What does it take to create a well-loved, well-frequented website? Of course it takes a great concept, great execution, and great material. A well-loved website though, has to really get out there and manage to bring in viewers. Visitors are what make a website successful. And yet, merely having great content doesn't do the trick most of the time. You need to put a lot of specific thought into how to increase web traffic. Here's how you do that.

In learning how to increase website traffic, the first thing you need to do is to really go all out promoting yourself. Make it easy for whoever visits, to come back – put an option in there that allows them to mark your website as their homepage or to add it to their list of bookmarks. Make sure that you include a way for your visitors to share the page on every kind of social bookmarking and networking service; and allow them to e-mail the page too.

Offer your readers a way to subscribe to a weekly newsletter so that they can have the best of what your website publishes each week coming right to them. You've heard of visitors going to forums to comment; have you ever heard of websites going to forums to comment? It's about time you did.

You, the webmaster, should need to visit lots of forms and websites where you believe that the people who are likely to be interested in your website might come visiting. And you need to contribute – to put in thoughtful comments, and leave the name of your blog or website in your comment. Just as long as you don't spam these forums, this should work just fine.

It doesn't work if you just stand there waiting for Google, for social bookmarking services like Del.icio.us, for blog search engines like Technorati or for discovery engines like Stumble Upon, to find you. You need to go to them. Make sure that you send your website to Google, that you claim your blog on Technorati and that you submit content to De.icio.us.

Certainly, it can be hard to keep finding great things to say on your site on a regular basis. That's where you bring in guest bloggers – star bloggers who have followings of their own. Visitors who know the talent you bring in will start tuning in just for them. You could employ bloggers too, even ghost bloggers. Of course, your website or blog can't just be about written stuff anymore. For the most part, you need podcasts, slideshows, video and audio – the whole circus – to keep you viewers interested.

You are building your website for the search engines just as much as you are for your readers. Remember, if no one knows about your website, all your efforts at creating a great experience go to waste. You need to turn yourself into a finely tuned machine that homes in on every opportunity to link and tag.

Wherever possible, throw in links to other people's blogs and websites. And then ask the owners of those blogs and websites to link back to you. Everywhere you have content, use meta-tags, headers and title tags to make your website or blog attractive and readable to the search engines. Use the right keywords used services like Hit Tail to zero in on the right keywords. And oh, make sure that your images are readable to the search engines too.

It takes time in the end. The secret to increasing website traffic is to do all of the above, and then having the patience to wait and keep doing it. The reward takes its time coming. But it's worth it.

Viral marketing is one of the most if not the most powerful way of advertising. I call it business at the speed of trust.

Viral Marketing

We are all influencers, influencing others, and we are all in turn influenced by those around us. We rarely do or try something new if there is no ‘social proof’. Before we go to see a movie we might ask some friends what they thought of it, we might read a review or look for clues from others that have seen the film to find out if it’s any good. Before we go on a holiday we might check out some travel advice sites like Trip Advisor or ask our work colleagues and neighbours about their holidays.

Viral Marketing

Usually when we want to buy a piece of software, fridge or new phone we like to go online to Google product reviews. I think you get the drift. We want social proof before we invest our hard-earned money or spend our precious time on a product or service. At the end of the day we trust each other more than a sales people or advertisers. From a ROI (Return On Investment) perspective viral marketing is one of the cheapest and most highly leveraged forms of advertising. Coupled with the exponential power of the internet, viral marketing gives you a very potent and powerful platform to get your message to the masses.

Viral Marketing

Relationship Marketing is targeted at building stronger and long lasting relationships with clients and other companies. The business is done with a strategic orientation, where the relationship is improved with existing customers rather than finding new customers. It is meant to cater to the needs of individual customers. Its major part involves studying the need of the customer and how it changes in different circumstances.

Relationship marketing applies techniques like marketing, sales, customer care and communication. The relationship is not only enhanced but its life period is increased by these strategies. And as the customer realizes the value of relationship, they are drawn closer. This marketing not only focuses on building relationship and attracting customers to their products and services but also how to retain them.

A raw form of Marketing came into existence in the 1960s. But, organizations were still facing difficulty in selling products, so a system was developed to sell low cost goods to larger group of customer. Leonard Berry and Jag Sheth originated this marketing, in 1982. It was started in B2B markets and industries, which involved long term contracts for many years.  Over the period of time, various marketing strategies were improved and relationship marketing was one of them.

Relationship marketing is applicable where the customers have many options in the market for the same product or service and the customer is entitled to make a selection decision. In such a kind of market, businesses try to maintain their clients by providing comparatively better products and good service and hence, achieving customer loyalty. And once it is achieved it becomes difficult for competitors to do well in the market. The customer turnover wasn’t paid attention on as the main attention was on customer satisfaction. This kind of marketing was initially named as defensive marketing. Offensive marketing is the marketing strategy where not only new customers are attracted, but also the sales are stepped up by increasing the purchase frequency. This kind of marketing concentrates on freeing dissatisfied customers and acquiring new customers.

According to a research, the cost of retaining an old customer is only ten percent of the cost of getting a new customer, which makes sense to not to run around to get new customers in relationship marketing. And according to another research done by cross-sectional analysis, says that, a five percent improvement in customer retention is responsible for twenty-five to eighty-five percent of the profit. Usually high cost is incurred when getting new customers, so if sufficient number of existing customers is retained, there will be no need of acquiring new customers.

Once the customer trust is gained his chances of switching to other company becomes relatively less, he buys goods in bulk, he buys other supplementary goods and he starts neglecting average price variation. This maintains the unit sales volume and there is an increase in dollar-sales volume. The existing customers will be like a living advertisement. If he is satisfied with the company he will recommend it to his friends and acquaintances.

Since the existing customers are familiar with the process, it will take less time and money to educate them about the procedures putting fewer burdens on employees also and making them feel more satisfied with their jobs. The customers are divided into groups based on their loyalty. This procedure is known as relationship ladder of customer loyalty. The groups in ascending order are prospects, customer, client, supporter, advocate and partner.

Due to the advancement in computers and Internet, software has been developed to facilitate customer relationship management. With the help of this software the tastes, activities, preferences, and complaints of customers are tracked. Almost all the companies have this software in their marketing strategy, which benefits the customer as well as the company.

Thus the main aim of relationship marketing is to construct and maintain relationship with committed clients who are meant to bring profit to the company. The other benefits achieved are confidence building and social benefits.