Becoming a traffic magnet is an idea that anyone with a website should want. Being able to attract traffic instead of fight to get it is not that hard to do when you think of things from your prospect's perspective. Why aren't they buying from you?

First, you should use an analytics program. This gives you insight into why people leave without buying. If you can figure out why they aren't buying, you can fix it and they might. Google's analytics works really well and doesn't cost anything. If you have the data from visitors, you can improve the performance of your sites and make more money.

Now, find where your audience is already going. Do searches for your main keyword terms (if you sell executive leather office chairs, doing a search for chair would work) and see what sites pop up. Visit the first 3 sites that come up, as they will be getting the most traffic from their current ranking. Look on the bottom of those sites for something indicating that they sell ad space. If they have that there, you can promote your site on theirs and gain an instant traffic source that already has authority in the eyes of your customers. You may even find forums, blogs, or other social sites where you can post there for free.

Do you know what a Google alert is? Google will alert you every time someone uses a keyword you want to be updated about. Think about this: Your prospect goes to Yahoo Answers or a forum and asks a question that relates to something you sell. A notice is sent to let you know about it and you can go answer the question. You also get to leave a link to your website. Just setup possible questions as Google Alerts! To find the questions, go to Yahoo Answers and do a search for your most basic keyword term to find questions that others have already asked. The key is to take a piece of the question and wrap it in quotes, that tells Google to only send you alerts with that exact term included in it and will save you from having to dig through alerts you don't need or want (example: "how do i get traffic"). Since Google has already found the question, it will definitely find your answer and give you credit for the link.

Here is an obvious step that nobody considers. Google implemented something called Universal Search in May of 2007. They took their individual search engines (video, news, blogs, etc...) and put it all into one gigantic index of the web. The last time you searched Google, I'm sure you saw it for yourself. This revealed to us marketers that we should target video, news, blogs, local listings to get ranked easier. There are a lot less videos competing for your keyword terms then websites. Take advantage of this and use press releases and video when marketing your business.