Tips & tricks to creating a gorgeous travel website

Sadly, how “gorgeous” your travel website looks is not going to rank it up through the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) on Google, but it will go some way to helping you to keep people on your website when they arrive, and may even help you to save a few holidays.

Take a look at your website from an outside perspective

Your first thought is going to be that you want to save money, but your second thought is that you are going to want value for money. For this reason, you should not sell your holidays on price. The price should be an after-thought, for after the user has decided that he/she wants to go on your holiday.

Make a list of the mistakes your competition are making

You can rest assured that your website is littered with mistakes. If that were not the case than you would not be looking at a website article for improving your travel website. However, you can also rest assured that your competitors also have travel websites that are littered with mistakes too.

You need to make a point of visiting your many, many competitor sites and listing down all of the mistakes that they have made. From things such as having images that are too dark or inappropriate images for what they are selling. Look for slow loading times or slow render times, and consider how easy it is to jump from page to page. Are the prices highlighted over the substance, etc? List all of the mistakes that you see and routinely eliminate them from your website.

Have the background match the location

This is a fairly easy trick that many travel websites ignore. It takes a little bit more web building, but is good for creating the right tone and atmosphere. For example, pages dedicated to Alaska or Greenland should have wintry scenes and a decoration on the background of the website. Similar tricks could be used for places such as Corfu or Brazil.

Lots of images of various places

Most holidays are sold on the back of the images that people see when they look at your website. This is why you need to include a lot of images on your website in order to really sell the holiday. It is also going to make your website appear more friendly and “gorgeous.”

Keep some of the images more personal

One mistake that travel websites make is having their websites too impersonal. They show all the locations, pan shots, sky shots, but fail to show people the smaller and more personal aspects. The best that most travel websites will do is show a few pictures of the hotel. But, people want to see what the holiday destination looks like from the ground level. They want to see how the beach looks when you have your back to the water. They want to see the side streets and people from the street level in a way that their own holiday photos are going to mimic.

Add in short video tours

This is a way of building on the idea above. You should show people how walking the streets and traveling around will look. They want to see the church across the water in Venice and the guinea pigs crossing the road in Peru. You should take a look at the videos that Disney World put out. They often have images from a high elevation, but they also have lots of shots of people walking around, of happy faces and happy encounters within their theme park. They do not show Mickey Mouse in a suit waving to a child because people are unaware that he is there.

Does your site lack substance?

There needs to be as much information as possible, but this does not mean create a user guide. That sort of thing (such as airport advice, money advice, etc), comes as an after sales product. What you need to do is show people what it would be like to be there right now. Do everything you can to make it very easy to picture yourself in that specific location.

Copy the things that work on your competitors’ websites

As you make your list of things that work from your competitors’ websites, you should also look for page/decorative elements that do work. Consider stealing their ideas in order to apply them to your own website. It may be anything from a web page theme to a full web page programmatic element.

About the author:  Kate Funk is a professional blogger and writer at www.speaken.net. She specializes in topics of interest to techno geeks and networking enthusiasts.

Business growth With Online Marketing

Most of the businesses reach a point in their growth where they want to expand and establish themselves as a bigger body. With the tools and applications that internet is providing, it is rapidly changing the ways in which business is carried out online. All the online media evolves by bringing in changes in marketing and behavior practices carried out online. To keep up with these continuous changes might be a little difficult for small sized and medium sized business’.

Trends in Online Marketing:

Mobile Commerce:
As the mobile and internet technology converge it is now possible for many consumers to access various websites, buy and pay for many items on their mobiles itself. Most of the manufacturers are now including QR codes to product packaging as they are looking forward to increase their mobile sales. You need to keep in mind that your company website is optimized so that it is easy for users to view it from the mobile phones if they would like to captivate the ever increasing mobile consumer market.

