There are many ways to increase web  traffic, both free and paid strategies and some are more effective than others according to how much work you put into it. Some marketers spend thousands of dollars on SEO and PPC tactics, video and joint venture attempts and still have mediocre results. This doesn’t include the money wasted on DVD’s, E-Books and Training Programs all claiming to teach you how to do this effectively. The answer is simple. Using free software to increase web traffic is a highly effective, yet fairly inexpensive way to generate tons of traffic your website.

If you have spent any amount of time seeking ways to get people to your website, you have undoubtedly come across article marketing, which requires submitting a number of articles to hundreds of websites. There is video marketing, pay per click campaigns and Tweeting on Twitter as well. Many of these strategies take either a significant amount of time and/or money. If you do it yourself, you have to spend time and if you outsource the tasks you have to spend money.

Why Should I Consider Free Software

Software creation and distribution could be the answer to your traffic problem. Don’t worry if you have no experience, there are several programs that show you how to create your own software, or you can hire someone to create it for a decent rate, or join one of the software membership sites.

Now you are probably wondering, what is so great about software? Well, it is not the creation of the software, it is the distribution. By distributing your software for free to the shareware websites, you have a chance to link to your website. Visitors will be redirected to your website for the download, you offer them a free newsletter in exchange for your free product and then give them the product as well as an introduction to all of your other offers.

Let’s face it; everyone appreciates something for nothing, although the opportunities are few and far between. Not only will you increase your web traffic, you are also building a valuable mailing list to market your products in the future.

While other marketers are submitting articles and conversing with potential venture partners, you are working on your next product while your one free piece of software is making money for you. It is a simple one shot deal and a golden opportunity.

There are a few important things to remember. You must provide something of value to your potential customers. In other words, it has to be software that in fact does something or people will just uninstall your product and opt out of your list. Your free software should have some relevance to your niche. People don’t just download anything anymore due to viruses and spy ware, so it has to be worthwhile and something they can use.

Finally, to give an answer to my question posed at the beginning of this article: Yes, free software distribution will surely help you to increase  web traffic and on the other hand, will improve your income as well. However, this does only work, if you deliver what you promise and provide compelling content when people reach your website.

Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be a priceless tool for your online business, but before you can get the most benefit of this tool, you must understand how to interpret the web traffic analysis data.

Many web hosting companies only provide you with the basics when it comes to web traffic analysis data. It is then up to you to utilize this information to the best of your ability. This web traffic analysis that you do receive from your web hosting company can be a bit overwhelming if you do not understand how to apply it to your online business, so let’s go over some of the information you may receive, so that you will understand how to use it. The basic data that you will receive will be visits to your site. These visits can be tracked daily, weekly and/or monthly.

The purpose of these figures is to measure your website’s activity accurately. At first glance, it may appear that the more traffic you see the better. In fact, most people assume that their website is doing well from viewing these figures, however, this perception is inaccurate. By seeing what your visitors are searching for, you can accurately measure your website’s activity, but disregard the first glance since it is not accurate if we speak about analising your web traffic.

“Hits” Don’t Matter

There is a myth or a misconception about what is known as “hits” and what is quality web traffic to your site. Hits are simply the number of information received by your server. If you think about it, a hit is simply a number of graphics per page. This is to give you an idea of how inaccurate the “hits” concept can be. One good example is if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server notes this as 15 hits when in fact it is really only one visitor checking out one page. It is for this reason that “hits” are not very useful when you do a web traffic analysis of your website.

The goal is using a web traffic analysis to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working. One way to figure this out is to see how long visitors are spending on your site. If the time spent is relatively short, there is a problem. It could be your website appearance or your content. It is up to you to figure out and fix those problems.

Importance of Keywords

In addition, web traffic analysis stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, now take a look at your keywords and keyword phrases. If certain keywords are sending visitors to your site; the more targeted the visitor, i.e. they find what they are looking for on your site, or even better, if they  fill out your contact form or make a purchase, then you know that the particular keyword(s) is valuable.

Keywords are crucial to attracting quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Careful analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you an understanding of your visitor’s needs and motivations.

If you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your company name, that is great news, and it means you have achieved an important level of brand recognition, which is a promising sign. As a result, always look at your web traffic analysis stats the right way and your site will be on track for success.

If you want to become number one in your niche market, it is paramount to increase web traffic to your site, to create brand recognition and to build authority. If you want to brand yourself in specific markets, there are five steps you can take to be the go-to person in your niche market.

1. Create content for the search engines

By creating good content laden with SEO keywords, you can brand yourself as an authority in your target market. You can start by searching for other businesses in your niche. Pay close attention to the keywords that they are using over and over again. If you see the same keywords on the first page, you know that these words are working. Use the same keywords in your website content to optimize your website, what will in return increase your web traffic and establish yourself as an authority.

