Tuesday, 21 August 2007

website traffic

One thing that anyone who has their own site online is worried about is how to get website traffic. Though for many, this is essential for business reasons, even those who just have a small personal site want others to stop by and visit. This is something that has been important since the web became popular with the general public, and it is something that might never change. What does change, however is the ways people draw this traffic to their sites.

When I was first online, I noticed a lot people simple begging others to come visit their sites. This was how many thought they were going to get website traffic. Granted, back then, no one really knew what to do and how to get people to their sites. There were many searches, but I can’t seem to remember if Google was around then or not. I do know that it was hard to find what you were looking for most times, and the begging for website traffic couldn’t last long. It was very annoying and even the people doing it knew it. There are still some that do it, but most people have taken a different approach.

Today, people go about finding website traffic in much different ways. Some still visit forums and post links to their sites, and this does work well on a small scale. However if you are looking for huge website traffic numbers, you are going to have to do something else. One thing is advertising, and some like to do this. Google’s Adsense program is a good one. This uses the keywords in content to place relevant ads on the site. Some drive in traffic simply by using the right keywords.

No matter how you go about getting website traffic, you can keep tabs on who is visiting by getting software that tracks visitors. You will not see names and addresses, of course, but you can see city, state, and country, and you can also see how long they were there and what pages they visited. This can help you decide who is coming, and what is working on your site and what is being skipped over. This will help tailor any site to what the visitor wants. When they get what they want, they are more likely to come back. Even though you are not getting any personal information about these people, make sure they do not know they are being tracked. They may think the worst, even though you aren’t getting anything other than basic activity information.

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