The Common Sense Secret to Increasing Your Site's Traffic

If you're anything like me, then you would prefer to work smarter, not harder.

Your goal as an online, small business owner should be as little customer buying resistance and competition as possible. Although the good ol' days of 1 cent Google Adwords traffic are long gone, web marketing is still very inexpensive and offers instant sales analytics which enable you to make modifications to your campaigns on the fly, allowing you to plug leaks and maximize profits.

The reigning king of online search is Google. Google uses a super-secret-special-sauce,  mathematical algorithm or point system to police its engine. The more closely you adhere to Google's standards for the web, the more points your website receives. The number of points assigned to your website is almost directly correlated to how you rank in the search results.

Google is notorious for routinely making changes in their super secret algorithm sauce, which can have a negative effect on websites and Adwords advertisers. According to Matt Cutts, Google's public face for SEO, on average Google makes 500 changes to its algorithm annually. This means that your site could be riding high on the first page of Google with tons of daily visitors one day and out in the middle of the Google boondocks with no visitors the next.

So instead of playing Google-style Russian Roulette, borrow a move from the Stock Broker's playbook and..

Diversify Your Web Traffic Portfolio

For ages Financial Advisors have been preaching diversification. Diversification is a Plan B not only for savvy investors, but also savvy, online, small business owners. By evenly spreading out the sources of your traffic, you lessen your risk for failure if Google slaps you or if a campaign goes awry.

Instead of waiting for one of Google's slap-happy mood swings, I strongly recommend you diversify breakup your traffic flow and head to where competition is almost nil and traffic is ripe for picking…

Where is that you ask? Forgotten search engines like Yahoo!, Bing and AOL.

I mean think about it, are the people who search Google any more qualified than those who search Yahoo, Bing, AOL, Ask or any other search engine? Of course the answer is no. When it comes to the internet, cold traffic is cold traffic no matter how you slice it.

I'm not saying you should nix Google, seeing as how they current own the search space, but what I am saying is that your should evaluate your business and determine whether or not you're getting the most bang for your buck. If you're not getting the most bang for your buck, then I strongly recommend you invite the other search engine guys to your traffic party and maximize your dollars and effort.

A diversified web traffic portfolio will make any future random act of Google slap-happy-violence feel more like giant-inflatable-glove-boxing. Not to mention that your business remains a float if one of your sources of traffic goes south.

So if you're looking to increase online traffic to your site, the best strategy is to have traffic flowing to your site from multiple web streams instead of one. Make sense?

It's as close to easy money as you can get.

Aces,

Collin