Social Marketing:
Social media platforms are the most forms of inexpensive ways for you to promote your business in the market. Their viral capabilities give you a lot of exposure giving you the opportunity to serve your existing customers and get in touch with your potential customers. While your presence in various networking sites will boost your business growth, some of them will have to focus primarily focus on few yet powerful networking sites like Google Plus and Facebook. Facebook now has more than 700 million users. It is predicted that it might have about a billion people by the end of 2013. Do you know that this social networking goliath is considered as the world’s 3rd populated country? So, I guess you must be able to make out how you can promote your services on such a large platform as this. On the other hand, Google plus has various marketing tools for building reputation, advertisement as an authority. It also enjoys the support of the Search Engine Herculean Google.

Rise of Social Consumers:
Online consumers these days are very much occupied in marketing campaigns, social media popularity, making decisions for purchasing items based on positive feedback from consumers. Search engines are now using the feedback from consumers of various products as search results display. Thereby, managing your brand reputation online has become even more important these days.

Online marketing strategy:

Market Research:
Having passion alone will not fetch you success in online business. You need to know if there is a market which needs the services and products you would like to offer. You need to study the market. Recognize and then target a section of the market. You will need to learn everything about your potential clients or consumers i.e., their needs and their language. Understanding the market and the potential customers clearly is fundamental for content creation and smart keyword research.

Goal Setting:
You won’t know where to head to if you don’t know where to get to. Evaluate your business’ current status, what it has accomplished till date and what should its goals be. Your business goals should be consistent with your website. You can increase conversions as you improve your sales copy and landing pages to encourage many to purchase your websites services and products. You can increase your leads by using list building methods like publishing useful content, adding a squeeze page or an email capture form or by offering freebies for email address. You can earn income by targeting better customers or by increasing prices.

Content development and content strategy:
Posting valuable content with the right keyword placement and keyword density promotes your site by flooding in visitors and the existing ones returning to your site. Quality content advances linking and sharing of the content, it stimulates follows, likes, comments and +1’s which is a crucial factor to gain search engine rankings.  An effectual content strategy when implemented consistently is liable to boost a website’s immunity against sudden alteration in search engines algorithms.

Keyword Research:
Including the appropriate keywords in websites’ text content and technical elements gains your website top search engine rankings and search engine visibility. Thereby, increasing traffic to your website. For example, if you are looking forward to start a PPI Claims Firm or a Cosmetics Firm, you will have to insert all the keywords related to it in your web content. This will surely help you boost traffic to your website.

Social Media strategy:
Generating quality backlinks to your website will also boost search rankings and traffic to your website. Social Media is useful for getting in touch with people who can share website content and create links to it and also for uncovering market problems and needs. Press releases can also help as most of them spend their time sharing, commenting and reading new articles they see on internet.

Coping with the accelerated advancements in online marketing might be a challenge. A proper digital marketing strategy must be very simple and easy to comprehend. It must be able to provide clear directions for the manger or owner to implement.

Written by: Joanna Luis. She has 2 years of experience in business in UK markets. She provides many suggestions for investors who were just beginners. In her free time, she writes articles related to business and finance. Presently, she is focusing on income support, a kind of income benefit and Online marketing trends.

Designing A Website That Drives Traffic

Do you remember the early days of the World Wide Web? Back then, consumers were so thrilled by the prospect of communications forum that they were pretty forgiving when it came to website design. If they stumbled across a website from their favorite brand that was little more than contact information and a few pictures, they were still pretty happy - but that’s not how the Web works today.

After a couple decades online, most consumers have very high expectations when it comes to corporate websites, even when it comes to small businesses. 

They not only want websites that look great, they want websites that provide useful content. Though that’s a tall order, it’s definitely not mission impossible for a small business.

Designing a website (and web strategy) that consistently drives traffic, and boosts revenue, is a very hands on process. It also requires a certain flexibility that allows site owners to embrace news technologies as they emerge.

If this sounds like a project you’re willing to tackle, here are some things you’ll want to think about.

