Did you know that only about 0,1% of web sites are getting considerable traffic? Maybe you’re that one of thousand, so you don’t need to read this guide. However, maybe you fall in those 999 of 1000 webmasters. In this case, you should go through each step which I explain below.

The basic questions stands as „How do I manage visitors to come to my web site?“. At first, I must say that I was standing in front of the same problem 1 year ago. After learning on my own web sites, I’m now able to say that everyone is capable to obtain high rankings for low or high competitve phrases sooner or later by himself. On the other hand, not everyone has enough time to spend hours, days and weeks on link building or writing a huge content. I decided to do everything by myself, so I’m responsible for all success or failure. My proven methods are described below.

Step 1: Use quality analytics tools

Without a tool of good quality, you will not get any information about how visitors find your web site, how long do they use to surf it, which internal page has the most pageviews, which page do people spend the most time on, if you are getting visitors through affiliate links or through search engines, or many other useful information. Aiming the right part of the internet users will speed up your visibility and importance. It’s proven fact that some web sites aren’t getting the major part of their visitors through search engines. On the other hand, good SEO campaign might raise your income several times without any heavy effort. In my opinion, the best online analytics tool is the Google Analytics.

Here below are some images from the Google Analytics.

This image shows the visits and pageviews trend. As you can see, the number of visitors doubles within 3 months and it is still raising. Another site of mine has much significant traffic, since it is online longer that the previous web site.

Of course, there are differences between those web sites and they’re not competitors towards each other. Moreover, as above, they are getting visitors from different sources. Let’s see the first web site analytics.

Unlike the first site, the second one has completly different structure of visitors source. Below is the image which shows that Google plays the main role in it’s popularity. You can also compare the statistics between Google, MSN and Yahoo. However, this chart doesn’t tell us how many internet users use each search engine, since the positions for various phrases differ.

Besides sources analysis, you must bear in mind the country where the most visitors come from. It’s especially important if you run a local business. Basically, it’s not needed to obtain top10 rankings for US market if you’re located in London, UK and you’re offering local car rental service. Let’s check where the visitors come to this web site (services-seo.net) from.

Generally, they’re from India the most, since indians do link building. In my experience, they don’t read the guidelines and they don’t answer to emails. On the other hand, I’ve spoken to some honest indian programmers too and I was happy to exchange emails with them. My another web site is getting the most of visitors from the United States of America, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and from France.

Naturally, there are other statistics within the Google Analytics. However, it’s up to everyone how it’s being used. I want to underline that increasing traffic to your web site depends on many factors and you should define your goals before you start. You should define your visitors target group (age, country, language, eventually more detailed factors) and the most relevant phrases as well as your competitors. Sometimes, it’s better to be the 2-nd or 3-rd one than the first one, since it forces you to fight for another phrases, what simply means more traffic.

Only if you’re ready to use good statistics tool, move to the second step.

Step 2: Build quality content only

Everyone’s duscussing about what quality content means. However, only about 1%-5% of highly visited web sites offer real quality content. Why? At first, content must not be copied from anywhere else. I have tried to copy some articles from articles directories and those pages have never been ranked well.

Here are the basic rules for quality content:

• 1) Don’t write short sentences,
• 2) Use proper English even if it’s impossible for non-native English (like me),
• 3) Don’t focus on 400 or 500 words articles; Focus on complete explanation of each problem/subject. Sometimes, it means spending 1 or 2 weeks on 1 article. On the other hand, people will find it much more useful than any short article made just for 1 phrase,
• 4) Use photographies as much as possible,
• 5) Link to quality web sites only and don’t point too much outgoing links from your articles,
• 6) Use nouns,
• 7) Interlink your content together.

Why? Why those 7 points? I’ll gladly explain how adhering those simple points might increase your web site traffic.

At first, short sentence is a sign of poor writing skills. On the other hand, don’t write very complex sentences. If a writer delivers content based on sentences with various length (one sentence is long, another one is short, and so on), it is appreciated by Google.

Secondly, use correct language syntax everywhere and everytime. At least, try to satisfy this point. Google isn’t stupid and even if he is not able to understand meaning of the content in all cases, he is able to use various algorithms which result in a decision about quality.

The next point shows us weakness called „short content“. Basically, every article should contain as much words as possible. You never know how your content is being ranked in the future for 1 or 2 phrases, so write keyword-rich content and don’t focus on 1 phrase only. Use natural sentences and words within. Maybe you will not get top rankings for phrase which you focus on, however you will maybe get more visitors through other phrases included in your articles.

Photographies mean the major source of visitors for some web sites. Yes, that’s true and even if you don’t think so, I’m going to explain it. Since many internet users use image search on Google or MSN, it’s very important to determine if your web site has to offer tons of pictures. For example, people usually don’t search images for SEO related phrases, however they search for dogs, cats, cars, various celebrities and of course, nude/porn images. If you sell fuel, don’t await much visitors through images search. Images should be named carefully if you want to get top positions. It’s also proven fact that large images are ranked much better than small ones. Not the last, but very important are title and alt tags within the img HTML tags. Also, images should be related to the text based content. It simply means that if you’re writing about extraterrestrial life, images should not be related to Britney Spears or Jenna Jameson.

