by Usha Krishnan

Created on: April 08, 2008   Last Updated: June 13, 2009

You've set up your site. Your family and friends have visited and commented on how wonderful it is. And now you're waiting expectantly for your real visitors' to show up. And nothing seems to be happening. If this sounds like a familiar scenario, then the following tips should help you draw traffic to your site and keep it coming in a never-ending stream.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO): Everyday, millions of Internet users go online and use search engines like Google or Yahoo to pull up information. While there are many search engines out there, they differ in structure, search strategy and efficiency. To get the best exposure, ensure your site is listed on a few of the top ones. You can do this by choosing wisely the keywords you select for your domain name, title tag and text. Ensure that your opening page is keyword rich and make sure that each page on your site has a unique title tag. Then submit your domain name to various search engines and get to monitoring them. You'll need to be patient as a SEO project can take a while. If you need to make changes in the text on your opening page to move up the rankings, then do so. If you find it hard to submit and monitor your site on a regular basis, there are companies such as trafficboost.com that will do so, for a fee.

WEB ADVERTISING: There are various ways to advertise your site, such as banner advertising, banner exchange programs, logo advertising and pay per click advertising. Companies such as Google, Yahoo and MSN offer this form of advertising, where you pay only for the number of times your ad is clicked on. Your ad is also ranked based on the amount you bid per click and the higher the bid, the better your chance of being ranked in the top position.

AFFILIATES: Firms that sell products and services on their websites for commissions offer another way to draw site visitors. Affiliates place merchant promotions on their websites to sell goods or services. In return, they earn commissions on leads or purchases made through their site. Some of the popular affiliate programs can be found through sites like linkshare.com and clickslink.com

EMAIL CAMPAIGNS: One of the best ways to attract visitors to your site is through an email campaign to current and past associates. Be careful how you word your email so it does not appear to be spam. Make sure that all future outgoing emails have your link advertised on it.

GET PUBLISHED: On other sites that is. And have a link to your site, which in turn promotes you as an expert.

NEWSLETTERS: Create a newsletter which goes out on a regular basis and build up your subscriptions.

CHAT FORUMS AND WEB RINGS : Join relevant chat forums and web rings and be a contributing member. This way, people interested in chatting with you will also visit your site.

KEEP YOUR VISITORS: And finally, make your site graphically pleasing and easy to navigate. Avoid bold colors and hard to read graphics. Leave a section for customer feedback, promotions and discounts. Doing so, should guarantee repeat customers and attract new ones.

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