More Than Just a Website

Those simple websites we described earlier are what’s known as, “static sites,” and wouldn’t really pass muster on today’s Web. These days, websites require a steady a stream of both content and promotion via e-mail newsletters, social media sites, search engine optimization, and word-of-mouth references.

Though the long-term goal of the aforementioned strategies is to start making these things happen on their own, this outcome can takes months or even years to achieve. The important thing to keep in mind is that your multi-pronged web marketing strategy can’t be executed haphazardly, and needs a solid foundation.

Actually Building and Designing a Site

If you’ve ever thumbed through an HTML for Dummies Book or a Guide to CSS3, you might think you’ve got what takes build your own site from the ground up. This do-it-yourself approach is definitely doable, but you need to really understand what you’re getting yourself into.
 

The day-to-day operation and maintenance of a website can be very time consuming. You might also find out that reading about something like CSS3 and actually implementing it are two entirely different concepts. Unless you’ve really got a knack for technology, you can get in over your head in to no time.

To avoid this outcome, you might want to consider hiring a professional website designer to help keep things on track. While there’s definitely no shortage of designers offering their service on the Web, you don’t want to hire just anyone. Make certain that your designer can come up with references and a solid portfolio.

We would also caution you to enter your dealings with web designers only after you’ve done some research on your own. The last thing you want is to be sold a lot of flashy bells and whistles that distract your customers and wind up costing you money in the long run.

Finally

Building out a successful web strategy is something that takes time and patience, but offers serious rewards. If you’re willing to make that investment, you’ll see a pretty solid return.

About the Author: Kelvin Thomas has many years experience of designing professional websites and promoting websites online.

6 Things Every ECommerce Website Should Have In Place

Running an E-Commerce site doesn’t have to be difficult when you know what your site needs to work at the best level possible. Ultimately, you want sales, but in order to achieve these you need to have a few essentials in place, so you can build up a great website and encourage both existing and new customers to choose you for the product or service they require.

Logo

Your logo is the key visual of your entire brand and you should put a lot of effort into what it implies and the message it sends to customers. Your logo should be memorable and completely unique, so that your business is easily recognizable to people choosing you. If you go for a generic logo, you may have to rely on the size of your business to see you through, this may not work for a smaller business relying on new customers, so make it enticing and interesting. 

Call To Action 

As we mentioned, your site is there ultimately to achieve sales, so this needs to be reflected in your calls to action on your site. You should concentrate on optimising these for the best possible results in terms of conversions. By learning the basics of conversion optimisation you can ensure that you make the most of your banners and linking elements of your pages.

Shopping Basket 

It is crucial that your customers have a smooth service when they go to purchase products, so you should make sure that you have a good and reputable shopping cart set up. If there is any sign that your shopping cart looks iffy, or falters as your customers are browsing the site, then it’s likely that  they won’t trust that your shopping systems are secure. If you’re running your site via a Content Management System (CMS), then try installing a trusted plugin such as WooCommerce or WP E-Commerce.

Strike A Balance With Paid and Organic 

Although it is possible to attract a lot of traffic through good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) practices, which you should be doing anyway, it is sometimes a good idea to invest a little budget into paid advertising. Although this doesn’t have to be your sole source of traffic generation, it does often pave the way to solid and targeted leads. If budget doesn’t permit, then maybe set in place a plan to progress onto paid search as business increases. 

Trust Signals 

Showing your potential customers that you are a reputable company can include a number of things. From gaining great reviews on sites such as TrustPilot, if applicable, or simply getting on-page testimonials from clients can really improve the likelihood of people choosing your business over your competition. The main thing you need to show the world is that you are a great place to buy from and that you will deliver on what you say you will. Other trust generating factors can include offering bonuses that others don’t, such as guaranteed delivery or loyalty rewards.

Linkable Assets 

The Internet is a social place, so offer content that people want to see and in turn share. This will make sure that your website gains attention from Social Media sites and not just through search engines. Connect with your customers and you will be sure to reap the rewards.

