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6 Ways to Drive Targeted Traffic to Your Website
1. Blog for Business: Blogging for business is free and is an excellent way to attract thousands of potential customers to your website, increase your search engine rankings, and boost company credibility. Regularly posting a blog also builds loyal readership and attracts more people to your website.
2. Comment on Blogs: Posting comments on blogs, forums, and discussion boards related to your target market and industry is a great way to increase site traffic. Use these platforms to post comments, get consumer feedback, and search for industry updates. Posting relevant and helpful comments increases your credibility and lures more readers to your website. After every comment, include a link to your blog or website to increase targeted traffic.
3. Socialize Online: Social media sites effectively integrate your business into the online community and help give your company result-driven online exposure. They’re a great place to post inbound links to your website and are a way to express industry expertise. Social media sites allow you to post recent news, company events, company information, discussion questions, and other useful tools to build solid online relationships.
4. Bookmark Your Business: Bookmarking your online articles, blogs, and website in specific categories on a social bookmarking site, such as Digg, allows you to reach out to your target market. These sites permit you to share web content with others and allow them to vote on the content. If this content becomes popular among viewers, it will be voted to the front page of the bookmarking site and be viewed by thousands of potential clients.
5. Utilize RSS Feed: RSS feed allows you to reach subscribers interested in what your company has to offer. RSS feed is similar to emails since they’re both sent to subscribers, providing them with updated information. RSS feed makes it easy for subscribers to be alerted immediately and allows them to click on the link to your website. Using email together with RSS feed will increase your client base and increase site traffic.
6. Post Articles: Online article directories allow you to place niche-oriented articles into specific categories, targeted at your specific market. For example, if your real estate company writes an article for ezinearticles.com and submits it under the real estate category, you’ll receive viewers who are specifically searching for your articles.
Build Long-Lasting Relationships on LinkedIn
LinkedIn has become an extremely popular social media site for promoting your business. It’s an excellent online vehicle for building a massive networking system, a larger online presence, and driving higher targeted traffic to your website. LinkedIn offers a variety of features beneficial to the success of your company. This site allows you to join groups related to your industry or of interest to you personally. Also, the site allows you to build a detailed company profile, request recommendations, and join in on industry discussions. It’s also a great place to search for jobs, people in your industry, and other companies in your industry.
LinkedIn has several areas of information to fill in to create a complete profile. These areas of information include your current position, two past positions, your education, your profile summary, a profile photo, your specialties, and at least three recommendations. You can choose to add certain information while leaving other details out if you prefer. But, according to LinkedIn, “Users with complete profiles are 40 times more likely to receive opportunities through LinkedIn.”
One of LinkedIn’s greatest features allows you to recommend someone or recommend yourself. You can recommend excellent service providers you’ve used, a colleague, or someone you went to school with. You can also ask colleagues, clients, managers, and employees to endorse your work. According to LinkedIn, “users with recommendations are three times as likely to get inquiries through LinkedIn searches. Ask your colleagues to speak up for you and get endorsed.”
LinkedIn is the perfect site to join since it’s one of the most elaborate and connected networks on the internet today. Integrated social networks, such as LinkedIn, are so intricate and virtually all connected, that by participating in one, you are bound to get a heavy traffic flow to your business site.
What makes LinkedIn so complex? LinkedIn has different circles of personal connections such as “circle one,” with your very personal contacts and “circle two” with the contacts of your personal contacts. If you only had one contact, you could virtually have 130 contacts in your second circle just from that one person.
It’s important to always remember to stay active on networking sites, such as LinkedIn, and constantly build your network.
Social Media Sites for Business: Which Ones Should You Join?
No longer are social media sites just being used to interact with friends and meet other people for social and entertainment purposes. These sites are being used by many businesses to promote themselves online, network with others, build company credibility, and express their industry expertise to the online community.
Some of the most popular of the social media sites are Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. These sites have recently received a lot of attention in the news because of their popularity among businesses.
There are dozens of social media sites, and it’s important to choose which types would benefit your company the most. Every company has different needs, and sometimes, your time is better spent on one type of social media site as opposed to another. It’s better to spend a solid three hours a week networking and promoting your business on two or three social media sites instead of joining five or six. Keeping your company present on social media sites takes some time. If you join six, you might compromise quality for quantity. Go for quality every time.
When deciding which social media sites to join, it’s important to take into account the type of business you run. Look at the features of each social media site in order to make your decision on which one would be the most effective.
Below are descriptions of Twitter and Facebook. Although there are several social media sites to choose from, these are two of the most popular.
