allow the lone web developer to benefit from increased market visibility. Systems that automate much of the SEO (search engine optimization) and allow promotion of a site without consuming too much time or money.

As I mentioned, at a very basic level many of these methods can be done for free. This is a great way to get a trickle of traffic to your site to see whether your basic idea is feasible or not.

I suppose it is a balance between cost and time. If for every one hundred visitors you are making a dollar, and a piece of software costing thirty dollars can get you five hundred visitors a day more, how long will it take before this software has paid for itself? Is there a possibility of it paying for itself many times over in the first week, month or year?

I recommend looking at all the options first though. Some excellent methods of driving internet traffic to your site are also very cost effective.

If you value your time, it might be worth checking some of these out.

Does you website need to generate internet traffic. gain internet traffic now.

If you have a blog then you want to increase blog traffic because the more people you have visiting your blog the greater the profits. To increase traffic you need to really build a good blog and this starts at the beginning when you start to design the website.

This means you may need to build it the software from scratch. If this is not an option for you than some good software includes Typepad, MovableType, Blogger and WordPress.

You want to carefully choose the words and phrases that appear in the title tags. Title tags serve 2 purposes. These tags need to be optimized for search engines but you also need to think about the potential visitors to your blog. Write down a few different versions and so a search on the popularity of the words or phrases you use.

You do not want to have a blog with 0 comments so launch your blog without comments. Once you have plenty of subscribers and comments you can add a comments section to show everyone your blog activity. You also do not have to cover every single news worthy item in your blog. The best blogs will talk about large trends but you want to try to take a unique spin on things not repeat the same story over again.

You also want to pick and choose what news you cover. Everyone will talk about the major news trends so see about talking about anew angle or stick to news that is relevant to your blogs topic.

If the reference is to something more obscure than a link can be very useful. If you quote other bloggers than it is important to link to that blog. It is always best to be over-generous rather than under generous with your links.

When you increase blog traffic, you are almost sure to grow your sales revenues. Using free blog traffic improves the bottom line even more.

There’s a lot of confusion about link cloaking. The term itself sounds suspicious, like it’s a black hat method of marketing or a way to disguise your identity. The fact of the matter is, it is nothing like that. What it is is something that any internet marketer should be aware of and use, for a variety of reasons.

After you are approved for an affiliate relationship, you are given the opportunity to embed widgets of code in your site. These are clickable links that direct customers to the site that sells the product you have affiliated with. In this way, the link is tracked back to you and you can be assured that if a sale is made, you will get your commission. It doesn’t always work out that way, though.

For one thing, many people have the mistaken idea that they will be overcharged for the product or service if they purchase it via your website. Thinking they are being clever, they remove your affiliate ID from the link before clicking through.When they do this, you lose the commission that is rightfully yours.

Secondly, sophisticated hackers can use the information on your link to steal your commissions. The commission gets paid, but not to you. While hackers are usually trolling for high traffic affiliate sites and usually are savvy enough to steal only a portion of sales, even small enterprises are at risk.

What you do when you cloak a link is metaphorically put a “cloak” on top of your link. This cloak is a unique URL that does not disclose your affiliate ID. By doing this simple thing, you eliminate a number of potential problems.

Firstly, those customers who would otherwise remove your affiliate link from the URL can no longer do so. Customers rarely do that, but you needn’t worry about it anymore. Many more customers, however, get suspicious when they see that affiliate ID and it puts doubts in their minds about you and your professionalism. Your cloaked link gives them the feeling that you are a professional reseller and not just an “affiliate marketer.”

Most importantly, your link is now invulnerable to hackers. They have been denied a vital part of your personal information if your link is cloaked.

As you can see, link cloaking has nothing to do with shady black hat marketing techniques. On the contrary, it is a legitimate tool you can use to protect yourself and enhance your online credibility. If you do not cloak your links, in fact, it makes you appear amateurish in the eyes of both your customers and the companies you are affiliated with.

Many internet marketers take it one step further and create an iframe page on their website. This is a page that looks exactly like the page that the customer will be directed to when they click on the link. In the eyes of the customer, this assures them that you have a direct and legitimate connection with the company.

If you are still worried about it, by all means contact the company with which you are affiliated and ask them what their policy is regarding link cloaking. The will appreciate your asking and probably agree that it’s a good thing to do.

It’s easy to learn more about how you can multiply visits to your Internet site and click-through traffic when you use link cloaking. When you use a conversion tracking system, you will be able to improve your marketing and advertising efforts and multiply your thriving business.