No matter what you choose to do with your site, always make sure that you focus on what your customers specifically want. This will be different for every business depending on what products and services you are offering, so make sure you tailor an individual approach.

About the Author: Katie Belliveau is an Internet marketing nut and likes helping businesses make money. She suggests you take a look at Davpack if you’re looking for reputable packaging supplies for your E-Commerce business.

Why Isn't My Website Working? Five Tips To Generate Traffic

Taking a “build it and they will come” attitude to a business website is a certain route to disappointment, yet many people still think that’s all they need to do. If the work on your website is limited to designing and uploading it, it’s likely that few people will ever find it, beyond you and those who visit it specifically - perhaps as a result of being given a business card. For your website to “work” you need an ongoing strategy to drive traffic towards it.

This article presents you with five tips to help you boost your readership stats.

1. Go Beyond a Brochure

Simple brochure style websites are better than nothing, but do little to engage people once they’ve had a quick glance at what your company does. Make adding content to your site something that you do on a regular basis – consider news pages, case studies and blogs. This gives readers something current to look at, and provides more content for search engines to find.

2. Hook People In
More links means more clicks, which in turn means more visitors. Be active in relevant communities such as forums and social networking groups, and make sure you link to your site in your posts and signatures. For example: if you provide services to small businesses, join some small business forums, contribute helpfully and intelligently, and people will probably click your company URL to find out more about you.

3. Optimize for Search (carefully)

The world of search engine optimization is in a serious state of flux at the time of writing, with several popular techniques (such as link sharing) being called into question. However, this doesn’t stop you from doing the basics – such as making sure your content is targeted towards relevant keywords, ensuring you have good quality site maps, and using keyword-rich image descriptions.

4. Promote your Site Offline

Make sure your URL is prominently displayed on your printed marketing literature and signage. Also, give your customers reasons to visit your site. If, for example, you have published a blog post that you feel may be of interest, email the link to encourage them to visit the site and read it. If the content is good, they may share it with others.

5. Consider Paid Advertising

If you want your website to bring you paying customers, you may wish to consider investing in banner ads or sponsored links. If yours is a crowded field, remember only ten firms can “win” by placing on Google’s first page for each search. If you can’t generate the traffic naturally, it may be worth paying to push yourself right to the top.

As you work to improve your site, it’s crucial to monitor the success of the steps you take. Google’s free Google Analytics service allows you to drill down into the readership of your site in extreme detail. Be sure to make use of the service to see which of your efforts are paying dividends, and which parts of your site are working for your readers.

About the Author: Debbie Thomson is a Content Marketing Specialist at GFI MAX, she is also a keen blogger and enjoys writing about many topics including business, technology and marketing.

Information on Buying Website Traffic

 

When you buy website traffic, you are almost guaranteed to get instant traffic. Many of the services that dedicate their businesses to building traffic for other websites offer a guaranteed number of visitors on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, making this one of the easiest and fastest ways to get website traffic. Although buying traffic from a traffic selling company is an assured way of generating visitors to your website or blog, there are a number of factors to consider before making that decision. 

WHY SHOULD I BUY WEBSITE TRAFFIC?
Most of the people think that using a Traffic Exchange program will generate a large number of quality traffic for free and it's the way to promote your site. The truth is that if you use ppc programs you will not get unique visitors, just a lot of visits from the same ip address. The point of buying website traffic is not that you will sell through that traffic, but that you will be in the first pages of major Search Engines and it will help you sell more. It can also be a very good way of increasing your Alexa rank. 

WHAT TYPE OF BUSINESSES BUY WEBSITE TRAFFIC?

Purchasing web traffic is not necessarily a brand new Web promotion idea. In fact, there's lots of online businesses that have been doing it for years. Though lots of of these companies are established already, they are not the only types of businesses who use such services. Sometimes the only way that a brand new, unknown website can get traffic is by purchasing it. Competing with sizable sites is hard, and sometimes, search engine optimization techniques are not enough to boost a brand new site's rankings in the search engines. 

