Rank This! 3 Professional SEO Strategies On How To Increase Your Website Traffic

Fact: A site with 5,000 pages of quality content & 15,000 quality inbound links will continue to generate THOUSANDS of targeted visitors even if it was never updated again...

And here's why...

I. Traffic is "The Thing"

During the 1990s, the Internet was reported to be growing at 100% a year. And, the early online marketers figured out that traffic is VERY valuable...If a site's traffic increases by 30%, its earnings should increase by 30% too because:

Traffic means visitors & visitors mean potential customers & customers mean money.

In fact, traffic is SO valuable that Google has built a $20+BILLION company around selling PPC traffic to businesses around the world...

So, the real issue is how to generate some FREE traffic for yourself.

Well, THOUSANDS of traffic generation & search engine optimization (SEO) techniques exist & here are just 3 of them...Let's begin:

II. Strategy #1: Linking "By The Pound":

Some SEO professionals claim that thousands of inbound links are all a site needs to generate visitors. While they won't let it slip out publicly, they believe in a fairly simple formula:

Inbound link VOLUME = Traffic = Money.

They trace a causation chain between:

1) The sheer NUMBER of inbound links your site has pointing toward it.
2) The amount of traffic your site gets.
3) And your site's eventual CASH earnings.

The theory is that as a site gains a "critical mass" of inbound links, its traffic level increases, & its CASH earnings increase too...

They theorize that link VOLUME drives traffic 2 separate ways:

1) The traffic from higher search engine rankings &
2) More importantly, the traffic from the 1000s of links themselves.

Barring a major PPC or offline media campaign, you'll find that 95% of the really high traffic sites you encounter have TENS of THOUSANDS of inbound links pointing toward them...For evidence of this, next time you stumble over a high traffic site, try checking its inbound links in one of the free backlink tools like Yahoo Site Explorer ("siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com").

Look at what you see. I bet you see THOUSANDS of inbound links…with each link theoretically contributing a little sliver of traffic every day...some obviously more so than others...

While this is a VERY persuasive theory, it may be slightly incomplete. Let's look at 2 other schools of thought:

III. Strategy #2: Link QUALITY Is EVERYTHING:

If you've been marketing online for more than a few years, you probably remember the "Page Rank" mania that seemed to sweep the SEO world during 2004-2005.

Professional SEOs were convinced that getting 2 or 3 authority links from high Page Rank sites would lead to better search engine rankings & a lot more traffic. The Page Rank hysteria quickly subsided…But, the strategy still remains VERY valid:

Links from prominent sites often ARE incredible sources of free traffic...

Once placed, some links will send a continual stream of 5-100 targeted visitors to your site every day, seemingly forever...And the new visitors will start appearing in your log files within hours of the link going live...If they were physical items, links like these would be worth their weight in gold...

For example, imagine my site has 10,000 inbound links from tons of different websites all over the internet. But, your site has only 3 inbound links: links on the homepages of Google, Yahoo, & MSN. All of which get MILLIONS of visitors a day...

Who would get more traffic? YOU WOULD, definitely...For the same 2 reasons stated above:

1) Your site would see a MASSIVE boost in its search engine rankings given how much "authority" Yahoo, MSN, & Google give each other &
2) The traffic coming off those 3 links by themselves would be HUGE too...

Clearly, link quality is very important.

IV. Strategy #3: Using Links & Content For Higher Rankings...

While the 2 above strategies make perfect sense at 1st glance, they may be overlooking another important factor: A site's CONTENT CONTRIBUTION. Search engines are VERY POWERFUL sources of traffic because they provide their users easy methods of finding YOUR content (AKA: "stuff")...

This school of thought theorizes that most search engine traffic is actually derived from a combination of a site's

1) Inbound links &
2) Content.

This is similar to the "link volume" strategy above, but with 1 extremely important difference: content "on" a website is deemed to be a powerful SEO factor too...

Offering unique content allows you to kind of "set a trap" for random search engine visitors who are searching for content similar to what your site provides...(This may be because "long tail" searches, generally containing 3-15 keywords, seem to have increased in popularity during the last few years. Searchers have seemingly become more specific as they get more comfortable using the web to find information...)

This SEO strategy tries to capitalize on "current" search engine traffic. In other words, traffic related to something that's just happened or become popular suddenly.

Therefore, if you have a good volume of on-topic "stuff" on your site, you'll increase your odds of being found randomly for keyword phrases that your competition cannot possibly hope to rank for! Think about it, there is NO WAY for anyone to optimize a page for a term that has only become popular during the last 48 hours...

And now that you know about it, you can this to your advantage...

V. Combining These Strategies For Maximum Rankings:

So, what should you do to increase your traffic? Experiment with a combination of these 3 SEO strategies...

Here are some tips on how to increase your search engine traffic by blending a little bit of each of these strategies together:

1)Enhance & optimize your site by posting the right blend of relevant content, given your market's characteristics. Feeding the search engines "the right stuff" in the right way will increase your traffic, both from popular keyword phrases AND from long tail phrases.

2)Build as many quality inbound links as possible to generate permanent residual trafficfrom the links themselves. Links from "on topic" sites are best & high traffic sites that have content closely matching your own are ideal. Sites with similar audience profiles to yours are everywhere & some of them get THOUSANDS of visitors every day.

Furthermore, many webmasters will keep a link up once they create it. 80% of the time, your link will stay there FOREVER...The trick lies in locating the right sites & getting your link well placed in the top 1/3rd of a clean competition-free page that gets regular visitors. Sometimes a link from a "links" page is adequate...Other times, you'll be better off negotiating for a more prominent position elsewhere on the site, if you can swing it...

Tools exist that help automate the process of ferreting out high traffic sites that have audience profiles similar to yours & that offer links too.

3)Benefit from the SEO effects that large amounts of relevant inbound links provide. Vary up the anchor text of the inbound links at specific percentages on a graduated scale related to what you consider to be "prize" keyword phrases. However, ALWAYS do a thorough competition analysis to see what rankings are realistic to achieve, given the competition. Strive to rank in the top 10 for an array of different keyword phrases...Build enough backlinks using a ton of related keyword phrases & watch your search engine traffic multiply as a result.

In conclusion, implementing these 3 SEO tips will help you increase your levels of traffic- both from the links themselves & from your MUCH higher search engine rankings...

See YOU in the Top 10!