One of the most common needs of online business owners is
traffic. Without traffic, your web site barely exists, and is
unlikely to make any profit whatsoever. With traffic, you stand
a much greater chance of success - but not just any traffic.
As the owner of a network of web sites receiving well over a
million hits a month, in this article I give you my five top
tips for increasing targeted traffic to your web site.
Newbies on the web frequently make the mistake of just wanting
traffic, and join any and every program offering just that -
"thousands of hits to your web site", with the vast majority of
them completely worthless. When their web sites fail to make any
money, many of them give up on the web as a money-making myth.
For those that do persist, and try to learn from their
experience, they realize it's not just any traffic they need -
it's targeted traffic. That means web site visitors who actually
want to visit (rather than those who are 'forced' to visit via
some traffic exchange program), and so are actually interested
in what you have to offer.
This type of traffic is far more profitable to you - your
visitors are far more likely to purchase from you, simply
because you have what they want.
But how can you attract targeted traffic?
Here are my five top tips:
1. An Affiliate Program
This works by giving those who promote your products a
commission if they make a sale. Over time you can build up an
army of people who are busy promoting your web sites for you.
My own affiliates account for well over half of all my sales,
and to do that, by definition they have to be pushing a lot of
traffic my way.
You can begin to see what my traffic and sales levels might look
like without an affiliate program.
For beginners who are selling digital products such as ebooks or
software, the easiest and cheapest way to start your own
affiliate program is through ClickBank. That's how I started and
I still use them today.
2. Add Content
Providing quality content on your web site is an excellent way
to permanently increase traffic to your web site.
Search engines like Google appear to favor web sites with a
clear navigation structure that provide quality content within a
certain genre - that means not adding anything you can think of
to your web site, but focus on a particular niche, and provide
content broadly in line with that.
You don't even have to create it all yourself. For example, look
in article directories on the web for free reprint articles you
can use, such as http://IdeaMarketers.com.
3. Create Content
Just as you are looking for content you can quickly add to your
web site, so are thousands of other publishers. By creating
content yourself, you can not only put it up on your own web
site, but also provide it to others for their use with a small
resource box at the end of the article with a link to your web
site.
In so doing, you can have literally hundreds of web sites all
linking to yours. This provides a consistent stream of targeted
traffic from readers of the article who want to follow through
to your web site, and also from search engines like Google,
where your ranking will broadly increase in line with the number
of web sites linking to you.
Hundreds of ezine publishers are also on the look out for
quality content that they can publish, on a wide range of topics
- if a publisher with a large mailing list chooses to publish
your article, this can lead to a surge in both traffic and sales
on your web site when their ezine is published. Many ezines are
published online too, providing another permanent link and
source of high quality traffic to your web site.
There are various courses and ebooks available online that can
teach you how to effectively distribute your articles and get
them published - there's also a free e-course available at
http:/ akanomi.com/publish-articles.php that tells you nearly
everything you need to know. 4. Publish An Ezine
One of the most effective ways to build a loyal base of repeat
visitors for your web site is your own mailing list, whether
it's an ezine that publishes regularly, or a mailing list who
you occasionally mail to.
By publishing quality information in your emails, you increase
your credibility, build trust with your subscribers, and
encourage repeated visits to your web site.
5. Pay Per Click Engines
When you use pay-per-click engines, you are effectively paying
to have a high ranking position for certain keywords, on certain
search engines. If you choose your keywords carefully, the
traffic is highly targeted - the trick is to ensure you are not
paying more per click than each visitor is worth.
To do this effectively requires some careful tracking of the
visitors that arrive at your site from your keyword placements,
but done correctly, the end result is net profit for you.
The main pay-per-click engines are Google Adwords and Overture -
with Google, your ads are displayed within minutes; with
Overture, it can take a few hours to a few days to have your ads
approved and displayed.
I personally use all of the above methods to attract targeted
traffic to my web site - of course, that's not the end of the
road in terms of web site profitability. You then need to ensure
that a proportion of this targeted traffic converts into paying
customers. Once you've mastered this too, you are well on your
way to online success.
About the author:
Steve Shaw creates software and systems for effective
e-marketing. His software at http://popupmaster.com allows you
to add unblockable popups to your web site quickly and easily,
specifically designed to sign up subscribers to your mailing
list, and fast.