WHERE CAN I GET TRAFFIC?

There's lots of online services that sell web-site traffic. To discover a sampling, basically type buy traffic or get traffic in to any Web search engine. You will be faced with such a large number of different options that you will have a hard time choosing which service to go with.In the event you are looking for referrals, think about visiting forums that have members who are online business owners or web developers. Lots of of the individuals who post in these forums may have already used or have some kind of knowledge about traffic building companies. In most cases, they are going to be able to offer you advice on their experiences. In the event you are unable to receive a referral, don't base your decision on cost alone. There may or may not be a difference between a traffic building service that offers 10,000 visitors per month for $20.00 and one that offers 10,000 for $30.00. Always inquire about services, as well as costs. 

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS TO ASK? 

Where Do The Visitors Come From?

How do you bring traffic to my website?

Do you ever use spamming techniques?

What type of traffic will be targeted: specific countries, specific languages, etc?

Are you able to guarantee that I will get traffic?

Will you provide me with stats?

Do you offer customer support?

How much will you charge me if I require to buy traffic?

Why is your service better than others?

When you buy traffic, most of the visitors you get will be from banner ads, pop-ups, pop-unders, and layers ads. The ads are placed all around the net. When a web visitor clicks on the commercial, they are going to be taken directly to your web-site. 

IS TRAFFIC GUARANTEED?

This is a hard question to answer because it depends on the service that you use to buy traffic. Some services guarantee that you will get traffic and others do not. Even in the event that they do guarantee traffic, they cannot guarantee sales. They cannot even guarantee that when you get traffic, it will stay on your site for over second. Nevertheless, you should always keep this in mind when deciding whether or not to buy traffic. Whatever you choose to do, make sure to track your traffic, your sales, and your overall results. After you have analyzed everything, it is possible for you to to basically choose if purchasing traffic to get traffic is in your best interests. 

SHOULD I BUY TARGETED TRAFFIC?

Buying targeted traffic can be the right decision to a new website if it has compelling, relevant content, and requires only exposure to a certain product or niche.There are a number of targeted traffic providers that you can easily find on the Internet that will give you a set of options at affordable prices. Targeted traffic can help boost your sales on a specific product you are marketing, as well as getting more feedback on the topic or niche you are writing about.The only task left for you is to ensure that your website or blog meets the expectations of all its visitors.

The success or failure of a website does not rely on whether or not you buy website traffic. It's just the beginning. Much is still to be done after the visitors finally arrives on your website and views the content. The fact that buying website traffic is literally only paying for the visitors attention, the next and probably most important step is how to keep that attention and how to keep your visitors returning.

How To Get Free Website Traffic Using Social Networking sites?

In the ongoing quest to increase website traffic,many website owners and businesses are learning the value of social networking; owners can attract new users to their websites through popular, user-driven websites like Facebook, Twitter and StumbleUpon. Each day, millions of users gravitate to social networks, where they can connect with others, share entertaining content and build new relationships. Social networking presents limitless opportunities to those who own and operate individual or business websites. 

Before you take the plunge into this ever growing trend, you need to understand how social marketing could lead to more page views. 

Social Networking Targets Large Audiences 
Social networking websites allow instant access to a large audience and user base. It takes mere minutes to create a profile on any highly trafficked social website and to begin posting information about yourself, your website or your business. The fun begins when you start adding friends who share your interests or who might be interested in your business. You can even go so far as to zero in on a niche, which can increase targeted traffic. In time, you’ll attract users to your website and gain valuable back links, both of which can lead to more page views. 

