Grabby headlines like that require substance, don’t they? More often than not, I am left scratching my head. So I present to you, a list (top 10 no less) of what it takes to create “a flood” of traffic to your web site. After all, it’s not smoke and mirrors. Never was. It’s just good old fashioned work. People – we are dealing with machines here. So, if you can think “machine-like”, chances are you will do better than the next guy. Many clients of ours enjoy all of these processes in our work for them. They are busy people and realize their time can be spent better doing things they are good at. They elect to outsource their online marketing to us. Regardless, you can have us do it, or you can do it. The important part is that it gets done.

You have high expectations for this world wide web and here is the reality of what it really takes to make it happen.

1) Start by building a search engine friendly web site. For all practical purposes, search engines read plain old typewritten text aka html. Sure, there are advances being made in technology. But like anything, applying the KISS principle to web site development is a good idea. Spend the money on a robust, scalable database instead of a bunch of flashy flash-o-rama pages. Spend the money on the best website management console you can. These are tools that will help you build out your site as time goes by. By all means build the site to be mobile ready.  Once you have built a site it must have SEO principles applied to the pages to aid the search engines in indexing your information so it shows up when people search for what it is you offer.

2) Going in to the project, web site owners tend to treat a web site like a brochure project. I’ll give you the bad news upfront. It’s not. A web site “project” is never completed. The good news? You know that typo you found on your brochure project? You can fix it on the web site! Step 2 is the never ending story. You must be willing to commit to adding more pages with deeper and deeper information, year in and year out. As well, you must commit to revisiting every page of your site at the very least, annually, with the intent to adjust, tweak and clarify your message with each pass. You must “re-apply” SEO to old pages changed and new pages added or you miss the bottom line reason why you are doing this…remember…the flood?

3) Embark on a long term, long view linking strategy to create a dominating association with the rest of the web. Your on-page SEO is only going to take you so far. And if you are in a highly competitive channel of business on the web, chances are, on-page SEO will not be enough to carve out a top ranking. This oh-so important step is fraught with pitfalls, misconceptions, liars and thiefs. There are also some people who really know whats what and can provide a huge difference in your long term outcome. I’m happy to know one of these people. I don’t even attempt to understand any more than 25% of what Dave is up to!

4) Create and execute a blog that will contribute to the page count of your site (as opposed to off-site blog services). With SEO in mind, blogging can be an incredibly powerful tool and will pull every bit its weight solely based on what you put into it. Ouch! Blogging about your business is a complex issue. You have to be prepared to give rather than receive. The nice thing about blogging is that we are talking a paragraph or two. Not a book. The key to blogging is consistent fresh posts. 3-4 a week is excellent. 4-6 a month is a bare minimum. You mix your posting up with contributions to your community, industry and others. Every third or fourth should be used to drive readers to a specific page/offer of your site that contains more information about a subject. A blog is the perfect place to announce a new page or feature has gone live on your site. This long term project has two goals; to create hundreds of potential search landing pages and to drive blog readers to get into “the meat” of your site.

5) Create press releases to be released through the various online PR systems. A good goal is to deliver 4-6 awesome head turning releases a year. When you apply an SEO strategy to these releases they can provide a variety of potential traffic sources. Who knows, you might even become a cyber-celebrity! Of course you blog these releases as well.

6) Create business pages at social networking sites. Who and what sites you choose to do this action with is up to you. The more you sign up for the more time commitment you are making to this part of your “flood” funnel. The work here is in building an audience(s). Otherwise there is no reason to be here. The goal here is to build an “insiders” group that is going to get notified by you with information before anyone else will. Now, when you blog, you go to your social network(s) and you post a link and a snippet to your blog, drawing the people back to your site from the networks. I wish it were that easy. Social networks require that you be an active participant and not just for the sake of selling your stuff. Its where you also build customer awareness, customer service, customer loyalty. We call it brand management in today’s world.

7) Create a YouTube account. Sure you can also choose another service. But you’ve got to post your videos at YT also. If you wanna know why then become an SEO “expert”, ok? Maybe you’ve noticed YT videos showing up in search, right? As long as you keep that “machine-like” thinking cap on the SEO target throughout all of these steps you’ll do just fine. You are going to have to create videos or attain and edit others you have permission for. The good news is small business marketing in a YT world really only takes a digital camera and, yup – some creativity and time to put it all together. But, when you have created your video you get to spin it through your blog and social network during its “opening days” and then reside it on your site where it can help explain or sell or compare – whatever it might be doing…Here again, this step provides important tools; new content for your site in a format people like and another potential search result point of light.

Whew – we are almost caught up to 2009 – But Wait! There’s More! Twitter’s fast moving “news feed” style community can build and support a steady flow of traffic just like all the rest of these tools. First though, you’ve got to build an audience. You are going to need to be known as a contributor not a shouter. This is where most people stumble and fall. They cant put in the effort to build their social network audiences. It takes time and nurturing. With Twitter in place you have the perfect online funnel poised to participate in the flood. As your news breaks you tweet about it and link the message to your FaceBook page. This helps build your FB fan base. At the Facebook page, visitors read a snippet and are linked to your blog to finish the whole story. The story takes them to a new page on your web site. Is this a sale? Or a lead form filled out? Or just another positive impression on the road to acceptance? It’s all good!

9) Everything above is “free” in that you dont pay for anything more than the effort it takes to make it all happen. After you have all of that in place, you can afford to work some pay-per-click advertising. Because you are getting new traffic from so many other sources, you arent as desperate as those who’s only traffic is PPC. So you go for the “long tail” ie. less expensive terms and positions and use the traffic as good targeted whipped cream on your traffic sundae.

10) Analyze your traffic data to help make better business decisions the information uncovers.

It won’t happen overnight. Or in a few months. But as you build, refine and grow, so will your traffic, till one day it is in fact a daily flood you are capable of welcoming in.