Where does traffic come from? Now I'm not talking about that stuff we all get stuck in during rush hour. Website traffic is essential, if you have no traffic to your website you are not going to get anyone buying your products or reading your articles. Traffic is one of the key components of your website and is available in these three forms.

1. Pay For It.

You can buy traffic typically using what is known as Pay Per Click advertising. The major names in this market are Google and their AdWords program and Yahoo Network Sponsored Search. There are many smaller companies around also but they all follow the same premise.

You create your account, grab a bunch of keywords and create your adverts. You can define the amount you want to spend per click or per day, what geographical areas you want your adverts to appear in and even what time they should appear.

When someone types one of your keywords into for example Google your advert will be displayed down the right hand side of the natural search results. If the searcher then chooses to click on your advert and gets forwarded to your website you will get charged for that click.

The price you pay for each individual click depends on a variety of conditions such as how many other people are competing on that keyword. The more competition the more it costs to be higher up the ranks. The position you want to occupy. The percentage of people who click on your advert, the list goes on.

Pay Per Click advertising can be very successful but has a steep learning curve, it is essential that you do lots of research into your chosen Pay Per Click vender and in the niche you are in.

2. Borrow It.

This option is not for everyone, but in certain niches it can be effective. The first method of borrowing traffic is what is called link exchange. This is where you put links to another website on your site and they put links back to you on theirs. This can be beneficial as you can get traffic from a more successful website reasonably quickly. However this traffic is not always targeted.

The second option in the affiliate marketing world is called a joint venture or a JP. This is essentially where you would contact another marketer or company who had products that complements yours. If they are interested they may send a mailing out to their list or put an entry in their blog alerting their visitors about you and your relevant products.

The key things to remember about borrowing traffic is that you have to give something in return. This can make it tricky when targeting very successful websites.

3. Create It.

Creating your own traffic is one of the best ways to start bringing people into your website. There are literally hundreds of ways to start creating your traffic but I'm just going to tell you about two of the most popular.

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Why Google Page Rank is Important in Building Traffic For your website?

Google PageRank is important in building traffic to your website for a number of reasons. Before we discuss why, here is quick heads up on how it works.

Page Rank is based on links between your site and other sites, in fact specifically between web pages, since it is links between individual pages rather than complete websites that interests Google. That is because Google lists individual pages and not domains. There is a formula that Google uses to determine the value of each link to your site, which is based on the PageRank of the web page providing the link and also the number of other links leaving that page.

You can see the page Rank in the Google PageRank bar on the Google Toolbar - it is the green bar that shows a numerical value of 0 to 10 when you hover your cursor over it.

This value is logarithmic, which means that if it takes 10 links to reach PR 1, then it takes a lot more to reach 2. If Google uses a logarithmic factor of 8, as it might do (nobody knows), then it will take 8 links to your site to get to PR 1, 64 to reach PR 2, 512 to PR 3 and so on. This is very basic, since, as I have stated, it also depends on the PR of the page providing the link and the number of other links leaving that page.

Here are the top 4 reasons that in my opinion help to generate traffic and make you money:

1. The higher your Google PageRank, then the higher Google is likely to list you in the search engine results pages. Google take the view than the more other websites link to yours, then the more relevant your web page must be to the topic in hand, otherwise they wouldn't link to you. In fact, the links are to specific pages in your site, not to the site as a whole, which is why it is called 'Page Rank' and not Site Rank.

2. The higher the Page Rank, then the more relevant other people will consider any particular page on your website to be. They will feel more confident that if they visit your site they will have their questions answered and find the information they are looking for.

3. A high Page Rank shows that you have a high number of links on the pages of other websites. There is then the possibility of others clicking on these links to get to your website.

4. The higher your Page Rank, then the more people will want you to link to their website. That means that they too will be likely to visit your site. They will also offer you a reciprocal link if you want one, and that too will provide you with more exposure online.

There are some factors you should keep in mind that could affect your Page Rank. The way your domain name is presented is very important. Take at look at these domains: www.mydomain.com, www.mydomain.com/index.html, domain.com, domain.com/index.html

They are all different URLs that will lead somebody using them to your domain. However, search engine spiders see them all as different URLs, and if you use different ways to write your home page URL, then they will all be listed separately, and all be given a different Page Rank. Thus, the page rank for any one of them will be weaker than your page would have been if you had used only the one way to express it. Get into the habit of expressing your domain in only one way.

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Since Google Analytics was launched in 2005 it has become one of the top analytics packages for small to medium sized websites. Growth was initially slow due to the frustrating waiting list system initiated by Google to avoid over stretching their servers. Now that the waiting list has been removed anybody can sign up to use this great service.

The user interface had a major redesign in May 2007 and a lot of the features we love have become hard to find. This guide should help you find your way around the new system.

I see a lot of comments on the forums asking whether Analytics can do X, Y and Z. In most cases it can do it but people just don't realize it. As webmaster of several large sites I have been using GA for around a year now to track a huge number of variables. In this post I will go through a few of the more obscure interactions that GA can tack on your site. Tracking exit clicks, banner clicks and RSS feed subscribers

Have you ever wanted to know how many people clicked on a particular link or banner on your site? You may wish to find out how many people click on an affiliate link, how many people from a certain country click on your banner advert or even the number of visitors from Digg that clicked to sign up to your RSS feed.

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The following article explains how to publish your site using Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is a program developed by Macromedia/Adobe used to create websites. The website is usually created locally first and then published to the web server.

To initially create your website locally, please follow these steps:

Note: This only needs to be done the first time you create your website.