Twitter works in a way similar to a mass text message. If you’re part of a fast-pace company that does new and exciting things each day, Twitter might be perfect for you. Twitter updates should inform your followers about what you’re doing at that moment during the day, ask a question to followers, ask advice to followers, and send an industry update to followers. If your company is a financial firm, Twitter might not be the way to go. A great example of a company that would benefit from Twitter would be a travel company, where updates are more timely and entertaining.
Facebook is another excellent tool for building your company’s online presence. It’s primarily used to illustrate your company’s overall mission, services, and image. There is room for large amounts of content and media. Facebook has more features than Twitter, but it’s not as timely as Twitter. Two of Facebook’s greatest features for businesses to use are the company page and group page applications. These two features allow you to create a page for your company where you can post company news, events, photos, videos, and industry updates.
Google Introduces Google Friend Connect API
Google has recently launched its new Google Friend Connect API, which works the same way many social media sites do. Just like social media sites, Google Friend Connect (GFC) is an excellent tool for companies to use to drive targeted site traffic and grow a successful business online.
This free online marketing tool works with blogs and discussion forums to build a niche-oriented online community on that specific blog / forum. GFC plug-ins are now available on Wordpress, allowing you to add a more interactive and social aspect to your blog.
Using effective SEO techniques to drive traffic to your blog is the first step. The next step is to build a loyal group of readers and allow them to interact on your blog more than ever before. If you use the GFC tool correctly, you can build strong and long-lasting relationships with customers, drive targeted traffic to your website, build readership, and allow visitors to have an entertaining experience on your blog.
How Does GFC Work?
• Allows visitors to sign in to the GFC aspect of your blog using their personal Google, Yahoo, OpenID, or AOL AIM account and make friends, share media, comment, and invite friends from their other social networking sites to visit your blog.
• Permits visitors to become members of the blog and create a profile or upload an existing profile from a social media site they’re a member of.
• Offers entertaining social features that engage visitors more and encourage them to visit your website and continue to visit your blog.
All of GFC’s features allow you to build your own niche-oriented online community centered on your blog. This community will consist of people interested in your industry expertise and business. The growth is viral and is an excellent time investment if you want to build a successful business online.
The Twittersphere: A Funny Twitter Video
When we came across this video we found on YouTube, we couldn’t stop laughing a this fantastic exaggeration of Twitter. Tweet. Tweet.
Squash Negative PR on Social Media Sites
In the March 13 WebProNews article, “Fighting a Bad Online Reputation & Keeping a Good One,” author Chris Crum brings up some excellent points on how social media sites can spell disaster for some companies. Because there is so much interaction and freedom to say whatever you like, anyone could severely tarnish your company name.
There is always going to be someone on the web trying to bring your company down, and it’s extremely important to make an effort to be present on several social media sites in order to counter any negative opinions. Although you’ll never catch all the bad things people say, it’s important to keep your company in a positive light and build a strong network of loyal followers on these sites. This will counteract to the bad comments some people might be saying about your company. A strong and large network can silence these negative comments and keep your reputation intact.
In addition to building a strong network, Crum suggests using several online tools to find places harboring negative publicity about your company. According to the article, Trackur tracks blogs, other sites, images, and video. The article also provides a link to an article on Duct Tape Marketing, which provides a list of “34 online reputation management tools.”
In regard to the frightening publicity situation, Crum offers some wise advice to businesses:
“PR disaster is much more likely to strike when the business itself does not monitor its reputation. Tools are there for you to use. Don’t ignore them. Otherwise, it might be your company somebody tweets about having a poor product, leading to all of their followers seeing the negativity and possibly blogging about it which can then be linked to, and so on and so forth. I don’t think you want to go down that road. Just watch yourself.”
Start building a strong online network now, and begin using the tools Crum’s article mentions. Your company will thank you for the dedication.
To view the entire WebProNews article, click here.
Use Social Networking to Gain Market Share
Check out this great video on company’s using social networking to increase revenue and to increase brand awareness. This video comes from Fox Business.
The Path to Online Business Success
Are you ready to nurture your company into a successful online business? If so, check out our Facebook group,
The Path to Online Business Success.

This group is for businesses eager to grow their company online. If you are struggling with growing your online presence, getting traffic to your website, and converting site visitors into paying customers, then this group is perfect for you. Here’s what you get when you join The Path to Online Business Success:
• Invitations to free teleseminars where you can hear expert advice—from SEO to website design.
• Industry news, case studies, and updates.
• The Weekly Seed – a tip or stat once a week to help you grow your business online.
• Instant access to a network of companies and the opportunity for discussion.
**If you have an event or a teleseminar you would like to promote on The Path to Online Business Success, feel free to contact the administrator. So what are you waiting for? Isn’t it time you grew your company online?