2. Write feature articles

Feature articles are great for establishing authority in your target market. Write short articles that give value to your prospects. For instance, you can give tips to succeed in the marketplace, or you simply define certain procedures and processes that your prospects need to know. Short, focused articles can be posted on your blog, submitted to online article directories or submitted to AboutUs.org. It is important to give away free information in your niche market in order to establish yourself as an authority. People follow authorities, and the more exposure you can get, the better, resulting in an increase of your web traffic.

3. Send your content to as many sites as possible

Write to webmasters and ask if you can be a guest author on their website. Include a bio box after your article with a link to your website. If people like what you have to say, they will click on your link to get more information about who you are and your business. Focus on branding your name so it becomes widely recognizable.

4. Do interviews

If you can get an interview with an expert in your niche market, it is gold, especially if it’s a high profile interview. Post the interview on your site or use it as a giveaway in one of your promotions. Don’t forget to post it on YouTube to increase your visibility. You should also grant interviews to other marketers to position yourself as an authority. Be sure to get rights to use the interview on your website, social networking sites and on YouTube.

5. Participate in social networking sites

Social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace have a worldwide audience, and this is a great opportunity to blog about your business, your products or the services you offer. Because social networking sites post updates to your friends or followers, they will have immediate access to the latest information you have to offer. Twitter is another great resource to keep your followers up-to-date about the latest developments in your business. The updates are short and to the point, and you can post your website URLs for immediate exposure and brand recognition. This all will clearly help you increase web traffic.

To increase web traffic to your website is a matter of establishing yourself as an authority in your target market. Follow market trends, take note of what the heavy hitters are doing and above all, do what they are doing but do it better.

If you want to use Web 2.0 properties to make money online, you need to get people off of them and onto your sales, affiliate sales or squeeze pages ASAP. Here are three keys to making it work.

Make it ugly? You are not making your Web 2.0 pages in order to impress anybody or win any awards. You are using them to make money! It follows that all of your effort, then, needs to go into making that money – and that none of it needs to go into the aesthetic experience!

Don’t use any of the bells and whistles provided by your Web 2.0 site, unless those bells and whistles can make you some money. If you use video, make sure it not only relates to your niche, but your product as well. And make sure it relates to people wanting to buy that product, which is paramount.

If you use images, you will mostly need only product images. This can be a “portrait” of the product or of someone using the product. There is no need for cute animated GIFs or anything “cute”.

Don’t entertain them. You don’t want to entertain your readers with content, either. When you are targeting a buying key phrase, keep all information focused on that product or the problems it solves. If you are building a list, make the content about the benefits of your list and/or the solutions it offers.

You don’t need jokes or funny stories. You don’t need to convince your readers why the solutions offered by your product or list are something they need. Target only people who already want those solutions. If you do any convincing at all, it should be that your list will offer a quality solution.

(You shouldn’t have to do this with products, if you’re targeting buying key phrases. People who look up “buying keywords” – specific brands, makes, models, colors, etc. – already know what they want.)

Give them one option. Focusing your page on a single action and providing your readers with a single option is of utmost importance when monetizing Web 2.0 pages.

Most Web 2.0 sites already provide a link or two to click off the pages with their on-site monetization. You shouldn’t give your readers any other choices than possible! Provide them with the choice that is most profitable to you and only that choice.

This should be easy if you have targeted the buying key phrase. After all, it’s what they were looking to buy in the first place, so why shouldn’t they go ahead and click to somewhere they can buy it?

By all means, they should – so don’t try and show them something else they can do. After all, the internet seems to have attention deficit built in to it. Don’t make it worse by providing multiple choices for your readers. Stick with the choice – and only with the choice – that will satisfy reader needs and earn you a commission in the process.

Selecting a hosting plan is a critical step when you want to start up a website.  In prior posts I discussed choosing a domain name and creation of web pages.  Now let’s talk a little about hosting:  Choosing a hosting plan is a primary step in launching your fledgling web presence.

Once your website has been created, it is time to make it go live on the internet.  In order to do so, you will need a hosting plan.  A hosting plan is different from a domain name.  You own your domain name but you rent a hosting plan.  In it’s simplest terms a hosting plan is paying a company to broadcast your website onto the internet.  Let’s go over some of the key important factors to consider when choosing a hosting plan:

SERVICE  First and foremost in your decision is to consider the hosting provider’s reputation for it’s services.  No consideration, including price, should supersede Good Customer Service as the criteria for choosing your hosting provider.  Once your website is live on the internet you will want it to be up all the time.  Therefore should a problem occur it is important to select a hosting provider that is readily available and will resolve the issue in as timely a manner as possible.

UPTIME  Does the hosting provider you are considering offer an “uptime guarantee? The better hosting providers will offer up to 99% uptime.  Even at 99% average uptime it can mean that your website will be off the internet for over 7 hours per month. If at all possible, choose a host guaranteeing up to 99.9% uptime.

SIZE  What size, or how many pages will the website have?  The amount of disk space all of your website’s pages takes up will determine the size of the hosting plan you will need.  Most websites do not require much space but if you’re planning on having a large site with a lot of multimedia content or an ecommerce site selling multiple items, you’ll probably need additional disk space on your hosting plan.

