Online Business Adviser

Getting people to any site is a challenge, even more so to a new one. Until your SEO kicks in (and even when it has) and delivers organic traffic, you need to rely on other methods to get people's attention. There are 3 tips I can recommend for (almost) free to drive traffic to your site and begin to build awareness (and hopefully quality links).

I'm just back from the first Affili@SYD conference, and wanted what I considered some of the highlights and point you in their direction, as I think there was some incredibly valuable content that anyone starting an online business should know.

Put simply, inbound links are those that point to your site from elsewhere on the web. It may be from a directory, it may be from a link that someone has added to a social bookmarking site, or someone may consider your site of enough value to link from theirs. Wherever they come from, inbound links are vital to the success of your site.

What you need to consider, particularly as a startup, is that people don't search for the name of your site because in the beginning, you have no profile or awareness. What they search for is a term that they consider to be the right one for what they are looking for, which doesn't always match with what you believe they would search for to find your site. What this means is that you will need to conduct some keyword research in order to determine what is best for your market.

When a company name becomes a verb, you know it has a pretty significant impact. Anyone who has ever searched for anything online has no doubt used Google at one time or another. The online behemoth, whose homepage is arguably the most valuable piece of online real estate, has the lions share of the global search market, making it one of the most important areas of online business for anyone - after all, if they can't find you, how do they buy from you? Did you know that 55% of purchases here in Australia come from the search engines?