1. Learn SEO techniques and apply them

There are many techniques you can learn and apply when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). We are talking about how to make our website more appealing to search engine to index and more inviting to human visitors to leave their name and contact information.

2. Include web address in all your stationary and communications

It is a good practice to always include your web address everywhere, especially in all your stationary materials and communications. You need to present your URL in front of as many people as possible through all means. Printing the address on your name card is a good idea especially when you do a lot of name card exchanges with other people.

3. Create a blog to supplement the web presence

Having a blog to supplement your website is another way to increase traffic. The nature of blog is having regular postings. Search engines love sites perceived to be active and updated with fresh content regularly. Linking to your website from the blog will definitely increase your website ranking as they are seen to be related and relevant. With higher search engine ranking, you will definitely receive more visitors.

More information can be found here: What is Blogging,  Blogging with Wordpress and Why Business Needs Blog.

4. Conduct online surveys and contests

You can also conduct online surveys and contest on your website. These are popular especially if the prizes are attractive. When people take part, they will tend to come back often just to see the progress and the result especially in contests. When your website design is attractive, your visitors will stay longer and explore more pages.

5. Provide online discount coupon download

For promotion purpose, your business will sometimes offer discount for products or services. Instead of using the normal way of discount, why don’t you use online discount coupon download? It will encourage people to visit your website and at the same time familiarize them with the site.

6. Provide special price for online order

Besides promotion, you can also provide special price for people ordering online. It will provide exactly similar effect to online discount coupon.

7. Start a regular newsletter with links back to your website

The much preferred way is to start a regular newsletter. By sending regular mailings, you will be perceived as expert in your topic and niche. By the time your readers are ready to buy, they will be more willing to purchase from you. Regular exposure will also encourage people to buy from you after about seven mailings. This is according to the statistics. Of course there are people who will buy earlier and there are some who will buy later.

8. Start a forum for your customers and visitors to interact with each other

Another method to gather people is to start a forum. People can join and interact with each other to familiarize with your products and services. For the forum to be successful, you need to moderate properly and correctly though. If not, it might turn into something you don’t really desire to have.

9. Get involved in social networking sites

From your involvement in social networking sites, you will also be able to increase traffic to your website. When you join the social networking sites, you will be given a profile page where you can enter your introduction and related websites. When people know you better, they will check your profile page. That is when they will click on your website and visit. Of course, when you are more or less known by other people, you can advertise indiscreetly. But, you have to remember not to do it too often as to flood the message stream with your advertisement. Example of social networking sites are Facebook, MySpace, etc.

10. Connect with microblogging

Microblogging is the trend now. Twitter is the trendsetter and its name is synonymous with microblogging. Similar to social networking site, you will be provided with profile page where you can put your web address. People will then look at your profile and visit your website.

11. Buy PPC

If you have the budget, you can also purchase PPC (pay-per-click). The popular and bigger network operators of PPC are Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. All there operate under a bid-based model. It means you bid for higher position with higher value of money for the CPC (cost-per-click).

These are just some ideas. Of course there are many more methods not covered here. I will be adding as and when I come across some good ideas to increase traffic. Please feel free to add on the comment section your ideas as well.

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• Build a Better Blog in 31 Days
• Understanding Website Traffic
• Building Business with Twitter
• Business Needs Blog – Why?
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• JavaScript for Business Blogs

In simple term, social bookmarking is bookmarking sharing. Of course, the other benefit is its use of tagging (a form of metadata) to make bookmark search much easier and faster. It is also called social tagging due to the fact that the bookmarks are available to others through the use of tags as well. Another name for social tagging is folksonomy which means sharing or collaboration of tags or index by the people (creators or consumers) not the experts.

It is actually not a new concept. It started as early as 1996 with online bookmarking service that included public and private bookmarks. There were many online bookmark services that emerged later on based on similar concept with various other added features. It was not until 2003 that del.icio.us (now known as Delicious) was started that it pioneered the use of tagging and coined the term social bookmarking.

Social bookmarking is linked to web 2.0 optimization. It is a powerful tool used in promoting a website by getting the community involvement. The concept is powerful as it is a comprehensive way that gets community involved in making the website popular. This is achieved by bookmarking the site with various social bookmarking services and getting backlinks. As a result, the traffic is increased and the search engines will index the site more quickly.

Here is the list of 20 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites according to eBizMBA. Heading the list is digg followed by Yahoo! Buzz, Technorati, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us.

There are also tools available that help people submit their site to multiple social bookmarking sites. The convenient tools help bloggers by submitting the site with a simple one-click. The most popular ones are SocialMarking, Socialmatic and SocialMarker.

I hope this article has covered enough introduction on Social Bookmarking. If you like this article, I hope you can bookmark it by clicking on bookmark by SocialMarker.

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