Got a brand new website? That’s great, but nobody cares.

OK, maybe that’s a little harsh. The truth, however, is that just having a website doesn’t get you much. Many business owners I meet are surprised to find, once we look at the numbers, that the shiny new site they had built not too long ago gets little to no traffic on a daily basis.

Many newcomers to the web make the mistake of thinking that just by buying a domain name and putting up your site, visitors are going to happen by – something like when you buy property and build a storefront in a busy part of town.
It just doesn’t work that way. The web is harsh. You can have the best looking site in the world with great resources and content and go entirely ignored or unnoticed. It happens. It’s happening right now. Somewhere out there in the ether is a brand new gorgeous website loaded with great content, and nobody cares. Poor little lonely site.

But there is hope. Every website had its early days. Even sites that get hundreds of thousands of visitors a day started out with none.

Here are 7 simple things you can start doing right now to help drive traffic to your site.

1. Get Some Quick Links From Trusted Directories
Link building is a long-term process with long-term goals, but for brand new sites with no history you’ve got to start somewhere. There are a number of directories out there that provide free and paid listings (subject to editorial review, of course). Here are the ones I recommend:

2. Start Blogging
OK, blogging isn’t for everybody (especially you boring people), but it’s a great way to build relevant content at your site on a consistent basis. It also gives your visitors/ customers a way to engage with you. But please don’t make the mistake of being too “corporate” on your blog – do yourself a favor and check your Public Relations cap at the door. Don’t be afraid to discuss your mistakes, missteps you’ve made, and what you’ve learned from them as well as your triumphs. In short, be a human, not a brand.

3. 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.

4. Use Article Marketing To Build Links
As with any tactic, I’d recommend using this one in moderation. Article marketing is, essentially, trading words for links. It can help with link building, but the quality of the links it garners is usually less than stellar.

Here’s how it works:

5. Guest Post At Relevant Blogs
This certainly requires some up-front investment, mainly in terms of building relationships with bloggers in your topic (a little brown-nosing never hurt), but it can help get the flywheel turning for your site like nothing else can. Take the time to make your guest post remarkable and smart – your host blogger will appreciate it, and it’ll improve the likelihood of attention coming back to your site (which you’ll link to in your guest post, of course). Links from blogs are some of the most powerful editorial links you can get – don’t underestimate them for a second.

6. Submit Your Site to Design Galleries
Is your website breathtaking to behold, beautiful enough to make angels weep? Yeah, sure it is. But seriously, if it looks pretty sharp there are plenty of web design galleries that accept submissions for new sites and link to the sites they feature. Particularly for CSS-driven design there are a number of galleries that will consider your site for listing (provided your site uses CSS for layout/styling – and God help you if it doesn’t) – including CSSElite.com, CSSHeaven.com, CSSBeauty.com and many others. Just search in Google for “CSS design gallery.” Unless your site is ugly – in that case, I can’t help you, and stop asking me to look at it.

7. Sponsor a Local Event or Charity
OK, I admit this is kind of a tired tip – but it works! Especially for local small businesses. Is there a local event coming up in your community? A local charity that has a website? Not only will sponsoring such an event give you all of the normal PR benefits (and self-righteous bragging rights) that are the byproducts of charity, but any web announcement for the event will potentially include a mention of your website as well as a link to it. And you can feel good about yourself for a change.

Bonus Tip: Be Patient
Alright, this one is cheap, I admit it. Not much of a tip. But it’s important to remember that you’re not going to see your unique visitors count skyrocket immediately for your new website. Most “overnight successes” actually take a few years to get going.

And if you find yourself checking your traffic numbers on a daily basis, please do us all a favor – step away from the computer, go toss the ball around with your kid, maybe take your niece out for ice cream. Contrary to popular belief, staring at your site traffic data has no positive effect on it.

About The Author:

Mike Tekula is the president of Unstuck Digital, a Long Island Web Design and Search Marketing agency based in Ronkonkoma, NY.

Trust me, despite the ongoing financial upheaval, there has not ever been a better time to create online income.

Despite this fact, it looks like many beginning Internet marketers are finding it hard to break through and acheive the traffic numbers they want. When I first started out, I thought there must be some secret technique that would instantly increase my traffic, if only I could find that ONE successful method! While there may be hundreds of ways to get visitors to your site – I’ve selected the techniques that have worked best for me. They can work for you, as well.

