Everyone wants to know the big secret to driving traffic to their website. Every day I see an article or an ad talking about driving people to your website. Driving traffic to a website has become the “holy grail” on the internet. People are realizing that 'if you build it, they won't come... unless you give them a reason'. Website traffic just doesn’t happen by itself. Your website is just one of many millions on the web and people rarely just stumble upon your site by accident.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. You can buy traffic from vendors that will pummel your website with hits from automated programs. This will increase your hits but will it increase your bottom line? Probably not. You can set up blogs that spider (connect to) your website increasing your traffic count. Does this drive users to your website? Only if your blog is sointeresting that people are reading it. There are thousands of blogs posted on the internet and your blog is just a needle in the internet haystack.

Another trick is to create RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for your website and subscribe to other RSS feeds. This again will increase your hit count but will do very little to drive potential customers to your website unless you’re providing valuable information. Tricks will increase your hit count but do very little todrive potential customers to your website.

A better way to buy traffic for your website is by using pay-per-click with Yahoo and Google. You identify the most common keywords associated with what you’re offering and bid on those keywords. This can be a costly option if you’re bidding on popular keywords but it’s a reliable way to generate highly targeted traffic. In my next newsletter I’ll go into more detail about using pay-per-click advertising.

The best way to generate traffic for your website is to provide quality content that will solve your customer’s problems. People search the internet for information that will solve their problems. Write and post as many articles as you can on your website.If you don’t have time to write articles or can’t write then hire someone to write the articles for you. You can have quality articles written by freelance writers at www.elance.com for practically nothing. The articles should be relevant to the problems your customers are experiencing and to the services you provide to solve those customer problems. Remember, it’s all about providing solutions to your customer’s problems. Check the “How To” Articles section on my website at www.valiss.com for more information about your website content.

The bottom line is that you can’t trick people into finding your website. You must provide valuable information that solves your customer’s problems. Your customers don’t come to your website to read your blog about how you spent the weekend. They’ll come to your website if they know they can find a solution to their most pressing issues. Keep your content fresh and relevant to solving your customer’s problems and in no time you’ll have plenty of visitors to your website.

Next time I'll talk about how you can use pay-per-click to generate targeted traffic and not spend a fortune.

Ted Prodromou spent over 25 years in the computer industry working for IBM, Digital, and Cellular one. Today he's the owner of Valiss IT, a consulting firm that provides small business coaching and marketing help. He’s also a certified personal and professional coach.

Ted has created and led many coaching workshops and today is helping small businesses automate their marketing with his latest coaching program, "Attract Clients While You Sleep". For more information visit http://www.valiss.com/specials.

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