Grow traffic now (Small Business E-commerce Link Digest – March 26, 2010)

While we’ve suggested that it’s not always a good idea to grow traffic in the past, what should you do when it is the right thing to do? We’ve looked at how to grow your traffic before and, a year later, have found some additional resources worth checking out. So, um, well, check these out:

• Search and social are two of the best ways to grow your traffic. Lisa Barone has an article on Small Biz Trends that marries those two ideas, looking at how to improve your Facebook page’s SEO. The great thing is that several of her tips apply equally well whether they’re on Facebook or your own site, too.
• And speaking of SEO for your own site, Econsultancy offers up a list of 9 common SEO campaign mistakes, along with tips for how to avoid them. SEO may sometimes seem like a black art, but as Econsultancy notes in its piece and as we’ve shown before, the basics of SEO are, well, pretty basic.
• Back to Facebook for a second, Wildfire’s blog has a good look at 7 strategies for marketing your facebook fan page. As with Lisa’s article above, many of these strategies work equally well on your own site. Not sure whether to drive traffic to your company’s Facebook page or your site? While you certainly want to drive traffic to all your sales and marketing channels, you may also want to look at which sales and marketing channels are most effective for your business.
• Finally, it’s best when looking at how to grow traffic to have an integrated plan. McKinsey Quarterly shows one way to do that with a look at 4 ways to get more value from digital marketing (Free registration required; it’s worth it).

What’s working for you? Found a great tip that we’ve overlooked? Tell us about it in the comments below. And happy hunting in the quest for more – and more qualified – traffic for your business.

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