Nextly, linking to similar web sites are appreciated by Google. Of course, you’re giving some importance to the target web sites too, however linking means „they’re related to me“ and if your keywords/phrases are similar to the links targets, you will get better rankings than without any link. I recommend to use up to 5 outgoing links to external domains. Linking within your web site should be limited up to 10 outgoing links. It’s because a link’s importance lowers as the number of outgoing links increases.

The last but one point says that nouns rules. Yes, it’s true! Nouns mean quality, since you can’t use 1 noun per 1 sentence if your content is of an outstanding quality. Basically, you should use related nouns, since it’s similar to the images cause. Every web site is ranked by the relevance factor; What means that your site contains a list of words and depending on their importance and occurrence, every internal page gets it’s ranking. What’s more, Google has it’s own lists of keywords and phrases and he uses it for ranking purposes.

As the last point, content interlinking means powerful weapon how to beat your near competitors. Linking to another content or article tells that you take care about relevance and detailed explanation. Imagine, you have an article about chocolate in common, then you write something about chocolate balls, another article is about chocolate production, then you write about spending money on chocolate and so on. If you interlink these articles together, you’ll get higher rankings than without them. Generally, high rankings mean a lot of web site traffic. That’s what you want, isn’t it?

Also, any web site should offer new content on a regular basis. Otherwise, you’ll lose your rankings sooner or later. If you have 20 articles in the beginning, don’t satisfy with them and write or purchase another 20. Once you have 40 of them, get another 40 and don’t stop anytime. Don’t stop and you’ll be no.1 at your area. Only if you’re finished with the content, continue to the next step.

Step 3: Build links and start getting traffic

Links rules. However, without any content, they have no sense at all. Generally, link building can be divided into the two parts. Firstly, the natural links which come from other webmasters without asking them for a favour (a link). Everyone prays for this kind of incoming links. Despite this fact, you can’t get any link from old and trusted web site if your site isn’t discovered by the internet users. That’s why it’s needed to submit your web site into many directories in order to get importance in Google, MSN and Yahoo.

But how the link building campaign looks like? Do I need to submit my web site into directories only? Where can I find such lists of directories? What if such directories aren’t accepting free links anymore? These questions are only a fragment of all possible questions.

At first, you must understand that incoming links to your web site must look like natural, they must be obtained manually and you must run a list of directories where you have submitted your web site into. Because of this reason, it’s not recommended to award your link building job to an unknown SEO. For example, I deliver complete XLS sheet of directories, successfull and rejected submissions to my customers everytime. Otherwise, someone might submit your web site into Google even if you’re getting visitors from Google for at least 1 year. I’ve seen such case, so be careful when deciding for a person for your web site SEO.

Apart from who maintains your links, you must understand to the following points:

• 1) A link is a link even if it’s not included in the A HREF tag. Google picks up links which are written as a text too.
• 2) A link means anchor text. So if I put a text „click here“ into this article and that text will point to your website, the anchor text will be „click here“.
• 3) A link might contain various attributes. Apart from the anchor text, the most valuable attribute is the ‘title’ attribute. Many directories offer this attribute after payment only. Unlike such web sites, our directory puts this tag to each link automatically and we’re not asking any money for such stuff.
• 4) A link with rel=’nofollow’ is still a link! Despite common sight that such links aren’t worth it, they’re followed by all search engines. If I were a search engine, I’d never focus on the ‘nofollow’ attribute, since it is a sign of free/paid links.
• 5) 1 link from 1 web site is good. 5000 links from 1 web site (not from the same page!) are good. 5000 links from 5000 various web sites are good. But only 5000 links from 5000 IPs with different C block address are the best what might happen to your web site. For this purpose, it’s good to track the number of incoming links on a regular basis.

Besides quality links, there is a discussion about DMOZ or Wikipedia links. Anyhow, DMOZ listing is very important, but not necessary. Unlike DMOZ, Wikipedia links aren’t worth it, since it’s completly taken over by webmasters who don’t allow quality web sites to be listed there. Moreover, about 100-150 outgoing links from a page don’t mean anything even if a link to your web site contains the correct anchor text.

In my experience, link building must follow content buidling, not backwards. For example, I don’t accept submissions of the poor web sites into my directory. You may get some links if you don’t offer quality content, however you will not get any important link this way ever.

Increasing your web site traffic is very long journey, but it’s worth it. If you’re able to do it yourself, you have won. It’s because you will learn all SEO techniques and you will be able to maintain all SEO without hiring anybody. You can find directories for your link building at directorycritic.com.