By Andrew Mollison

To get sales of your product or subscribers to your service or newsletter, then you need to get traffic, as without traffic you will not get either.

Yet generating website traffic is one of the hardest things to do, sure you may get lucky and invent the next Facebook or Twitter, but for the vast amount of websites then getting traffic is not easy. Indeed a lot of people who build their own websites struggle just to get their sites indexed in Google.

If generating traffic was easy we would all be Internet millionaires!

So if you have a website, or want to start one then how do you go about getting traffic?

Well there are two ways in which to do this, buy it or carry out Search Engine Optimization (SEO) in order to gain free traffic.

Buying traffic can bring goods results if your site converts its sales well, but can cost you dearly if it does not. There are various forms of what we can class as “Paid” traffic, from buying banner ad space on other sites through to using Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. Depending on how much you are prepared to spend then using paid traffic can bring in lots of traffic fast, but it is only the PPC traffic that is likely to be targeted and result in sales. Avoid buying in offers of 10,000 visitors for $20 etc. as you have no idea of where these visitors are being generated from, and you may find that major search engines actually mark your site down as a result of this traffic.

SEO is the best way to generate large volumes of free, targeted traffic that will keep coming to your website month after month, long after your PPC campaigns have ended.

SEO takes a lot of skill due to the large number of factors involved in relation to your websites on page and off page optimisation, and in addition the search engines are always changing their ranking algorithms, which means the factors involved in SEO are also ever-changing.

If you have built your own website then there is quite a bit you can carry out yourself, however if you are considering getting a website built by a web development company then it is worth looking at what SEO services they offer in order to help you generate long-term free traffic. A good web design company may not offer the Search Engine Optimisation services that a web development company does.

The first may help you just design your site, whilst the latter designs it and then helps generate traffic to it, and traffic is key to making sales.

Generating off page traffic can involve a very wide variety of activities from blog posting, posting on related forums, article promotion, press releases, ezine articles, and newsletters to name but a few.

Bad traffic generation methods to be avoided are banner exchanges – you have no idea where your banner is being displayed, link farms, bulk traffic purchases, and buying in poor quality back links, all of which can negatively affect your site’s popularity.

So consider these factors carefully when choosing how to generate traffic to your site, and ideally consult a web development expert in traffic generation and SEO.

TME Solutions provide Web Design in Kent, and aid clients with various methods of generating website traffic throughout the site launch and development process.

Article Source:  Generating Website Traffic

20 Free eBooks About Social Media

1. The New Rules of Viral Marketing – David Meerman Scott
2. Marketing Apple – MarketingApple.com
3. Masters of Marketing – Startup Internet Marketing
4. Podcast Marketing eBook – Christopher S. Penn
5. Google Adwords Secrets – SEOBook
6. Get Viral Get Visitors – Stacie Mahoe
7. Marketing With Case Studies – Dynamic Copywriting (Bad Link)
8. How to Write a Marketing Plan – Geisheker Group
9. SEO for WordPress blogs – Blizzard Internet
10. Social Web Analytics – Social Web Analytics
11. Geeks Guide to Promoting Yourself With Twitter – Geekpreneur
12. The Zen of Blogging – Hunter Nutall
13. What is Social Media – iCrossing
14. A Primer in Social Media – SmashLab
15. Effective Internet Presence – Effective Internet Presence
16. Introduction to Good Usability – Peter Pixel
17. Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program – CRM Transformation
18. We Have a Website. Now What? – Craig Rentmeester
19. Blogs & Social Media – PRSA
20. The Podcast Customer Revealed – Edison Media Research

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/20-free-ebooks-about-social-media/