Most Professionals Use Social Networks 
Many online business owners have heard of social networking but are some what hesitant to use it as an advertising tool because they’re under the impression that these networks cater to youth—and if their business isn’t aimed at a young market, then they shouldn’t waste their time. They fail to see the value in it. This assumption is completely false; many social networking websites target career professionals, not teenagers. A recent survey conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity reports that approximately 80% of business professionals use personal and professional social networking websites. The same survey reveals that most professionals gravitate to LinkedIn, followed closely by Twitter and Facebook. 

Save Money With Social Networking 

When you have millions of users at your disposal, why would you even want to buy website traffic with a PPC campaign? Instead, add social networking strategies to your online marketing plan and save yourself some money. Numerous fortune 500 companies, including Bank of America, are monetizing with social networking applications, blogs and photo galleries.

In fact, according to Yahoo! Senior Product Manager Laura des Dorides, many companies that purchase micro-websites (i.e. websites geared to promoting one brand of a company) on the Yahoo Network now demand that social marketing tools - like Facebook applications and Flickr photo galleries be included. They understand that these tools generate traffic. Getting traffic for free is a rather large topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know apply the most important ways – i.e. the ways we have discussed here and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free.

How to Buy Website Traffic the Right Way?

Although everybody likes to generate website traffic for free, the reality of it is it can be very time consuming. While you wait for the free traffic methods to start to produce, it may be a good time to start thinking about buying traffic. Buying website traffic has been known to be a very powerful tool for generating traffic to your website. There are numerous companies that will provide you with unique visitors and targeted traffic to your site for a fee. This can be the fasted way to obtain traffic to your website or blog.

The 3 Most Widely Used Methods to Buy Website Traffic...

1. Pay Per Click Ads
Using the Pay Per Click (PPC) engines such as Google Adwords or Yahoo! Search Promotion is one of the best ways to buy traffic. You can start for a little investment and since you only pay when someone clicks your advertisement, you have some control over how much traffic is generated.The key to making PPCs work for you is to pick your keywords wisely. To learn what is working for your competitors, track their ads that are currently running and what keywords trigger them. Chances are in the event that they continue running the same advertisement without any changes, it is working for them!

2. Text and Banner Ads
Another effective way to invite targeted traffic to your web site is purchasing marketing space on sites related to yours. You can be positive that the people visiting your net site have an interest and may possibly buy your product.They have earned a bad reputation historically in the past, but banner ads are still an effective kind of marketing - since you can purchase them so inexpensively. Try them out and you may be pleasantly surprised by the results 

3. Buy Unique One-of-a-kind Visitors
Although it is not for everyone, some big name site owners claim to have great success with buying traffic. In the event you have some additional money in your budget, it may be worth trying. Before purchasing web traffic, you should first make sure that the website traffic company you plan on using is legitimate or legal. The less reputable web traffic companies use automatic generation script, which generates large numbers of fake hits to your web site. This means that there is only a single computer visiting your website automatically in a specified number of times.

In the event that they do not supply you with the information you require, you should basically avoid purchasing from them. You can also ask people you know who are generating a lot of web traffic about the company they are currently using or have bought traffic from.To make sure that the website traffic company is legitimate and protect you from frauds and online scams is to contact the company. 

Find out what methods they use to generate traffic to your web site. Another way to find out if the company is legitimate and do not use automatic generation script is to make use of the cPanel (if your website hosting provides you with one) you can use it to find out the visitors IP address.The IP address should be mostly different from one visitor to another. If the visitors IP address are mostly the same, the company is using automatic generation script. 

QUANTITY or QUALITY TRAFFIC? 

When you buy website traffic you have one of two options quantity or quality

While the choice might seem obvious, there is a major factor to consider:

Let`s say you own a video store or have ever worked in retail, which would you prefer to have – large amounts of people coming into your store and just browsing but not buying anything or a smaller number of people coming in and the majority of them buying something? If you are in business to make money than I believe it is obvious that you would want the second choice. This should be the same for your website, you want quality traffic that converts rather than a large amount of traffic that the conversion is very minimal. 

