So you finally had that online business of yours up and running. It should not just be running though, it should be ahead of the competition (way ahead, if you intend to quit your day job altogether). And with the hundreds and thousands of web pages in the internet, competition is a whole new ball game. If you are serious about generating sales and traffic, not only do you have to have quality products, competitive prices and a snazzy website, you have to have an audience. Otherwise, your efforts would amount to nothing. Here are some web 2.0 techniques that you might want to try if you want to increase web traffic.

Leaving Trails
One of the keys to a web traffic surge is high quality back links. These are links posted on other sites that directs visitors to your site. You can also add back links in community forums and online bulletins. Make sure that when you do this, you already know your niche. While this is almost always entirely free, keep in mind that you are trying generate sales. It doesn’t take too long to post a link somewhere, but it is better to have a solid understanding of your niche. For example, if you are promoting game-hunting equipment, promoting your website in animal-welfare community forums is not only an exercise in futility – it might also be regarded as insensitive and might be terrible for your company’s image. Another way is to post comments in authority blogs. You can use Google’s blog search to find out about bloggers who are in your niche. However, make sure that these blogs are ‘reliable’ – not just something that someone posted so that others like you can post back links on it. Also, make sure that if you ever leave a back link, it is a dofollow link. Otherwise, the search engines will not follow that link.

Social Bookmarking
There are sites that allow you to bookmark your URL on their site, such as Delicious.com. This way, you can promote your website for free. Others will know you have such a website running and might drop by for a visit. If other people like your site, which is possible if you have an attractive website with informative content, they will also bookmark it. These sites have a tagging system and unlike SEO-type ranking, your position will increase if other human beings actually like, and therefore bookmark your site. The higher your ranking goes, the more you will be noticed not only by people but also by search engines as well. A high search engine ranking can increase web traffic by a mile. Note that in doing this, you must actually have useful content. While it is possible to get in an agreement with a large group of people to promote websites in social bookmarking sites, doing so while knowing that your site is nothing but fluff is nothing short of deception. And customers would not like dealing with shady enterprises. When posting links, make sure that you use competitive keywords in the link text when entering the information in the forums.

Social Networking
You are probably already familiar with this Multiply, MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Sites of this nature, specifically Squidoo and Hubpages, can be used as a powerful marketing tool, and you do not have to be an internet social butterfly to be able to use this. This will be some sort of interactive leg for your online business website as customers can communicate with each other in a less formal manner – share suggestions and product reviews, etc. Also, you might be tempted to use content that you have already used on your website, but never ever duplicate it. Rewrite it if you want, make a video version or something, but never repost it. Reposting is only acceptable for highly literary articles (Short stories, poems, anyone?).

Social media has become very powerful tool internet marketing. You can put it to good use and increase web traffic for your online business. However, whatever you do, make sure that your site actually fulfills what was promised, however implicitly, by that text in the link. That is the only way to go, if you want to stay in business.