LINUX OR WINDOWS  Which operating system should your hosting plan use?  BTW it does not matter what operating system you are using on your personal computer.  The determining factor here is what programming language was used to design the website.  For example, if CGI or PHP programming language was used, the best choice for the hosting operating system would be Linux.  For a website designed with ASP, the best choice would be Windows.  For the novice user who is building a simple html website the above may not be a consideration at first, but may become important later on as you become more experienced and add more features to your website.

TRAFFIC  How much traffic or how many visitors do you expect monthly?  Hosting plans are usually sold at different level plans according to the bandwith that will be required.  Bandwidth = Traffic.  The more visitors or traffic you expect on your site, the higher the bandwidth you will need, and the more the plan will cost.  The best advice here is to start off with a low cost, low bandwidth plan and upgrade it later as the traffic to your website grows.

SHARED OR DEDICATED HOSTING  Whether or not to choose shared hosting over dedicated hosting comes down to the following:  A shared hosting plan is exactly as it sounds, and means that your website will be stored on a server along with lots of other websites.  In this hosting format you generally have no ability to make changes to the resident software on the system, meaning you cannot change or upgrade the operating system, or the database management system, etc.  You will have to work within the software structure provided by the hosting company.  Dedicated or virtual dedicated hosting is different in the sense that you will have full control over the environment that your website resides in, and you will have the only access to that space.  Dedicated server hosting gives you full control over setup of the operating system and auxilliary programs such as database management or shopping cart or database management software.  This type of hosting is definitely geared to the more advanced user, and usually you won’t be able to get as much customer support because it will be a custom setup.  The best advice I can give to the newbie is to use shared hosting at first, until you gain more experience and abilities and are ready to take the plunge into something as advanced as dedicated hosting.

At StartYourWebsiteToday.com I offer 99.9% guaranteed uptime and offer customer service 24/7.  The hosting plans that are offered include a variety: shared hosting, virtual dedicated hosting, and dedicated hosting plans with either Linux or Windows operating systems for every need and budget ranging from the small personal website to large online multimedia sites to those interested in ecommerce website building. To see what is available, click HERE: Hosting plans.

This week we interviewed Tony Conrad of Sphere at the Web 2.0 Expo to learn about their recent acquisition and their tools for online publishers, bloggers, and advertisers.

Duration : 0:2:28

In early 2008 I spoke at the Secret Society of Traffic and Conversion Seminar for my friends Buck Rizvi and Brock Felt. The attendees paid thousands to be there but I’m sharing my 3 hour presentation from the seminar with you for free. I outlined the social networking and web 2.0 strategies that I personally use to drive tons of traffic to build my list and make more sales. I covered dozens of topics including, but not limited to, internet marketing, creating a sales funnel, search engine optimization (seo), myspace, youtube, squidoo, email marketing, wordpress, rss feeds, openx ad server, affiliate marketing, blogs, getting more traffic to your sites, social profile pages, social networking, social media, and more!

Duration : 0:7:0

In early 2008 I spoke at the Secret Society of Traffic and Conversion Seminar for my friends Buck Rizvi and Brock Felt. The attendees paid thousands to be there but I’m sharing my 3 hour presentation from the seminar with you for free. I outlined the social networking and web 2.0 strategies that I personally use to drive tons of traffic to build my list and make more sales. I covered dozens of topics including, but not limited to, internet marketing, creating a sales funnel, search engine optimization (seo), myspace, youtube, squidoo, email marketing, wordpress, rss feeds, openx ad server, affiliate marketing, blogs, getting more traffic to your sites, social profile pages, social networking, social media, and more!

Duration : 0:7:32

In early 2008 I spoke at the Secret Society of Traffic and Conversion Seminar for my friends Buck Rizvi and Brock Felt. The attendees paid thousands to be there but I’m sharing my 3 hour presentation from the seminar with you for free. I outlined the social networking and web 2.0 strategies that I personally use to drive tons of traffic to build my list and make more sales. I covered dozens of topics including, but not limited to, internet marketing, creating a sales funnel, search engine optimization (seo), myspace, youtube, squidoo, email marketing, wordpress, rss feeds, openx ad server, affiliate marketing, blogs, getting more traffic to your sites, social profile pages, social networking, social media, and more!

Duration : 0:6:41

In early 2008 I spoke at the Secret Society of Traffic and Conversion Seminar for my friends Buck Rizvi and Brock Felt. The attendees paid thousands to be there but I’m sharing my 3 hour presentation from the seminar with you for free. I outlined the social networking and web 2.0 strategies that I personally use to drive tons of traffic to build my list and make more sales. I covered dozens of topics including, but not limited to, internet marketing, creating a sales funnel, search engine optimization (seo), myspace, youtube, squidoo, email marketing, wordpress, rss feeds, openx ad server, affiliate marketing, blogs, getting more traffic to your sites, social profile pages, social networking, social media, and more!

Duration : 0:8:48