At first glance it looks logical that the more website visitors you get, the better it is for your business. But what good are all those visitors to you if they do not become paying customers? Statistically, having thousands of web visitors does look impressive. What you should look at is the actual percentage that converted into clients. Only then do you see the real picture. It is not the amount of traffic you attract; it is the kind of traffic you attract.

How to Get Unlimited Traffic To Your Website For Free?

Traffic generation is one of the most important tasks for any website or blog publisher. What is more, you can't generate traffic once and then just reap the benefits. Generating traffic to your website is an ongoing task that you must constantly be doing. There are thousands of sites out there that will sell you traffic to your website for a one time fee. However, there are many excellent ways to get a lot of traffic to your website or blog absolutely free. Knowing how and where to generate free traffic to a website can determine the difference between a sites failure or success.

10 Proven Ways To Get Website Traffic For Free...

1. Optimize your site for search engines 
Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site. SEO is not that difficult and if you want to get a helping hand, check out Scribe for SEO. Scribe is used by professionals all over the world to optimize their websites and get their sites to the top of the major search engines fast.

2. Frequently update the contents of your site
If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO, content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your site.

3. Take advantage of social bookmarking sites
Social bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free. If you want to learn how to do it, check out How to get free Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites, where we have explained what to do if you want to get free traffic from sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Delicious, etc.

4. Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts
Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth.

5. Get links with other sites in your niche 
Another way to get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you need a list of sites within your niche where you could get backlinks from, check for a quality Backlink Builder tool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.

6. Use any chance to promote your site for free
Free promotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your site work well but if you select the right places to promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic.

7. Create a free product or service
Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the site as well.

8. Use viral content
Free products and services are great for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.

9. Use offline promotion
Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.

10. Forum marketing
URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.

How to Keep your Website Visitors Returning?

A whole lot of successful sites depend on returning visitors. Returning visitors account for the majority of determining a websites success. Getting thousands of visitors a month to your website will not matter that much if they are all leaving as soon as they get to your homepage and not returning. Keeping that traffic on your website and returning is just as important as getting them to your website in the first place. Just remember that the key to building repeat traffic is to create a website or blog that is useful, unique and full of valuable content... 

Keep your website visitors returning with the following approaches... 

Fresh Content 

Keeping your site up to date with fresh content is one of the best ways to keep your customers on your site and attract them to keep coming back, you might have heard this over and over again, but it is what brings visitors to your site, if there was no content on your site, your site would be useless. It’s the text, images, and videos that you put on your website that makes it what it is, and brings in the visitors. 

By also keeping your site fresh and up to date, creates curiosity within your visitors, as they always want to know what you are up to and see if anything new is on your site. A perfect way of doing this is by setting up a blog on your site, which you update regularly, with news, events, and other promotions and offers that you may be running. Everyone loves a blog. 

Good Design 

Believe it or not, if you don’t have a attractive and unique design with easy an navigation so that customers can flow from one page to another with ease, they will not stay. Design and the look of your website plays’ an important role in keeping your customers on the site. Keeping your site simple and straight forward is the key, just look at Google’s home page. 

Social Networking 

Being active on social networking sites like facebook, youtube, and twitter. Start interacting and staying in touch with your customers, because this will always attract them to your site. Many of the times they don’t get to know about the offers that you run on your site but by mentioning it on your network platform, your followers and previous customers will always return to your site to check out any new offers you may have. 

Run Competitions 

If you lack in getting your visitors excited about your services and products, running a regular competitions for your customers and your readers can keep everyone in your network excited. Everyone likes to win and this will also encourage others to visit and explore your website. 

Newsletters 

From day one of your site start to build your mailing list, capturing customers email address, as this always comes in use on rainy days. On a regular basis you can send out to all on your mailing list the promotions, offers, news, tips and tricks encouraging them to visit your site. 

