Top Traffic Sources - 5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Site

Website owners devote much of their time to devising ways to drive traffic to their websites. Site owners know that the more traffic that they can drive to their site, the better their chances are for turning those visitors into paying customers who buy up their products or services. On a daily basis, site owners rack their brains and search for ways to find the best sources for generating site traffic and attracting new readers.

Which methods are the most effective? The following are five of the tried and tested ways to drive traffic to your website.

No. 1 -- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing is the number one way to build website traffic. Statistics show that 85 percent of website traffic comes from organic search engine listings. Organic search engine listings are not the paid links that show up on the side of the search engine; they are the listings that appear along the middle of the page when a search is conducted online. In most cases, the top source for site traffic is to optimize your website so that you can achieve high rankings in the organic listings of search engines.

No. 2 -- Articles

Another great way to drive traffic to your site is with the use of informational articles that provide a detailed explanation of your product or service offering without making it an actual advertisement for your business. Articles that are posted online usually have an “About the Author” box at the bottom of the article that allows for a small “plug” about the author and the business that the author is involved in. Readers that find the article useful can then go to the author’s website for more information. Informational articles can also translate into organic traffic if the articles are published on your site, as well as other sites on the Internet because the search engines will index articles as part of the content of the sites where the article is published.

No. 3 -- Blogs

In the past few years, blogs have made their way into the online scene as another form of marketing to drive traffic to websites. Blogs are being used by companies to post information that relates to their business, which often inadvertently drives traffic to the business site because searchers land on the blog looking for information. The blog provides the information that the surfer is looking for, while also offering other resources for the product or service in question. Blogging serves as an important means of driving traffic toward business websites.

No. 4 -- Newsletters

Electronic newsletters allow businesses to drive more traffic to their site by conducting direct mail campaigns to the newsletter subscribers. Since the subscribers signed up to receive information and promotions from the company, the site owner knows that the subscribers are part of their target market and are interested in the products and services that the business has to offer. By providing promotions, information, articles and resources to the subscribers, companies can drive traffic to their site and increase the chances this additional traffic will convert into successful sales.

No. 5 -- Online Directories

Another great source for traffic is listing your website in online directories. Because directories are separated into categories, your site will be listed in the most appropriate category that pertains to your business. This provides a significant benefit and can translate into targeted traffic being driven to your website. Online directories also give your site credibility because it will be listed with industry related businesses that fall into the same category that your business falls into.