• Tweet
• Sharebar

Web savvy marketers know that traffic is what it’s all about. Without traffic, a website is useless as a tool for communicating ideas or selling a product.

Web savvy marketers also know that you need links from other sites pointing to yours. These inbound links are one of the most important ways of generating traffic, getting yourself known, and getting your site noticed by the search engines.

Links generate traffic in two ways:

Direct traffic from Links

The way it works is that links from sites that share your target audience will be clicked on by a certain percentage of visitors to the other website, and then they will in turn become your visitor. Some surveys estimate the average percentage of traffic by this method as high as 21%.

People click on these links because they assume that a link from outside source is an “endorsement” – as the webmaster of the linking site saying “Here is another site you will find interesting.” So people click the link to check it out.

Another important reason is curiosity. This is especially true if the link contains intriguing wording like “Cheap powerful advertising” or “Get a free iPod.” But it doesn’t need to be this dramatic. A slightly mysterious name for the link can also generate curiosity.

This suggests three lessons to be learned here: 1) that you should try to get links on related sites; 2) that your link text should be somewhat intriguing, and 3) that you should give preference to popular sites on which to place your links. After all, having hundreds of links on pages that practically no one looks at will not result in much traffic. Also, having your links on more popular sites will be seen as more valuable by the search engines. This is why exchanging links with link directories is questionable, as people rarely look at these links.

Finding good sites on which to place your links is not always easy. One way is to do a search for the keywords that people are most likely to use when searching for your product or service. This can bring up sites that are related but not directly competing with you. Getting your links on some of these sites is almost guaranteed to result in traffic, so it is worth the effort.

Traffic from Search Engines

The second major reason to get inbound links is to impress the search engines, which use the quantity and quality of such links to evaluate the importance of your website and its relevance to particular keywords.

This will result in you getting placed higher in the search engine listings for your keywords, and thus getting a higher click through rate from online searchers. The more such relevant links are on your site, the more likely your site is to rank for these terms and the higher quality will be your resulting traffic.

Using Articles to Get Search Engine Traffic and Direct Links

One simple way to increase the number of inbound links is by writing articles. You will be able to include your website link in your credit line or “resource box.” Webmasters who are looking for quality material to enhance their own sites will often reprint these articles, and sometimes this can result in your well-written article appearing in hundreds of places on the web.

Articles are good at attracting traffic because the people who read them are obviously interested in your subject matter, and are therefore more likely to click the link to your website.

This suggests that a themed or categorized article resource may be the best place to publish your article. For example, if you write a self-improvement oriented article you can place it on a self improvement directory.

Another tip is to, if possible, use anchor text that includes one or more of your most important keywords. This will help the search engines to relate your website to that important text phrase.

Guest Author’s resource box:
You might get the impression that the Mac is the forgotten stepchild of the Internet marketing industry. But did you know that some of the top names in Internet Marketing use Macs? Visit http://internetmacmarketing.com; and get a FREE 75-page ebook that covers everything you need to know about running your Internet business using a Mac, iPhone and iPad. http://internetmacmarketing.com/10tools.html.