Traffic Methods That Actually Send YOUR Traffic to OTHER Websites
Believe it or not, there are many rather popular website promotionmethods that actually drive traffic away from your website. Theyusually clutter up your website with a bunch of graphics and dovirtually nothing to improve your bottom line.Here are just a fewexamples:Top Sites ' The premise is that you put a vote button on yoursite and people click to vote for you, raising your site up in the listof 'top sites'. People who visit the top site list see your site nearthe top and click on your banner to see what your site is all about.Things to consider: You have to put a graphic on your site. Ofcourse, you will make the link open in a new window, so you don?t loseyour visitor, but you have created a distraction for your visitor. Youwant your visitor to focus on your sales message, not a graphic thatleads your visitors away from your website. Let's be serious. If you've participated in a Top Site or visited a topsite page, when's the last time you did any shopping from it?Realistically, the Top Site List serves to best promote the websitethat created the list rather than the individuals on that list. Checkyour website stats to see how much traffic you get from this list andsee if anyone buys.Banner Exchange ' Everyone participating in the exchange placesa banner on his site. This banner rotates throughout the participatingsites every time a page refreshes. The premise is that you get a lot ofexposure by having your banner appear on a number of sites.Things to Consider: Again, you have to put a distracting graphicon your site. Usually banner exchanges are made up of like-sites. Whywould you send your visitor to your competitor?! Most banner exchangesgive you one impression of your banner for every two times the bannerexchange appears on your website. Does it seem wise to possibly giveaway two visitors for every one visitor youmight get back to your site? As in the Top Site List, the bannerexchange serves best to promote the website that created it. The bannerexchange usually has a link to the creator's site underneath thebanner. This is the one link that doesn't change on the rotation, thus,giving the creator constant exposure on all sites, but giving you verylittle in return.Web Rings ' A web ring is a graphic placed on a website thatallows visitors to travel from one related website to another. The ideais that everyone puts the graphic on her home page to create acontinuous 'ring'.Things to Consider: It's the same old story. You're creating adistraction for your visitor and potentially sending your traffic toyour competitor. It just doesn't seem like a good idea. These rings areoften broken by members and you never know it.And even more BAD ideas' Buying Hits ' It is so sad, but there is an entire industry thattakes advantage of traffichungry website owners. If you see an ad thatsays, 'Buy 10,000 targeted hits' or an eBay auction that says, '2Million Hits to Your Website,' run the other way.Here's how these programs work: Your entire web page pops-upwhile somebody is surfing another website or is using particularsoftware. Sometimes these hits are delivered within in a day or a fewdays and you have no idea where your site is popping up.You must realize that these aren't bonus fide visitors to your website;it's just people who may have been annoyed by your website popping upin their faces.Let's go back to our conversion rate calculations. We know that a 1conversion rate isn't bad. If buying hits was a good idea, we would get100 sales for every 10,000 hits we bought. We've tested this. It justdoesn't happen. And don't be fooled by people who tell you they cantarget your hits by country or industry. There is NOTHING targeted byforcing someone to view your website without permission.Surfing for Traffic ' There are all kinds of programs where youcan surf other people's websites in return for other people surfingyours. These programs are generally free. Search Engine Submission ' It's big business but is a COMPLETE waste of time and money' Let us start by saying that you should NEVER pay anyone to submityour website to search engines. First of all, many of these programsuse auto-submitters, which are against many search engine guidelines.But the biggest scam of all is that these companies will say thingslike:Submit your site to the top 500 search enginesYour site submitted to 5000 search enginesLet's be serious. There aren't 5000 worthwhile search engines, letalone 500. There are just a handful of search engines that will bringyou a significant amount of traffic. These include Google, Yahoo, andMSN. Then you'll probably see some traffic from AOL, Netscape, AskJeeves, EarthLink, DogPile and a few more. But you know what? You don't actually have to submit to these sites toget listed. Search engines follow links on the Internet and if you havewebsites linking to you, these search engines will find you. So, if youwant to get listed and stay listed, all you need is to acquire a fewlinks to your website.If you don't believe us, take it from Google
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