| With all the traffic-generating software available today providing easy ways to get lots of traffic redirected to your website, it's easy to lose track of the bottom line. Your website's main purpose is to do something other than just generating hits. It can be the promotion of a product, or providing information on a certain subject. Whatever the case, the volume of traffic running through a site is a major determinant in it's success as a website. However, this is only part of the equation, and some people lose track of their website's main goal in the race to get more hits than everybody else. Eventually, this leads to their ruin, no matter how many hits they get.
One of the best ways to avoid this problem is to keep your website's original, main purpose in mind at all times. Granted, aggressive online marketing software can get you a lot of hits - but will you KEEP those people coming back to your website? That's the question. Always focus first on what you're about. Keep your content fresh and always make sure that you give people a reason to come back and visit you, or you'll wind up the proverbial flash in the pan.
Aside from making your website itself interesting, you have to select your target traffic wisely. Simply bombarding tons of people to visit your website in the belief that the "good" ones will stick around doesn't always hold true. Why? Because the sheer volume of traffic made up of mostly casual browsers or even misdirected hits from any traffic-generating software you're using will ultimately cause lag and bog your site down. This can turn off even those who might have otherwise wanted to browse, or conduct business with you in the first place.
So you need to do your research when selecting your target audience. This is made easier by the fact that most software meant to either generate or attract traffic can be customized to your specifications - how aggressive it gets, what types of advertisement to use, parameters on email addresses and websites contacted, that sort of thing. This ability to customize should be used fully to make sure that the audience you reach is the one you want to.
Often, it is a good bet to aim for a smaller but solid customer base that will generate constant traffic from coming back often. Then you can expand from there, slowly building up by looking for more clients to contact. You can also improve your website as you go along to cater to your existing traffic, using things like referral systems to get browsers to participate and bring people they know in (which makes them inclined to stay even more since they'll have friends using your site too). Naturally, this gradual ramp-up can also allow you to improve your site to meet the increasing number of traffic going through.
This will be rather different from the usual "randomized" traffic pulled in by traffic generators, who will be there one moment and gone the next, making your traffic spike wildly. Aim instead for a gradually increasing curve to your traffic rate that rarely diminishes and often increases. In this way you can make sure that your website becomes a long-term investment of your time, money, and effort.
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