There are a couple of different marketing philosophies that are often used online. One is to target a very specific audience to increase web site traffic. The concept is to better focus your marketing so you are promoting your site only to the people who may actually want to visit it. The other takes the opposite approach: it advocates marketing to everyone you possibly can to increase web site traffic. While both have their pros and cons, neither will succeed if you resort to spamming.

What is spamming? Well, there are a couple of different aspects to it. Most people are probably familiar with email spam, or the dozens of unsolicited email that comes to your inbox every day. Email spam doesn’t always advertise stuff-sometimes, it’s spam about a political cause or wanting you to join some group. However, it’s all junk and if you’ve been hit with piles of spam, you know how annoying it can be. One or two emails about your website to people who specifically gave you their email address isn’t that bad, but if you start sending out emails every few days trying to get people to visit your site, you’ll probably find people blocking your email addresses.

Message board spam is just as bad, and it won’t help you increase web site traffic. You don’t want to upset people on message boards because doing so will get you banned from that board. If there’s a place to post web site links, only post your link there. If there isn’t, you may not be allowed to link to your site at all unless it’s in some way relevant to a discussion. You can, however, include your web site link in your signature, which is a good place to put it.

While the urge to spam can be great, and while it may seem like it should increase web site traffic, studies have shown that it really doesn’t. Keep this in mind next time you want to start posting your web site link everywhere you can find.