I don't know about you, but when I first entered the world of internet marketing I thought I could just submit my newly finished website to a few search engines, then sit back as the visitors flocked to my site.

I imagined that people would arrive on my website, as if by magic, purchase goods, and perhaps come back again for more.

A week or so later I came down to earth with a big bump.

I realised that it would take a bit of time and effort to see the results that I was dreaming about!

Since my reality check, I have learned all about the weird and wonderful ways of internet marketing.

In this article I will tell you about my top 5 free ways of increasing website traffic.

All these methods are completely free and if you spend some time on them you will find that they work consistently.

(1) Writing Articles

Writing an article on a subject related to your website and getting that article published has two major benefits:

• People who are interested in your article will read it and often click on the URL in your resource box find out more. This gets you another free targeted visitor. Targeted, because that reader wants to find out more on the subject of your article, which is hopefully related to the subject of your website.
  

• Every publisher of your article must also publish your "resource box". Adding a resource box with your URL to all of your articles will increase the number of links leading back to your website, which in turn helps to increase your search engine position
  

For a list of directories to submit your article to, see http://www.homebiz-direct.com/articleWriting.html

(2) Forum Networking

There are many discussion forums on the internet, on every topic you could possibly imagine.

Most discussion boards allow posters to attach a "Signature" with their post containing additional information about themselves, such as their name, URL and sometimes even an advertisement.

By visiting a few forums regularly and participating in the discussions, asking and answering questions, you can build up trust with other forum members, whilst at the same time getting free exposure for your website.

Just try to make a useful contribution to the forum - be sure to read the forum rules and don't spam!

(3) Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking has two main benefits for you.

Firstly, the more links that you exchange, the more chance there is that someone will follow a link from another site and land on your website.

Secondly, your website will be perceived more importantly by search engines.

The more links you have from other sites, the greater your chance of getter ranked more highly by all the search engines.

Here are some Dos and Don'ts to help you get more out of your link exchanges.

• Do link with sites that will be of interest to your visitors.
  

• Don't link with pages that have unorganised link directories with hundreds of links on each page. This won't benefit you with increased traffic or search engine rankings.
  

• Do link with sites that have a clearly labelled "Link Directory" from their main page. You aren't likely to get much traffic from a hidden or hard to find link directory.
  

• Don't use link farms or FFA pages. You are unlikely to get extra traffic using these methods and the search engines may penalise you.
  

• Do use link directories to help you find link partners. Visit http://www.homebiz-direct.com/Link-Exchange-Resources.html to find popular link exchange directories.
  

• Do stay organised. Use link exchange software, or a spreadsheet to keep track of the link exchanges you have requested and the contact details of the webmasters.
  

(4) Email Signatures

This is a very simple, but often forgotten way of increasing your website visitors.

Most of us are sending lots of emails a day, but many of us just sign them with just our name, or perhaps nothing at all.

Instead, why not end your emails with a short signature containing your name, a bit about your website along with the URL?

Keep the signature short (4 lines), to the point and avoid hype or SHOUTING.

You may be surprised at the extra visitors you receive through doing this. It's amazing how curiosity will lead the recipients of your email to click on your link!

(5) Using Traffic Exchanges

Finally, this is one easy way to guarantee instant hits to your website. You can build up credits for free by surfing or building up a downline to surf for you.

The downside of this method is that the visitors you receive from traffic exchanges are not as targeted as the visitors that you will receive via the other methods that I have described.

The reason for this is that people surf traffic exchanges for one reason - to earn as many credits as possible in as short a space of time as possible!

This gives you a challenge - how do you attract the attention of someone who is looking at your web page for 20 seconds or less?

Here are two tips -

• Know your market - spend some time surfing on the exchange that you are advertising on and pay attention to the types of web pages being advertised. Make sure that the pages you advertise are going to interest your target market.
  

• Use a short, simple attention grabbing page that can be read in a few seconds - there is no point advertising a huge page of text that takes 5 minutes to read. The chances are, your visitor will get bored and click on the "next" button without giving your page a fair chance.
  

Regularly invest some time in each of these 5 traffic generating methods and you will see your web statistics moving in the upwards direction before you know it.

Copyright 2004 Suzanne Morrison

Suzanne Morrison is the webmaster and owner of http://www.homebiz-direct.com. To learn more about how to promote your website for free visit her Internet Marketing pages on http://www.homebiz-direct.com/internetMarketing.html.