You see, there IS a secret to traffic success, and it’s this: Do not rely on just ONE technique to drive traffic. Get acquainted with, and use several of them. It’s better to have numerous traffic tactics going to your website, rather than just one. It’s surprising how many Internet marketers disregard the basics. One of those basic ways to increase your traffic is to be utterly certain that your site is listed in the search engines. Don’t just trust that the search engine spiders will do your work for you. All of the major search engines have elaborate and easy-to-follow instructions on submitting your site as well as how to produce and submit proper site-maps.

Then, there is the power of blogging. The search engines LOVE blogs. The SE “spiders” thrive on freshness and change, so if you post a new entry to your blog every day, or every other day, the search engines will see what’s going on and start to rank your blog higher than those websites that don’t change their content from month to month. A higher ranking means one thing: visitors to your site.

Another method is to place your website link in your signature when posting to online forums and discussion groups. This is especially good if your product is in a specific niche. You know that there are hard-core and pertinent online communities and groups who want to hear from you. The ever popular weight loss niche, for example, has hundreds of forums and discussion groups you could be posting to with your link in your signature. Just make sure that is allowed by their rules first, so as not to get into grief with the site admins. Your forum signature can be an absolute goldmine once you have figured out the best way of showing your product’s best features so that the readers will find your website irresistible.

One of the best ways to get visitors to your websites is to write an ebook. Remember, we’re not talking about the Great American Novel here. We’re not even talking more than 30 pages or so, double spaced, and using size 12 font. The fact is your ebook will bring in visitors to your website. Whether you are selling it or giving it away doesn’t matter really, though giving away a smallish ebook based on your niche (with giveaway rights) with your website link in it will definitely get you that targeted traffic you’ve been wanting. Later on, you can set up your paid eBook to affiliates so that they’ll be sending visitors to your site too! If you’re more into audio than just writing stuff, then create a podcast. If you are a video kind of person, then create a video and pop it up on YouTube and any of the other free video sharing services. See, everyone loves information but not everyone finds the printed word the best way to get it. Provide that same information where it can be listened to on an iPod, a mobile phone, or can be seen in a video, and you’re offering a much higher value product. Look, you have the reports and ebooks that you’ve written on your harddrive and you can add value to it by converting it into an .mp3 or a video. There’s even free applications that will help you do this, so money doesn’t have to be a stopping point for you.

How about getting your website seen by ten million people in ten minutes? Well, it sounds bizarre, but it’s very possible, if you do it right. Google Adwords, also known as Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, can get you instant and massive exposure, but you’ve got to be careful with it. People tend to go a little insane getting their ads absolutely perfect. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just understandable, and eye catching. Be sure to read the small print, or you could end up with your budget depleted very quickly. Follow the guidelines, budget sensibly and you could easily attract many hundreds of visitors, even on a daily basis.

This one is not new, but it is overlooked by many. It’s eBay. You don’t want to ignore eBay simply because the digital rules have changed. Selling physical products on eBay is still extremely viable for getting visitors to your site. If you would have normally sent a buyer a digital link to download your eBook, simply send them a CD instead. The possibilities for driving traffic here are endless. You can include all kinds of things on the CD along with whatever it is you are selling, such as your website address (to remind them of it again), your email address, which should be based off your domain name, a link to a help desk at your website, if they have questions about what they’ve purchased, etc. You get the idea.

How about Ezines and Newsletters? Well, they work! Many Internet Marketers bring in a ton of traffic using this method. If you like to write, or have someone that writes well that you can outsource to, then be sure to include this as a definite means to boost your traffic. If you love your niche, and you love your product, then obviously you’ll have alot to say about both, and there are people out there who want to hear what you have to say. You can build a huge subscriber base with a good Newsletter.

One of the basic items that is sometimes overlooked on a website is your meta tags. A “meta tag” is a tag that is used by the search engines. It allows them to accurately list your site in their indexes based on the tags they find. Your meta tags need to be relevent to your site. You don’t want to have a meta tag in your page header for “dieting” when you’re site is about dog training. These tags work most of the time, but you have to remember the search engines are always changing their methods, and they don’t all use meta tags the same way. You don’t want to ignore this technique, no matter who is using what algorithm, as the main ones still use them to categorize sites.

Leaving testimonials on other people’s sites, and commenting on niche related blog posts is another very easy way of getting your link noticed by others that will definitely get you more traffic. This doesn’t take long to do, but your website link will be visible for a very long time. Make sure that you write your comments so that they are understandable, and that they fit in with the post and the niche.

I hope this list has given you a few good ideas on how to increase traffic to your website. Remember, the idea is to not just focus on one method, but to incorporate, in all practicality, as many as you can, so that you are utilizing as much of the vast range of the internet as possible.

Wishing you great success,

Ross “The Pit Boss”