Since everyone is so obsessed with ways to increase our website traffic (and of course we should be) people often are quick to jump at anything that might help. We are always talking about ways to increase search engine traffic. But, what about what we shouldn't do? The following I'll share a few tricks that you shouldn't be doing.

--->Do Not Buy Traffic
This is one of the oldest scams around the internet. I'm not talking about PPC programs; that's a whole other article. The ones I'm talking about are the ones that 'guarantee you' 10,000 visitors for $10.00 (just an example). Do you really think that's possible? Not only do they try to sell you visits; they also try to say you'll get such and such amount of sales. In plain wordsBULL! Besides, there is NO company that can guarantee you any amount of sales. Sales depend on the demand of your product/service, price and of course your ad copy. Plain and simpleBuying traffic is a scam. Don't do it.

--->Don't Bother with Top Sites
These quickly become a big waste of your valuable time. (Remember, your time is valuable and time IS money.) Everyone else listed there with your site is doing the exact same thing you're doing. Let me guess, every day you are clicking on your link and voting for yourself and/or you are sending out tons of emails (possibly spam) begging all your friends to vote for you. Am I right? Don't waste your precious time doing this. Instead spend your time working on your ad copy. It'll take you much further.

--->Submitting Your Site Myths
You don't need to submit your site to search engines. Submitting your site to search engines does not increase your search engine rankings. The important search engines will index a properly built website.

--->Web Rings
Web Rings can be fun but, you very well could be sending your traffic AWAY from your site. You are giving your visitors the opportunity to click away to another site. You need to be concentrating keeping your visitors and selling your product or service. Besides that, a lot of people break the web rings. These rings are set up to be all about the same topics. You are giving your visitors direct links to your competitors.

--->Don't Spam Your Website
Some webmasters out there have decided to spam their own websites. How do they do this you ask? One way they do this is to place a lot of unrelated keywords into their meta tags and keywords. Another way is to make 'invisible text' on their website by making the text so small that it actually looks like a dot or period. Don't do this. This can easily get you banned from the search engines.

--->Do Not Participate in Link Farms
What exactly is a Link Farm? A link farm is list of links created and maintained solely for the purpose of constructing links between member sites. For example: One page of links is generated and to be listed on this page it is a requirement to place this page on your website. Search engines see this as an illegal move and can have you punished and banned from them. Please don't hesitate to investigate if you have a question about a particular program that you are involved with. It could save you tons later.

One thing that I frequently hear when referring to the above 'programs' is the following: "But, it's free, it's not going to hurt me." First of all, these aren't free. These are a waste of valuable time. As I mentioned Time IS Money and your time is precious. For every moment you are spending on these basically worthless ideas, you COULD be improving your traffic instead. Secondly, a few of the above mentioned are against search engine rules and could get you banned. That is a lot of hurting.

Starting to get depressed? Want to know what TO DO to increase your online traffic? No worries. (I wouldn't let you hanging like that.) There are lots of great ways to increase your website traffic. Take a look at http://www.mommyshelperonline.com/increase-online-traffic.html to find out what you should be doing.