Users often wonder why their website doesn’t get many visitors. The answer is simple. Just compare your website to your home or office. Few visitors randomly show up there without any encouragement. First you have to do something.

Before you start inviting guests over, you should clean up your website and make it look nice. If a visitor shows up and everything is a mess, ugly and confusing, they’ll immediately turn around and leave.

But just having a beautiful website isn’t good enough. You have to make it clear why people should want to visit your website and what they can expect to find there. On an eshop the idea is to shop; on a company website visitors can find some information or submit requests; on a non-profit website they could learn about where there is a need and how they can help. Determine what your goal is and adapt your website accordingly - put the necessary elements in prominent positions and highlight them. Welcome your visitors and offer them your best.

Each time a visitor fulfills your goal for the website (be it make a purchase, sign up as a volunteer, etc.), it’s called a conversion. If a large percentage of your visitors fulfill your goal, then you have a good “conversion rate.” You can calculate the conversion rate by, for example, dividing the number of orders the previous month by the number of website visitors. The conversion rate is an important indicator that can help you understand why your efforts aren’t producing the desired results. Even if your website gets a huge number of visitors, if the conversion rate is bad, most of those visits are of no real value to you. Improve your website to improve your conversion rate.

Before you start promoting your website you should think of a name, logo, and slogan to fit your brand. It’s great if you can come up with an original idea, but what’s most important is clarity. Then decide if you want to refer to yourself using your url (for example, NomadJenny.com) or in the more typical way (Nomad Jenny), or you could even add an Ltd., etc. at the end of your name if you’d like. But whatever you choose, use it consistently everywhere.

Once you’ve decided on a website name enter it on Webgarden under the Settings tab in the field Website Title.

If you have a logo, get it in its final format (preferably as a .png file). If you don’t have a logo, consider creating one. Even personal websites and art portfolios can benefit from logos. Place your logo in one of your website’s static blocks where it will enjoy prime visibility.

Before you jump to paid advertising, remember there is all kinds of free traffic available out there. Here are some of the main sources.

Search engines are sometimes viewed as magical sources of streams of visitors flowing into websites. If you share this perspective, you’ll be disappointed when you see that it’s not so easy. Search engines direct to you and your competitors (at the same time) the exact number of people who are searching for the topic(s) of your website. They send the most visitors to the websites of the highest quality. Higher quality websites are placed above the others in the search results, and therefore more people click on them. So if you have a significant amount of competition, then your website needs to be something of excellent quality to be listed in a good position.

In recent years webmasters have begun studying SEO (Search Engine Optimization). They’ve tried to find and map out every way possible to customize their websites so that they will show up at the top of search results. But some of the SEO techniques discovered conflicted with the goals of search engines who wanted to direct their users to websites made for visitors, not websites made for search engines.

Today search engines have powerful tools at their disposal, which help them evaluate the quality of websites. They follow communication and trends on social media. They understand which backlinks are relevant and which not. In brief, they are doing everything they can to evaluate websites through the eyes of a visitor. Therefore the most important thing is to focus on the actual quality of your website, and do search engine optimization as usual, but in a way that is honest. You can still follow the generally applicable rules on how to make things easier for search engines checking out your website. Read more about that specific topic in our article How to Optimize Your Website.

Although search engines will find your website sooner or later, you can help them out by submitting your url to the search engine. If you would like to register your url with Google, for example, go to Google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url, or for Bing go to Bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url.

Comparison shopping websites compare products and prices from different merchants to help shoppers get the best deal. A substantial portion of online sales take place via comparison websites, so if you have an eshop it’s important to register your goods with them.

In the past directories and the yellow pages were excellent sources of information, but today they have mostly been replaced by search engines. However, specialized online directories and resource lists have arisen which are quite useful.

Online niche directories can help visitors find your website if you register with those that are prominent in your field. You can also register with a standard directory for your local area that would be something similar to a yellow pages.

A good way to promote your activities and your website is through social media. You can create your own page on websites like Facebook and Google+, both of which offer special pages for businesses in addition to their typical personal profiles. Social media is an ideal venue not only for telling your fans about the latest news, but also for communication such as collecting feedback, answering questions, and addressing misunderstandings. The advantage of social media is that if you can thrive there, the positive effect spreads to the friends of your fans as well. Similarly, Twitter’s microblogging system may offer limited tools, but when it comes to promotion it plays a crucial role. Before posting on social media remember that sometimes it’s better not to share everything there. Post only the bait to lure them into clicking through to your actual website.

