Here’s a quick screen shot of my Google Analytics stats from yesterday.

Bear in mind I’ve been away and haven’t posted recently so my traffic has been virtually nil. This is reflected in my Alexa ranking which dropped into the millions again.

I want to show you exactly what I did to grab this quick boost to my traffic so you can do the same.

I spent a few hours sifting through Twitter and adding people who I thought were both interesting and whom I’d like to network with.

I didn’t just blindly add people. I made sure to check out their page and tweets to see if they are people that I actually want to network with.

Tip: As a starting point, view the people your friends are following and those who follow them.

Twitter sets an initial limit of 2000 on the amount of people you can follow. Once you have 2000 followers yourself you can start to follow more than this limit.

People often debate the merits of following so many people but for me, the more the merrier! This way you can visit Twitter at any hour and find someone to tweet with.

Sneaky tip: You could lift this limit more quickly by unfollowing those that don’t follow you back and adding more that hopefully will. Once you’re beyond 2000 followers and the limit is lifted, re-add those that you unfollowed if desired.

As I write this I have 871 followers and rising as people log into their accounts today to follow me. You should also note that I added several leads on the back of this traffic too.

Be sure to have a link back to your website in your Twitter profile or this won’t work! Don’t forget to follow me here: http://twitter.com/JohnSzram and I’ll follow you back!

You might also want to get a Twitter Counter like the one you can see in my stats menu. Happy Tweeting!

There are many different ways to increase website traffic but today I’m going to focus on 4 of the easiest methods. I’m going to give you 4 simple ways that you can increase website traffic quickly, easily and that you can start to put to use today.

These methods aren’t rocket science and they are no big secret but if used correctly they work really well. If you are not currently using them as part of your overall traffic strategy then you are missing out.

Notice I didn’t say these are the best ways, but they are just some of the easiest ways to drive visitors to your site quickly.

You’ll notice my Alexa ranking not too long ago was in the millions, which isn’t unusual for a new blog. As I write this it’s at modest 239,235 and steadily rising. Recently I even broke into the top 100,000 for the week, which in itself doesn’t mean much but I like to use it as an overall indicator of how I am progressing.

Anyway… I digress, let’s get started:

1. Blog Commenting

The Golden Rule: Add value to the converstation.

Please do this, it is so important. The temptation when using blog commenting as a traffic generation strategy is to try and get as many comments out there as possible. A few well written comments are much better than lots of “nice post” type comments.

People will simply gloss over these comments and the chances of them visiting your site are virtually nil. Conversely if you add something of value to the conversation readers might think “this person has something to say, I’m gonna check out their site.”

Don’t force it either or it will sound contrived. If you’ve got nothing to say that is relevant move on and find another post where you can add something of value.

If you have the Alexa Toolbar installed, my advice would be to comment on blogs where you can not only add value but that are also in the top 100,000 on Alexa and certainly in the top 500,000. This shows they are getting a decent amount of traffic. If at all possible focus on commenting on “dofollow” blogs. If you are not sure what that means check out my recent post here: http://www.johnszram.com/are-you-following-me/

The thing about blog commenting is, I enjoy it. I truly enjoy reading other people’s posts, learning and adding my thoughts. In fact, I’d add more comments but I don’t want to flood people’s blogs! You get to read, learn, contribute and you benefit from the traffic and backlinks. It’s a great set up.

2. Submit To Blog Carnivals

Submitting to Blog Carnivals is also a great way to drive people to your site. It’s a win-win situation, the carnival owner gets valuable content for their site and you get a backlink and traffic.

Some of the carnivals require that you post a link back to the their site which I have no problem doing since hopefully we won’t be submitting to spammy sites anyway. Think about it like this, if your link to their carnival helps them in the search engines… great! The more people visit their site the greater the chance they’ll find your content and come back to your blog.

I like providing my content for others to use on their site and this helps to build a reputation as an expert or an authority on your subject.

3. Social Bookmarking

I choose one of my best articles and I submit to a lot of social bookmarking sites and I do this once a week. Instead of submitting to them all individually I use Social Marker. I have usually been surprised by which individual sites send me the most traffic and there’s only one way you’ll find out and that’s to submit and monitor the results. You could use Google Analytics to do this.

The first time I implemented this strategy I noticed a huge increase in website traffic to our site. On one particular day I saw an increase of 400% from the previous days traffic the night after submitting through Social Marker. I highly recommend you submit a quality article using their service. I can’t promise those results but it’s still an effective way to gain visitors.

4. Forum Participation

Forum participation much like blog commenting is a great way to increase website traffic. Especially if you make posts that offer good quality information. Like all of this stuff, relevance and content are king. You’ll need to create a link to your site in your signature so readers know where to find you.

Please don’t spam these places. Contribute. I don’t know if there’s such a thing as “marketing karma” but usually the more you give, the more you receive back. If you are struggling to make money online, think about that for a moment, how much are you giving as opposed to taking?

The posts that work the best are ones where you start a thread for no reason other than to provide quality information. Don’t think about getting anything in return. Just provide the best information that you can on a particular subject and people will thank you for it and so will your traffic stats.

It’s a great way to build a reputation as a provider of quality information and to show your expertise on a particular subject. Do it today. Think to yourself “I’m going to write the best information I can possibly write on this topic and submit.” See what happens.

Forums are also one of the best places to learn, since you can get as involved as much or as little as you like. You can sit back and only read other’s posts or you can become proactive and contribute. You’ll find the whole process much more rewarding once you start to contribute.

My favourite forum is Lee McIntyre’s Standing Start Profits but I would say that since I’m a moderator there right? Well I’d say that anyway and I did before I became a mod (though I’m actually a rocker ). It’s without doubt the place where I feel most at home.

Now go out there, start driving some traffic today and let me know how you get on.