Building defensible or alternative traffic sources for your website allows it to
stay afloat, should any search engine algorithms negatively impact the amount of
organic traffic you currently or are able to receive. This article includes a
compilation of 10 overall strategies you can use to develop referral traffic
sources for your website or business.
As these methods are generally not niche-specific, you can use them effectively
for any type of website or industry. Links to similar articles on these topics
are also included at the end of this list.
Characteristics of an Ideal Defensible Traffic Source
Let?s start first with a general idea
of the type of defensible traffic you
should be building. While the following
points are ideal conceptualizations,
they may help you to assess the value of
your referral traffic sources.
The traffic source you are developing
should:
- Promote your brand.
- Reinforce or build the existing
community around your site
- Send targeted traffic
(interested visitors)
- Work on both a long and short
term basis.
- Connect your website with a
broad audience
- Sustain itself over time,
without requiring consistent active
effort.
- Complement your overall site
monetization strategy
Research on the 10 Ways to Build
Defensible Traffic for any website
Here are the 10 ways you can use to
build defensible traffic to your
website. They are not listed in any
specific order and I?ve included a brief
commentary as well.
1. Build a Community Around your
Website.
The fastest way to grow a website is
to amass a large regular audience
who are likely to recommend and
support your site building efforts.
Not only can they offer valuable
feedback to your website, this
community can send you
links, referral traffic and future
subscribers.
It?s important to follow a clear
community development strategy from
the onset and one which involves
active interacting/networking with
your audience or target market.
2. Practice Social Media
Optimization
Social media optimization involves
educating your audience on social
websites, occasionally developing
content targeted at a specific
social audience and
facilitating interaction
between your site audience and the
social website in question.
This also includes promoting the
usage of a particular social
voting/networking website (e.g. Digg
or StumbleUpon), which can then be
gradually developed as a referral
traffic source.
This process may involve personal
use of the social website and active
networking within the social
community in order to set it up as a
source of visitors for your website.
3. Focus on Growing Your Subscriber
Base
Syndication of your content away
from your website should be
encouraged because it promotes
viral dissemination of your
content and brand. One of
the ways to build a regular audience
is to focus on the growth of RSS
feed or email newsletter
subscribers.
The benefits of building feed
subscribers are many and one should
primarily view them as people who
are able to generate buzz or support
for your website or brand.
Most of the time, subscribers are
the also the easiest to convert when
it comes to recommending new
affiliate programs or
income-generating schemes for your
website.
4. Develop Linkbait and Remarkable
Content
Linkbait is content that is created
to pull in links and referral
traffic from a targeted audience and
is a very fast and effective way to
create awareness of your website.
However, the only way your
website can continue to attract
recommendations and traffic over the
long run is to develop several
webpages or articles that are
comprehensive, timeless and
reference-able.
Linkbait is the hook that reels
in the crowd and flagship or
cornerstone content is the
carrot that converts them into
recommend-ers or future promoters of
your website.
5. Industry and Niche Networking
Getting links and traffic from
another website doesn?t only depend
on the quality of your content,
although it is a very important
factor. Networking with the right
people in your industry can not only
get you links, traffic or sales but
also one very important element:
recommendations.
These recommendations vouch for
the quality of your business and the
integrity of your personal brand.
There are many ways of networking
within your industry and an visible
online example of this is the
creation of industry-specific
ranking lists or awards.
6. Start an Affiliate Program
Creating an affiliate program for
your website/business is an
effective way for you to
consistently drive more targeted
traffic towards your websites.
Affiliate programs create
lateral traffic sources which
develop simultaneously
across a wide body of websites.
They allow you to expand your
reach into demographics that are not
targeted and is an effective way to
consistently receive visitor
traffic. For example, I use
affiliate ads on Dosh Dosh?s
sidebars and have literally sent
thousands of visitors to websites
such as Text Link ads (TLA).
A large number of websites are
active members of TLA?s affiliate
program and each of them send a
great deal of visitors to their
website. This traffic is cumulative
and consistent because publishers
have an incentive (commissions)
to continue doing so. A good
affiliate program will only do your
website or business good and never
harm.
7. Buy Advertising on Relevant
Websites
Purchasing advertising for traffic
is an old strategy used by almost
all webmasters or online business.
An ad on a high traffic and relevant
website can send you a fairly large
and regular amount of web traffic.
Paid advertisements can come in
many forms: sponsored blog reviews,
RSS feed advertisements, text links
or image-based banner ads. They can
be purchased according to a
time-based, CPM or CPC arrangement
and is a viable option to consider
if you need to brand your new
website.
8. Partnership and Joint Ventures
One facet of online marketing
partnerships is banner exchanges,
which are widely used by various
types of websites. There are also
many other types of partnerships
available which can drive visitors
to your website: some of these
include collaborations on a new
online project and
co-advertising/branding for a
popular product.
9. Offline or Traditional Media
Marketing
Promoting your website offline is
not an option that is often explored
by many webmasters or bloggers but
small business owners understand the
value of offline marketing.
Selling your website in
traditional media allows your
audiences to connect with
what you want them to see.
When you list your site URL in a
magazine ad, you are inviting them
to explore your website further.
Entering your url, a visitor
arrives at your website or sell
page, which can be designed to evoke
a specific response from the visitor
in question. It is important to note
that offline marketing also involves
pitching your website to journalists
and traditional media such as
newspapers or industry journals.
While they may not send a great
deal of traffic, offline initiatives
are great for branding and
complements your online marketing
efforts.
10. Set up a Defensible Traffic Plan
Last by not least, it is very
important to create a well
structured defensible traffic
development plan. Setting goals,
to-do items and monitoring your
website?s performance allows you to
determine progress and discover what
traffic-generating schemes work or
not.
If you want to make money from
your website, you need a clear idea
of how to build traffic sources that
will grow your website and brand
over the long run.
Conclusion of Building Secure Traffic for Your Website
In the next few articles within my web
traffic building series, I will try to
cover some (or perhaps all) of these 10
strategies in much greater detail, while
providing examples of how you can use
these tactics for your website.

Webmaster Said:
Thank you.
Web Guru Said:
seo-sem-expert.net Said:
I also advice you to use tweetdeck for managing your social networks and build optimize blog.
1)Start a topic on blog.
2)blog must have a feature to invite your social networking friends to your blog.
3)For blog comment they have to add banner link to there blog or website
4)Blog must have feature to bookmark there comment.
Regards
Mr Khalid
SEO | SEM Expert