We all know that in order to make money on the web, we need traffic. It’s not always so easy to get that traffic though. Below I’m going to go through some simple ideas that you can use to generate traffic for your website.

Create a Valuable Resource

Write an article or post a list of resources that people can use and refer back to. For example, if you have a website about starting a website, create a list of all the places where you can submit your site to. Make sure the list is accurate and goes directly to the page that they need. By this I mean, don’t just send them to a homepage so that they have to search out the page that they need to submit to. Make sure the link goes directly to the submission page. Make this list exhaustive! Really put some effort into it and make sure you have created the best resource you can.

Once you’ve completed the list and posted it on your site, advertise the list to the world! Post in forums relating to your market, submit it to user groups, even submit it to some of the free press release networks! If you have truly created a great list you’ll be amazed how many people will start linking to it and referring their visitors to your site. I’ve gained thousands of visitors each month by doing this and I always make a point of going back to the lists from time to time and check that the links still work and adding new ones to make sure it continues to provide a valuable resource.

Write and Submit Articles to Article Directories

One of the best ways to get links to your website is by writing articles and making them freely available for others to use on their websites. In return for writing the article, you are allowed to include a resource box which will contain a link to your website or product.

The benefits of doing this are twofold. By having your articles printed on hundreds of other websites, each containing a link to your site, you greatly increase the opportunities for people to click through to your site. If you write original and engaging articles the amount of people that then go on and click on your link can be quite high.

The second benefit of this is the effect on your search engine ranking. To explain this better let’s have a look at how your website is ranked. One of the factors search engines use when ranking sites is the number of incoming links your website has. It grades the quality of those links based on a number of factors such as the age and standing of the website within a given sector. (Is it an authority site?). How relevant the site is in comparison to yours. So a link from an authority site in the same sector as your website is worth much more than 100 links from sites with no relevance to yours.

So how does writing articles help you? Well, the majority of people that will re-print your article will have relevance to the topic that you are writing about, and therefore your website or product. You are therefore getting links from sites in the same sector as yours. If you consistently write good, popular articles, you’ll also find them being published on some of the sector leading sites, resulting in a huge jump in your search engine traffic!

Below you’ll find an extensive list of the top article directories that you can submit your articles. If you want a quicker solution and have a small budget to get the task automated it could be well worth your while to look at SubmitYourArticle.com. The will submit your article to all the biggest article directories as well as a lot of niche directories for your chosen category as well as to a number of mailing lists and user groups. I’ve used them for nearly 2 years and greatly benefited from the increased traffic I’ve recieved.

List of Article Directories

SubmitYourArticle.com

Create an RSS Feed of your Content

RSS (which, in its latest format, stands for “Really Simple Syndication”) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed”, “web feed”, or “channel”, contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favourite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.

By creating an RSS feed you’re allowing people to view articles and updates on your site without them having to go to your site. When you add something new to your website or blog, your RSS feed will be updated and will appear in peoples RSS readers. If what you’ve added looks interesting to them, they are given the link to click through to read it on your website. RSS feeds can also be displayed on other websites so visitors scanning another website may see your link and through that click through to your site. A lot of web publication software such as WordPress come with RSS feeds built into the software. Otherwise you can find tutorials on how to create on for your site.

Search for tutorials on how to create an RSS feed.

Once you have an RSS feed, you need to publicise it. I found this great site that lists most of the most important sites that you’ll want to submit your feed to. RSS feed directories

I hope this has given you some ideas about some simple ideas that can generate a heap of traffic. Make sure you have great content on your site to keep all these new visitors you’ll find yourself with! It’s one thing to get traffic, but if you can keep those new visitors coming back time and again then you’ll really see the profits start rolling in.