Saturday, September 15, 2007

Traffic

Ah, yes. Traffic.

The key to making money on the internet, regardless of what you are selling or advertising, is traffic. You already knew that. If you have a ton of traffic, that means tons of people are already clicking on your ads--and that means you are making money.

There are two ways to get traffic (people) to your site. Either you advertise or you rank highly in the main search engines. Preferably both. Advertising your site can mean many things, of course, but it usually means buying sponsored ads on Google and Yahoo. You need to do this if you are serious about making money on the internet.

Basically, you brainstorm and come up with keywords and keyphrases you think people are likely to be searching for (with regards to the subject of your website) and then you bid on some of those words or phrases. When people see the ads and click on them, they arrive at your website and you get charged for the click. There is no guarantee the visitor will buy anything or even click on one of your ads. All you are paying for are eyes showing up on your website.

The other thing you should be working on to increase traffic to your website is Search Engine Optimization. SEO. This is a little less straightforward than simply buying advertising, but it is also more fun. For some of us, anyway. With SEO, content is king. You have probably heard those words before. Believe them.

More about content later.

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