“We have hundreds of articles in more than a dozen topic areas available,” says Josh Madigan, product manager of Content Infusion. “The beauty of service is you can pick and choose which categories are most appropriate for your site. Older articles are automatically removed, and new ones are added each week.”

* Search Engines

Getting your site recognized by major search engines is another good step to take. The first thing you should do is make sure your site is search engine optimized, meaning pages contain keyword rich titles and text. A good title contains most relevant keywords, describes what your site is about, and is less than 80 characters long. Keywords should also appear within body of text, but don’t overdo it. The search engines will penalize you for excessive key wording. Once you think your site is ready, submit your site address or URL to top search engines and directories on Web: Google, Yahoo and Netscape, and in no time, traffic will likely pick up.

* Traffic Networks

Another way to bring people to your site is by joining a traffic network like Traffic Swarm. All you have to do to join is log on to www.trafficswarm.com , enter some basic information about site or sites you want to promote -- a Category, URL, a Title, and a Description, and information will be used to generate targeted links to your site, which are then displayed throughout Traffic Swarm network. A basic listing on this network is free. The beauty of traffic networks is that they bring traffic that is targeted to your primary audience.

* Adding Links

Adding links to your site is another way to grow your traffic. Some webmasters simply search web and then e-mail related sites asking for a link swap, but this method can be time consuming. An easier way to do it is to search for web directories with similar businesses already onboard and join. Some sites will charge a fee for privilege, but majority of them are free.

“A Website’s ability to target and capture an audience is crucial to its success. It is audience retention that gives you a forum to further market, sell to and communicate with members of community you’ve created,” adds Madigan.

To sign up for free service offered by Content Infusion, log on to www.contentinfusion.com and follow prompts.

Provide a feedback form Make sure you provide a feedback form and not just an email link. Feedback forms will encourage your visitors to provide feedback more than just a simple email link. With a feedback form you are letting your visitors know that you want them to provide you with feedback and that you will listen to their comments and perhaps even act on them. Make form as attractive as possible, use drop down boxes, radio buttons and try not to make form too long and difficult to fill in. Don’t ask too many personal details, an email address and a contact name may suffice in most cases. You may want to validate form so that you get a proper email address and name. If you sell products provide an easy drop down menu of those products or a department within your company that email will be sent to. Also make sure there’s a thank you after submission to let visitor know that submission was successful and provide a time scale message such as “a member of our support team will be in contact with you within next 24 hours”. You may also want to remind visitor of your business hours.

Other feedback suggestions A forum can be another way to gain feedback and suggestions. Perhaps having a forum category called ‘site suggestions’ or ‘product suggestions’ would be a good addition to your site. Another good way to gain feedback is in your payment processing. If you sell products you’ll know that sometimes visitors cancel their purchase just at last minute This can be puzzling. PayPal allows you to redirect user back to a personalised page so why not allow user to provide you with feedback as to why they aborted purchase. This could be valuable information, perhaps they felt payment process was too cumbersome and long and if so you may decide to change to a different payment company. Providing ready written options such as “the payment process was too long and complicated” that have an accompanying checkbox might make it easier for visitors rather than them simply having to fill in a feedback box. Other ideas might be to use review or rating software that will let you visitors perhaps rate a page or application and write reviews.

Employing some or all of these methods can certainly help you get feedback. In turn this feedback will help you provide a better site or software and best thing of all is that this feedback doesn’t cost!

I'd love you to email me (michael@codefixer.com) and tell me what you think of this article!