Go that extra mile 
Customers are always looking for best deal and value for their money. If you offer them an excellent item or service and go out of your way to ensure that your customers are happy and satisfied they will always come back to your site for more. This will also encourage them to tell others about your site and service, which will bring you new visitors, as they say “the best form of advertising is word of mouth.

Give something free 

Saw my local doughnut shop do this very well, every so often they have a Happy Hour, where they give out free doughnuts, and the number of customers are doubled that day. There’s no reason why one can’t implement this technique online to attract new customers, and also to keep your existing customers coming back for more. You could have a period on your website once a day, week or month where you are giving away free samples or a gift with all orders ordered on your happy hour.

Once you have the desired traffic to your website, you should take certain steps to assure your visitors stay on your site and return. Providing quality content for your customers that is not only informative but also entertaining and engaging will help to generate web traffic from genuine online customers. Including current information on your products or services will help provide customers with useful information like trouble-shooting for common problems faced. Maintaining customer assurance and building customer loyalty will not only help establish your business and grow a steady stream of web traffic but will encourage your visitors to return... 

What are the main reasons why visitors are not staying on your site?

Boring content – They have become bored of your site.

Not Required – The information on your site is no longer required.

Lost – The visitor happen to came to your site accidentally.

Poor site – The site is not attractive and not functional.

Competitors – It’s your competitors who are merely keeping an eye on what You’re doing.

Better sites – Your visitors found a better site that offers them more.

Let’s look at a few more reasons why your visitors are not staying on your site or returning back.

Loading time 

According to the most recent studies, one has less then 10 seconds to captivate a visitor. If ones website has slow loading pages, its over; you just lost your visitor to one of your competitors. Most of the time, it is because of big, slow-loading graphics that will decelerate the loading speed of your webpage. But if large images are absolutely necessary for your pages business, simply insert smaller thumbnails of your pictures on your pages and allow guests to click on them to enlarge it (preferably in a new window). As long as its up to the visitor to decide upon, nobody would object to a longer loading time. 

Pop-up ads 

There is not much to say about this but to AVOID them at all cost. A lot of people nowadays have pop-up blockers installed on their computer. So if your website is one that counts on pop-up windows to tell them something important, they wont even see it. In the end, having pop-up windows is just more trouble then its worth. 

Animations 

Like the article announced before, one has less then 10 seconds to grab a clients attention. With that said, guess how many people will actually hang around longer then they need to simply to view your elaborate animation? 

Sideways scrolling 

Make sure that your website will be displayed the way you want it on lower resolution monitors. Not everyone will have the same screen resolution as your monitor, so refrain from needing the visitor to scroll sideways. Also, if you page displays important information too far to the right hand side, there are chances it may not even show up on others screen. Simply put, its really quite unpleasant and you will likely end up losing the guest. 

Navigation 
Having proper navigation is essential to any good website. Do not attempt to be all fancy and complex with navigational features. Just keep it straightforward and logical, it will help users keep control and enjoy surfing through your site. If the visitor keeps getting lost or if the links keep bringing him every which way then there`s a problem.Basically, avoid complicated interactive navigation such as menus that open up to sub-menus that open up to sub-sub-menus that open up to you get my point. 

Contact information 
Having a visible and easy accessible Contact Us link is always helpful. If the customer cant get in touch with your company quickly, they will most likely leave. A good idea is to have an entire page devoted to contact material such as phone, email, fax, etc. Do not, and I repeat, DO NOT have large slow-loading graphics on this page. If the contact information does not load almost instantly, chances are the client will go to visit your competitors website. Also, when designing the Contact Us form or any other form on your site, keep it as short as possible. People do not enjoy answering a long list of questions. 

Non-HTML features 
Like for pop-up ads, a lot of people use blocking program like firewall to keep away from those annoying things that can potentially screw up their computer. Because of this, when visiting your page, a lot of clients may experience display and function problems as a result of your using of JavaScript, Java Applets, Cookies and so on. To be able to build a good and successful website, the use of non-html features is not necessary; therefore you should refrain from using them.