If your social media presence isn’t getting you enough traffic, you could also produce videoclips to release on websites such as Youtube or Vimeo. Videoclips of events, reviews, travel shots, video tutorials, or promo videos are good examples. You can link to the videos from your website, and it’s advantageous to insert links on your social media pages as well.

You can publish texts supporting the subject of your website in order to increase public interest on the topic. Post them on your website or blog, and then distribute the articles through the available marketing channels (such as social media).

One of the most valuable ways you can get traffic is by building a good reputation. If visitors find your website particularly interesting, chances are they will add it to their favorites. If your website has its own domain with a fitting address, visitors will easily be able to remember it.

Here you can begin to connect the real world with the world online. Everything should be intertwined. You can support the physical conception of your website and its popularity, and the website can support you. For example, a band’s enthusiastic audience links to their website after a concert to download some free mp3s; at this point the band can use their website to offer products for sale and invite fans to their next concert.

But again, everything revolves around the quality of your website’s content. And what makes it quality? Is it quality if you tell some jokes there that everyone thinks are funny? No, not if the content of the website is without real purpose, not if it doesn’t fit in with the overall topic of the website. The content needs to be something that will be useful long-term, that will cause visitors to come back again and again, not just to stop by once and they’ve seen it.

The sources of traffic mentioned so far have included some where you can benefit from a good reputation and some where you can connect with potential visitors for the first time. But don’t forget about newsletters. If you use newsletters wisely, they can be beneficial. Although email may not be the most skillful or effective form of Internet promotion, it is the oldest and most widespread. You can use newsletters to tell people about the latest news, upcoming events, and to remind them about your website.

The amount of content available online these days is substantially more than what people can consume. It’s quality, however, often leaves something to be desired because creating quality content is hard work. If you have a quality website and want to choose a respectable path, you can either wait until readers find your website by natural means, or you can help them out a bit by spending some money to promote your website. If you set aside the classical forms of advertising (press, television, flyers), you are left with several online options.

The most widespread method of online advertising today is PPC. It’s suitable for text or graphic advertising. You can bid for an opportunity to advertise and only pay when someone clicks through to your website. Your choices for a daily budget and maximum price per click then control the price of advertising, online and in real time. PPC campaigns can be very effective, but you have to know how it’s done. Modern PPC sites offer countless tools for optimization and management, and it is sometimes possible to reduce or even to regulate costs per click or per conversion. Thanks to conversion measurements you can easily figure out if a PPC campaign has been effective - compare the numbers you can see to determine whether the advertising resulted in gain or loss. It’s possible to start PPC advertising with a relatively small budget of at least $150.

This method is similar to a classical billboard - you pay an annual fee to have your graphic advertisement displayed on a website. Before you actually try it, you can only estimate how effective the advertising will be from a conversion perspective. It’s usually less effective because the advertising isn’t directly targeted like it is with PPC. However, more people will see your advertisement and possibly numerous times, which may cause your content or logo to stick in their minds. This will make their visit to your website seem more familiar and trustworthy. So for the purpose of promoting your brand, display advertising can be better than PPC.

Remarketing is a special method of content network advertising where your advertisement is shown only to users who have some sort of connection to your website. The people who see your advertisements are those who have previously visited your website, so now you have an opportunity to remind them about what you offer in a totally different place.

Pay for premium listings in the most strategic directories. You are generally placed above others and can include more content in your listing. How beneficial this will be varies from listing to listing. It can be difficult to measure the level of effectiveness.

Add your products to comparison shopping websites where there are costs involved or pay for better visibility on those which also offer free listings.

Some content networks also offer opportunities for video advertising. The videos are shown to viewers of Youtube and other video portals before they can watch a video they are interested in. It’s possible for viewers to click through to your website from the video advertisement.

The most ineffective way to advertise is through autosurf programs which display your advertisement to users in their network among thousands of other ads. This kind of advertising is often completely worthless because the people who see your ad have no interest in your website. Additionally, arguments have been made that autosurfs which charge fees and promise a return on that money can generally be classified as Ponzi schemes.

In conclusion: “Promote websites from the end” - start by optimizing where visitors end. Thank them for their order, cultivate discussion, give your brand a good image, and in this spirit optimize your website. Accept criticism - there is always room for improvement. Then keep up with social media and other forms of free advertising. Finally, you can choose to invest in paid advertising to utilize all of your options.