1. Open Dreamweaver on your local machine.

2. From the Site menu select Manage Sites.

3. Click New.

4. Enter a name for your website.

5. Choose if you will be using a server technology like ColdFusion or ASP.NET.

6. Select Edit local copies on my machine.

7. Enter the path to the folder you would like to use to store your website.

8. Click Next.

9. Select FTP as the method used to connect to your remote server.

10. Enter the necessary information:

* Hostname: enter your domain name or IP address

* Folder: this field can be left blank (Windows accounts) or enter htdocs (Linux accounts)

* FTP login: enter your FTP username

* FTP password: enter your FTP password

11. Click Test Connection to ensure Dreamweaver can connect to the server.

12. Click Next.

13. Choose if you wish to enable checking in and checking out of file. This option is recommended if multiple people will be working on the pages in your website.

14. Click Next.

15. Click Done.

To publish your web site, please follow these steps:

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How do I use a connection string to connect to a MySQL database?

A guide for Linux users.

The following article explains how to use a connection string to connect to a MySQL database. The syntax of the connection string will vary based on the programming language you are using.

Below are sample connection strings for PHP, ColdFusion, Perl and JSP. The code snippets can be added directly to your code.

In the following examples, please substitute your information where the following data is referenced:

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How do I use the CFMail tag to send mail from my ColdFusion pages?

The following article explains how to use the CFMail tag. This tag allows you to send email messages through your website. This tag is available for use on all of our shared Coldfusion hosting accounts.

The syntax of the cfmail tag is very simple. Within the tag you add the pertinent information including the to address, the from address, a subject line and the server name. The server name will be localhost. The message of the email is placed between the cfmail tags.

Below is an example of the CFMail tag for versions of ColdFusion starting with ColdFusion 5.0

CFMail tag using Coldfusion 5.0

Coldfusion MX 6.1/CFMX 7/CF 8 allows for SMTP Authentication by use of a username and password. The username and password must be a valid email address from your mail account.

The following article explains how to enable Spam filtering for your mail account. SmarterMail includes many advanced anti-Spam measures that help keep out unwanted junk mail. There are three levels of Spam probability: low, medium and high. Customizing Spam settings flags certain messages for their level of Spam probability. The flagged messages are then handled according to specified actions for each level. To set a Spam filter for incoming email messages, please follow these steps:

1. Open a browser window and go to one of the following URL: http://mail.yourdomainname.com

2. Login using your email address and password.

3. From the Settings menu, select My Spam Filtering.

4. Select the radial button Override Spam settings for this account.

5. Click the Actions tab.

6. For each Spam level (Low, Medium, and High), choose the Weight and Action for an e-mail. If you choose to add text to the subject line of messages, enter it in the text box below the action drop down menu. The actions are defined as:

* No Action: nothing is done to the email message

* Delete Message: the email message is immediately deleted

* Move to Junk E-Mail folder: the email message is moved to the junk email folder (a default folder created by SmarterMail)

* Add text to subject line: additional text can be added to the subject line of the email message

7. Click the Trusted Senders tab.

8. Enter the email address(es) that will not be checked by the Spam filter.

9. Click Save.

The following article explains how to forward your email to another address. The email is first received in your inbox and then a copy is sent to a specified address. The original email remains in your inbox, unless you instruct SmarterMail to delete the message.

To forward email automatically to another address, please follow these steps:

1. Open a browser window and go to one of the following URLs: * http://mail.yourdomainname.com

2. Login using your email address and password.

3. From Settings menu, select My Settings.

4. Enter the forwarding address. If you are forwarding to more than one address, use a comma to separate the addresses. For example: user1@yourdomain.com, user2@yourdomain.com, user3@yourdomain.com.

5. If you want to have the messages deleted after they are forwarded, check Delete message on forward (otherwise a copy of the message will remain on the mail server).

6. Click Save.

The following article explains how to use PHP mail to send emails. PHP mail makes use of the mail() function and sends the email based on the parameters specified. Send a Simple Email Message

Below is a sample script for PHP mail:

Email the Results of a Form

To send the results of a form as an email from your website you will need to first create the HTML form. Within the form you will need to set the action to the page containing your PHP mail code. For example:

Next, you will need to create the PHP page specified in the action which will contain the PHP mail code.

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A guide to website hosting terminology

Confused by web hosting industry technical jargon and terms? This web hosting guide provides valuable information to help you make an informed decision about your web hosting requirements. If you are just getting started with hosting, one of our value hosting plans will deliver outstanding features at an affordable price.

Here are the key components of a hosting package, and what they mean to you and your site: Hard Disk Storage

This is the space you have to store your site. Every website is stored on a webserver, which is the computer that broadcasts your site to your visitors. Your hard disk storage is how much space you are allocated on that server's hard drive. Even most robust websites don't require more than 10 megs of space, but having more is a nice luxury for storing pictures, video, and graphics.

Monthly Transfer (also called bandwidth)

This is the total amount of data (including graphics, HTML web pages, video, etc) which can be uploaded and downloaded from your site each month. It is a rough estimator of how many visitors your hosting plan can accommodate. For example, on an average size with a moderate amount of graphics, it has been our experience that 1000 megabytes (MB) of transfer can accommodate well over 5,000 visitors per month. Some web hosts claim to offer "unlimited bandwidth" which is not really possible. Not only are they likely to pack your site on an overloaded server and connection, but if you read the fine print there are always "excessive use penalties" which are arbitrary and costly. In contrast, we insure your site always gets the resources you pay for to make it fast and reliable with no hidden charges. POP3 Email Accounts

These are email accounts which can be used with your account. They allow you to receive and read email via our easy web interface or with a number of popular mail clients. Please visit our support center for more information on configuring your email client of choice. Unlimited updates via FTP

We allow you to update your site 24x7 using an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Client. This is a program which allows you to connect to our server and upload your files. We recommend WS_FTP which is both powerful and simple to use. It can be found at ipswitch.com.

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