Increase traffic? Now there's a MILLION dollor question.

The answer to this question is not an easy one in many respects, but mainly It's almost impossible for one answer to be correct for every circumstance.

I began my venture into cyber space with absolutely no computer knowledge what-so-ever. Not only was I computer illiterate I didn't know the InterNet from a fishing Net.

One of the very first things I learned was that the Internet can be a very lonely and impersonal world. Sitting alone in front of a computer screen hour after hour day after day and keeping your focus is not an easy task.

My first suggestion is to establish contacts with like minded people as soon as you can. Not only will this help keep you from feeling isolated it will allow you and they to take advantage of each others experiences and expertise.

I'm not saying bring others into your business, but networking has been a part of good business practices since the beginning of time. It just makes good business sense to take advantage of all the resources that are available.

How is this going to help me get traffic to my website you ask! Well, in a number of ways. Some of these networking pals will have websites that compliment yours, trade links. The more LEGITIMATE ( I say legitimate, because there are those that aren't) links you have to your site the better.

Links help in a number of ways, they push traffic from the linking site to yours, and they garner you higher rankings on some search directories.

I am a firm believer in links. I have written on the subject a number of times. I'll relate A good example of why I'm so link happy!.

We have a small obscure resource site sitting all alone in the middle of one of our domains. The page itself was just a 5 minute project to fill a hole we needed filled about 2 years ago.

To make a long story short, because of links to other sites that 1 page sees 3 to 4 hundred visitors a day every day, day in and day out. The traffic count increases by 30% every month. A New York radio station picked up the URL for that page and has it featured on their website. That's why I'm link happy.

The first thing you need is accurate tracking of your traffic. A site counter is not tracking your site visitors. Until you have a valid tracking method to track where your traffic is coming from where it's going, how long its staying, what time it arrived, what time it left, how many of your pages did they visit,what key words brought them to your site, what search engine sent them, what other site sent them ( from your links! remember) your wasting your time promoting.

Until you have the system in place to track all of the above and more, all the site promotion in the world won't help. And why is that you say? Very simply put, you have no earthly idea what's working and what's not!