Top 10 Tips I Use To Build Traffic

1. Make use of article distribution sites. This is one of the fastest, and most straightforward ways of getting your content 'out there' and absorb by websites. Do it as soon as you have enough original content. Don't go for too many, just select about 3 article distributions sites and submit away (I like EzineArticles, IdeaMarketers and GoArticles).

2. Insert images into your web pages. I checked my logs and I have proof that images draw in a lot of 'extra' traffic. People search for images as well as web pages. So if your web page is about 'how to buy a laptop' and you have a picture named 'how-to-buy-a-laptop.jpg' - you will cover both the image searches and text searches.

3. Participate very actively in ONE forum. If you participate in an online forum, you will slowly build credibility with your web readers. Don't spam - please - just contribute and solve others' problems. And my style is to select only ONE forum to participate in. That way, you can build up your contribution base very quickly. If folks see you have 1000 posts in a forum, they tend to read what you say. And that means they are more likely to click your links or signature.

4. Send out your newsletter regularly. This is another important point. I personally fail to send my SBI newsletter regularly and it is costing me traffic. If you judiciously send your newsletter out, you get more and more traffic because folks come in to your website, read the latest articles and spread the word around. You also load a fresh copy of your newsletter in the SBI site so folks can search and find your newsletter page.

5. Respond to emails your readers write. Try to make it a point to solve problems and answer your readers emails. Trust me, if you build credibility this way, soon the word gets around and you will get more traffic.

6. Write more content everyday. Try to commit to write 2 articles a day. Don't give up - writing consistently is the surest way to build traffic over time. Keep it up, don't give up!

7. Don't try to do small tricks. Ok, this is not exactly a way to build traffic. But it does indirectly focus your energy and time, so in way, you will do the correct things to build traffic. What I mean here is to avoid doing small tricks to get traffic. For example, posting answers on Yahoo Answers, posting stuff at WikiHow, setting up scam auctions to attract people to your eBay page containing your URL - stuff like that. These things, when added up, take up a tremendous amount of time. Instead, cut away all these time wasters and just write those 2 articles a day. Then distribute them to an article directory.

8. Set goals. It is very important to set goals in this Internet stuff. I used to plod away randomly day to day writing content. Now I know better. I set a goal of 50 fresh articles per month. What I do is set up folders everyday in my laptop (e.g. '20 May 2008, '21 May 2008'). I make sure that every one of those folders gets filled with 2 articles a day. That way, I will surely meet my goal each month. 50 articles a month = 600 articles a year - believe me, the traffic WILL come with that volume of content.

9. Choose a topic where you can write a lot of 'how-to'. Here is something I learnt from experience. I know a lot of you choose SBI website topics based on your passion and interests. However, I'd like to add one more tip to guarantee greater success in building traffic. Choose a theme where you can write a LOT of 'how-to' articles. Why? Because 'how-to' articles build credibility. And they're easy to write. For example, for one of my sites, I chose a topic on digital photography (heck of a lot of 'how-to' I can write there). On another site, I chose a topic on baby strollers (there is not much 'how-to' I could write there). Needless to say, I closed down the baby stroller website.

10. Faith and passion. I don't mean to make this sound like spiritual advice, but having faith in your SBI site is very important in building traffic. Faith and passion is the fuel that will make you come back to write articles day in and day out. So keep that plenty of that fuel there inside you. One day, you WILL succeed.