Targeted Website Traffic - What not to Do

Traffic is the lifeblood of every website but not every type of traffic directed to a website will be beneficial to the owner. A carefully created stragey for generating targeted traffic will enable the website owner to build a stable foundation for their business. The wrong traffic could kill a business.

Listed below are 4 website strategies that you should always avoid is you want to build a steady flow of targeted traffic that could subscribe not just to your list but emerge as a paying customer.

1. Buying Traffic. This is where a website owner pays for links to their website. The trouble is these links could be placed on another website that does not compliment the product or service offered. The end result will be visitors to your website (it will generate some traffic) but the quality of that traffic will be poor. Just remember that poor quality website traffic, unlike targeted traffic, is unlikely to subscribe or even more importantly buy your product. Spending more on links may just be wasting money as the concept is rather flawed in the first place.

2. Traffic Exchanges. These websites request that you sign up and start to look at other member websites whereby you will be rewarded for doing so by reciprocal visits to your website. Just remember, it will take you an enormous amount of time looking at other websites to build you reward points. This encourages surfing just for the sake of building points. Do you want visitors to your website coming for the sole reason to build their points? This is not the quality traffic that you are looking for. Some traffic exchanges cost money to buy into a higher membership level promising better quality traffic. You are unlikely to see an acceptable return on your investment using this method.

3. Banner Ads. There was a high volume of websites with flashing banners and graphics a few years back but they are fewer in number now. They have probably had their day. You placed banners or graphics that were clickable on a high traffic website and they took the viewer back to your website. Unfortunatley, too often these graphics or banners were just not relevant to the product and many websites were just plastered with them. It not just confused the viewer but could annoy them as well.

4. Safe Lists. These are lists that you sign up to and agree to receive emails from other website owners. In effect it cut out spam. You have to pay for the service and in return are promised that you will receive a torrent of targeted traffic to your website. Often, the torrent turns out to be a trickle and those that do pay your website a visit are mostly likely not who you are trying to target. This can be costly for you and should be avoided.

For every one poor website traffic strategy there are lots of genuine ones that are proven to work, don't cost you anything and are easy to implement. Website traffic strategies andsearch engine optimisation go together as the higher up the search engines your website is the more traffic it is likely to generate. If website owners are paying big money to use Google's Adsense, then this proves that a high search engine placing will bring traffic to your website. But there are other methods available that are free to gain high search engine placings that anyone can use.

By using the proven methods for website traffic generation a website owner will always have a better chance of targeted website traffic flowing to their website rather than use these outlined methods that will cost you time and money but result in very little if any traffic, and mostly unlikely any targeted website traffic that a website based business requires to thrive.