There are many people who love taking part in contests. As a result, you will note that the Internet is filled with websites that promote free contests, how to enrol in them and even how to win. You will also find that there are several websites, which will offer free newsletters for people who register at their site for information. But the most registrations are done for websites that offer free entry to contests where you actually have the chance to win something.

Here is how you can use contests to increase the website traffic and links to your website.
o Decide the number of sales contests that you are going to hold at your website and calibrate your results accordingly. You can also decide what gifts you are going to hand over to the winners of the contests. Remember that the better the contest the more chances that the consumers will be willing to take part in the contest that you are holding at your site.
o Make sure that you advertise the contest on the home page of your site. Home pages are crawled by search engines and they are more likely to categorize the contests so that other search engines will pick it up and promote it. You can also enlist the contest at websites that list contests for free entry. These websites will direct traffic to your website and to your home page as long as the contest is listed on the home page. Set up a blog to show case the contest, and distribute a press release to show people why the contest is great and how it works.
o Make sure that you have weekly and monthly contests that have different prizes. For example one really great tweak I’ve noticed is that you can run a weekly contest with a prize of about $20 but you can also run contests that run every month of about $40. But entry to the monthly contest will require a sale at the site. This leaves two options open for contestants and you are more likely to get viewers who see multiple pages of your site just to find out what you are selling.
o Show testimonials of customers who have won gifts from contests and place those on the first page too with audio and video content stating why and what they won.

Some of the benefits that you get from hosting contests every month at your website are-
• Great links with websites that list all contests for people whom like entering contests for free. There are over a thousand sites that will host the link to your website for free. Imagine the traffic and page ranking if even a fraction of those links get clicked on.
• People who realize that you do award the winning customers will be more likely to get back to using your website and finding products at your website.
• Pleased customers are also more likely to get referrals to your website generating leads for the least amount of work possible.

Consider holding monthly contests on your site; this is a great way to generate traffic and get back links to your site. You could also set up a contents page listing future contests and prizes. Holding regular contests has been known to create a flood of continuous traffic for most.