Anyone can make a website, but there is an art and science to getting people to visit it, let alone buy something from it or click on an ad. Fortunately, there are many so-called “Web 2.0″ tools that anyone can use to drive targeted web traffic to their site. Many are things you can do right now, so let’s not waste any time.

First things first: you are very likely wondering what Web 2.0 is. Unfortunately, there is no single easy answer here; Web 2.0 is a set of ideas rather than a specific entity. It’s a collective term for dynamic, interactive sites like blogs, social media and social bookmarking platforms as well as social networking sites. All of these are easy to work with and can be used to generate targeted web traffic for your site.

The chances are that social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are things you’re familiar with already. These kinds of sites tend to come and go, but these two are the most popular at present and are the top choices of website owners trying to drive targeted web traffic to their sites. These sites allow you to create a profile page which tells others about you and your site and why they may be interested in visiting.

The key to generating interest using social media sites is keeping your page updated regularly. It doesn’t matter so much whether you update daily, weekly, or twice a week or whatever. The important thing is consistency. If people go to your MySpace page or your Facebook page and see that you haven’t touched it in eight months, they’re not going to take the site that it’s tied to very seriously. Web users today want up to the minute information, particularly when it comes to new merchandise, new technology, and new prices.

If you don’t have a profile on one of these social networks, the time to make one is now; since it only takes a couple of minutes, just go ahead and set one up right now. It’s not essential to install all of the many add-ons available or to decorate your page right now. You can do this later; and it is easier than you think to overdo it with the bells and whistles and actually lose potential customers. When you have your profiles set up on these two popular social networks, start searching for people you already know – there’s probably quite a few people in your life who use Facebook or MySpace already.

If you use the popular microblogging application Twitter (and if you don’t, you should), you can easily use it to update your social networking profiles as well. All you need to do is to go to your Twitter page and select settings, account, and scroll down to the option “you can also add Twitter to your site here”. This selection will give you the opportunity to add a Twitter feed to your Facebook, MySpace, Blogger and other pages. You’ll be given some code to copy and paste into these other pages – once you add this code, your Twitter content will be posted on these pages automatically.

Digg and other social bookmarking sites allow users to share content they find interesting with others. You can set up a Digg account in a matter of minutes and in case you were wondering, you can use Digg to bookmark your own pages – there are instructions on the site to do just that. Of course, what you really want is for other users of these social bookmarking services to add your content to their Digg accounts, which helps to drive targeted web traffic to your site.

A blog has become de rigeur for business oriented sites of all sorts. These are one of the most useful tools for any business; readers can subscribe to your blog content by means of an RSS feed, which notifies them of new content as it is posted. A blog can do a lot for your traffic, as long as you remember to update this page on a regular basis. This isn’t as difficult as you might think – blog posts tend to be short and casual in tone, so this is a good place to mention new products and services as well as news about your business. Just as with your social networking profile pages, you can add a Twitter feed to your blog as well, giving this page another source of regularly updated content.

These are only a few of the large number of different ways that you can leverage the opportunities presented by Web 2.0 to drive targeted traffic to your site. There are plenty more you’ll want to try later, but the above ideas can get your new online business up and running and on its way to success.

Best Wishes to you. B. L. Marlow

B. L. Marlow writes some cool stuff including a book about increasing targeted web traffic using Web 2.0 tactics. For a limited period, you may grab a complimentary copy by visiting his internet marketing strategies site.