Want some of my traffic for free? by Richard Grady

Hi Folks!

Want some of my traffic for free?

I have recently added a new feature to my busiest website which will enable YOU to share some of my traffic. The Trader Online Forum is by far my most popular site in terms of number of visitors. As I write this newsletter the Alexa rating for the forum domain is 19,026 (the one week average is nearer 12,000!). This is a busy, popular site and it is getting bigger and more popular by the day.

The forum was originally set up for the benefit of all of my customers and subscribers and this remains the case today. Therefore, in order that everyone can benefit from some of the traffic that the forum receives, I have put in place a 'Members Directory' so that you can list details of your own websites and hopefully entice other members to visit your online business :-)

There is no charge to list your website within the directory, I ask only that you provide a link back to the forum somewhere on your site. This will help to spread the word about our little community thus continuing to improve the forum in the future.

To view the new Members Directory, simply visit the forum at the link below. You will see the link to the Members Directory towards the top of the page and once you click-through to the directory itself, you will see the link to add details of your site.

http://www.traderonlineforum.com

Please note that websites will be listed within each category in the order that they are submitted. This means that it is in your interest to get your site listed as soon as possible. It also means that you won't be stuck at the bottom of an alphabetical list just because your business name starts with a 'W' :-)

Let's talk about link exchanges for a moment....

If someone asked me what type of traffic I like best, I wouldn't have to think long before answering. My absolute fave traffic is highly targeted and FREE. And believe me, such a thing does exist.....

There are a few ways of obtaining this 'perfect' traffic and one of the best is by exchanging links with other websites that have a similar but not necessarily competitive theme to your own. This means that you are effectively sharing traffic as in the scenario I have outlined above.

Before you start getting into a panic and thinking that you are suddenly going to lose all of your own traffic that you have struggled to build up, don't.....

It is unlikely that you will want to put all of your reciprocal links on your home page and if you plan to exchange links with a high number of different sites then you will probably want to set aside a specific page or directory area as I have done above. This means that your own visitors are still going to be very focused on your website and your products. A few will venture into the link directory and will click on a link and leave but in fairness that is what it is there for.

Now the flip-side is that you might be thinking, 'Well if only a few people are going to click on the links in the directory, what is the point of putting my site there in the first place?' Good question and here is the answer:

As with everything on the Internet, this is a numbers game. You are not going to break any traffic records by having 1 or 2 sites linking to yours - ideally you need lots (unless those sites are eBay and Yahoo of course!). Let's say that each site that links to your site sends you just 2 visitors a day (which is a perfectly realistic figure). If you have links to your site on, say, 10 sites, that means you will be getting 20 visitors to your site per day. Not a huge amount by any standard. However, let's say that over time you manage to build up 500 inbound links to your site. Now we are looking at a totally different scenario. Those 500 links could be generating over 1000 visitors to your site every single day. And the best bit would be that each visitor was interested in your products (as long as you have exchanged links with relevant sites) and these visitors would be costing you absolutely nothing!

How long would it take to get 500 inbound links? Well with a bit of work and assuming you agreed 2 links per day, just over 8 months. That means if you really put some effort in, you could be receiving an extra 1000 targeted and free visitors to your website every single day before the end of this year.

The other benefit of having multiple sites linking to your site is that it will help to improve your 'link popularity'. This is a measurement used by search engines (in particular Google) to assess how important your website is and it helps decide where your site will be ranked in search engine results. Without going into too much detail, the general rule is, the more inbound links (links to your site) the better :-)

Don't know where to start? Link up with the Trader Online Forum firstly and if you would like to automate the majority of your link directory (including checking that your partners have linked to your site and seeking out new linking partners), take a look at the link below. It is the same software that I am using for the forum link directory and I highly recommend it:

http://www.thetraderonline.com/rm.html

Until next time....

Richard Grady