In order to perform its functions in full measure and justify its goals - a website should work properly, contain useful information, have an attractive and clear interface and be frequently-visited and popular. Let’s try to investigate the last item. What factors impact websites’ frequency and how to generate website traffic? There are a few ways to increase website’s traffic. These ways can be classified into 3 types:

-Search Engine Optimization
-Displaying links on Websites
-Advertising

1. Search Engine Optimization is the most effective, but not the easiest way to get heavy traffic on a site and thus increase its frequency. Most of all Web users pass on to sites via Search Engines. To get into the “TOP 10” page given by main Search Engines is enough to increase Your site frequency radically. It’s also important not only to get high PR in Search Engines, but to hold this position. SEO is such an effective way to attract audience to Websites that a lot of companies all over the world spend round sums of money on it, along with ad. campaigns and security system. For more information about this traffic generation method see “Search Engine Optimization” article.

2. Displaying links on Websites. After Search Engine Optimization Web links take second place among traffic generation methods. Many Web users willingly transfer to the links displayed on a site if the titles of these links correspond to their interests. There are many ways to get links to Your Website. The most popular are:

a) Link Baiting.
The fairest and safest, but not very effective way of link-getting. Link-Baiting is what all Search Engines call us to – fair white hat Website optimization. The essence of it is that You must have such an interesting and original content on Your site that all the other sites will link to Your Web- resource voluntarily. You will obtain the result only if You are able to place absolutely unique and useful information on Your site. Alas, Link-Baiting is a passive traffic generation method, impossible to regulate.

b) Link exchange.
The most wide-spread way to get links on a site. While exchanging links it’s very important that the subject-matter of Your site correspond to that of the site You exchange links with. PageRank and approximate site frequency of Your Website should be either identical or higher. Keep in mind that traditional reciprocal link-exchange will only enlarge Your site traffic, but it won’t have an affect upon the site’s SEO. In order to get a Search Engine-friendly source of traffic, one should use more complicated link-exchange methods, e.g. cross-linking or Webring- exchange. In both cases You link to one site, but get a link from another one. In this way, such links will be extremely valuable for the Google and other Search Engines. Some Internet projects have an automated link-exchange process which offers all comers to participate in its exchange-program. One ought to be carefull to such link-exchanges because there is a good chance to fall into Search Engine Ban.

c) Registration in Web directories and catalogues.
Effective way to get one-way links on a site is to register it in catalogues and directories. At the same time, registration in hundreds or even thousands of free catalogues is not only ineffective but also insecure. Google and other Search Engines treat Web directories with distrust. Most of free directories don’t have hand-edited registration, are overfull with links and don’t keep well-ordered niche link classification. As the result Search Engines put such directories in the black-list. Such submission may have serious consequences for Your site.

There is a more proficient method to get high-quality kinks on a site – registration in following directories: Authoritative Web directories –are the directories, relevant for Search Engines and recognized by users as exclusively useful web-resources (DMOZ.org/dir; yahoo.com; business.com etc.). General human-edited web directory – are usually paid directories with hand-edited site listings and well-indexed pages of certain category (stpt.com; romow.com and others). Niche web directories – are the directories, containing websites dedicated to one subject: music: music-sites.net; computers: directorycomputer.com; sports: sportfocus.com and so on

d) Buying Links (gray hat SEO)
Is one of the easiest but not safest ways to generate traffic to Your site from other sites. It is possible to increase Your site traffic purchasing links from the home pages of frequently visited Websites, but these links won’t be relevant for Search Engines. One should also keep in mind that Your site frequency will come down as soon as You stop paying for these links.

e) Article Marketing
Is one of a few methods to get really qualitative links. It implies writing articles of a certain subject and displaying them on corresponding Websites. Every article placed on these sites will have an author’s link. Users transfer more willingly to the link of the author having previously read his article. Besides, practice has shown that the users who have transferred on the site in this way would likely become its clients. The most popular sites that submit articles are: amazines.com, ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, magportal.com, articlecity.com, isnare.com

f) Search Engine Advertising
This traffic generation method gains more and more popularity every year. “Google AdWords Select” ad campaign arranged by Google company allows site owner to advertise his Website in the web-resources of similar subjects and to pay only for the number of clicks made on the publicized site’s link. The advantages of this method are clear- a site owner pays not for the display-time of the link and not for the number of “impressions”, as it was once popular, but only per click. Search Engine Advertising is a marketing tool of heavy traffic generation with pay per result.

j) Banner Advertising
Displaying banners is one of the oldest and most popular ways to increase Website frequency. Banner Advertising is relatively inexpensive and has a number of advantages: -it allows using graphic images that makes two problems solvable

a) to draw new clients who have clicked on the banner to a site
b) to create and support a company’s image.
-may be high-performance. A banner can be designed in such a way that, being thrilled of it many clients would click on this banner. It depends on how well the idea of the banner was worked up and on creative abilities of the Web designer who designs the banner.
-it’s flexible, because it may be paid either for the number of clicks (transfers) or for the banner display-time (usually weekly).
3.Offline Advertising.

The ways of advertising a Website outside the Global Network are highly diversified. They depend on the budget of the supposed ad. campaign and the purpose and tasks of the publicized site. The most effective and approved ways are TV/radio/press (magazines and newspapers)/billboard – advertising and so on. Each of the above-listed methods has its advantages and drawbacks, but all of them belong to the so-called “conveyor” advertising. It implies that every comer can buy an advertising panel in a magazine or a billboard on a stadium, but other people will treat such advertisement correspondingly. “Advertising for advertising’s sake” is the main drawback of this method. There are many advertising methods, based on an original, sometimes unusual or even earth-shattering idea. To make it clearer, here is a simple example: it’s necessary to increase frequency and sales of a sports e-shop. You may spend vast sums of money on the above-mentioned advertising ways, but if You let Your imagination run away with You, You will get much more profit from advertising for the same amount of money. It will be quite enough to put Your site title on the T-shirt or the boxer shorts of a famous boxer for the time of his next action (having previously arranged about it with his promoter). Millions of spectators and TV viewers will see this action and that will increase Your site frequency tremendously. It’s worth paying attention to the fact that some viewers might be directly or indirectly related to sport. So, there is a high probability of that they will effect a purchase on the site. Unlike usual advertising, this publicity will highly influence Your site frequency in future, because the action-recording will be repeatedly shown on different TV-channels and distributed on CD, in the Internet on video-sites, in magazines and so on. In Advertising (as in Websites development) –original and unusual idea is an excellent way to achieve high results.
To order website promotion.