Driving traffic to your web site at a reasonable cost is one of
the biggest challenges you'll face. It makes no difference how
good a site you have; no visitors, no business. But, if you pay
too much for your visitors you will either lose money or not
generate enough profit.
This article outlines a relatively inexpensive method of quickly
driving targeted visitors to your web site. At the same time,
understand that the methods we'll discuss are only one step of a
multi-step process to accomplish your goal of getting qualified
visitors to your site at a cost at or below your Visitor Target
Acquisition Cost (VTAC).
This step, however, is generally the first step you will want to
take.
Why is that?
If you do it correctly, you can generate targeted traffic to
your web site in less than a week. That's right, in less than
seven days. Plus, you can quickly determine the metrics of your
web site, which as a business owner you absolutely have to know.
Your Visitor Target Acquisition Cost
Let's first discuss your Visitor Target Acquisition Cost, or
VTAC. Your VTAC is unique to your web site. It's a function of
how well your web site converts visitors to customers (presuming
you're attempting to sell something from your site). Here's a
simple example:
Let's say you're selling an item that has a selling price of
$100 and a gross profit of $50. Plus, let's say it takes 100
visitors to your site to generate one sale. Your Value Per
Visitor (VPV) is then $.50 ($50 gross profit/100 visitors).
The VTAC is the percentage of your VPV that you will spend to
get that visitor multiplied by the VPV. Ranges of 25% to 100%
are common; you'll have to decide the percentage for your
individual business.
In this example, assume you'll spend 50% of your VPV; then, your
VTAC will be $.25 (50% x $.50). This will be the maximum you'll
spend to get one visitor to your site.
If you're just beginning and you don't know your VPV or VTAC,
you'll have to make some assumptions, quickly test your
assumptions, and make any necessary adjustments.
The Background of Quickly Driving Traffic to Your Site
The technique you use to quickly drive traffic starts with pay-
per-click search engines. PPC search engines are a tool in which
you as an advertiser (web site owner) bid on your search engine
ranking for specific keywords.
When your keywords are typed in the search engine by the
visitor, your results are shown ranked according to how much you
bid on the various keywords. The highest bid for a keyword is
ranked first, and so on.
You'll only pay when a visitor actually clicks through to your
web site. In other words, you only pay for performance.
As an advertiser, you gain several advantages: * You only bid on
the keywords you believe visitors will use to find you
targeted keywords. * You decide how much you bid based on your
VTAC you'll never pay more for visitors than you know you
should.
For very competitive keywords (those that are very popular and
tend to have higher bid prices), you have the option of finding
related but less popular and less expensive keywords if you do
this right you can drive equivalent traffic at lower costs.
You can gain top ranked positions at a number of conventional
search engines by letting the ppc search engines do your work
for you.
Which PPC Search Engine To Use
As of late October 2001 you have over 160 ppc search engines
from which to choose. Your choices are simplified by the fact
that one ppc search engine, Overture (GoTo) stands well above
all the rest.
Estimates vary, but Overture (GoTo) says that you can be seen by
75 per cent of all web searchers by using Overture (GoTo). We
recommend to our consulting clients that they begin their ppc
bidding with Overture (GoTo) and expand to some of the other
ppc's if the results warrant it.
The Process of Quickly Driving Traffic To Your Site
You can drive traffic to your site in as little as five days if
you'll follow these steps:
* Develop a list of at least 50 (200 is better) relevant
keywords keywords that relate to content on your site. * Use a
ppc bid management tool to save yourself time and money both
before and after you begin actually bidding at the ppc's the
best tool we've found for the beginning to intermediate web site
owner is the Keyword Bid Optimizer (
http://www.paidsearchenginetools.com ) The KBO will even help
you develop your list of keywords). * Open an account at
Overture (GoTo) with your first keyword bid (Note: If you use
the Keyword Bid Optimizer and open your account from within this
tool, Overture (GoTo) will add an additional $5 to your
account). * Once you've opened your Overture (GoTo) account (and
submitted your first keyword bid), add additional keyword bids
until you have at least 50 bid keywords. Overture (GoTo) offers
several cool spreadsheet tools to help you do this, along with
saving you time. * Track your keyword bid submittals and follow
up with Overture (GoTo) in case any of your keyword bids are
rejected typically this happens for non-relevance. * Monitor
your bids to achieve your desired position without exceeding
your VTAC.
By the way, this complete process along with a large number of
tips and tricks is spelled out in step-by-step detail in my
newest E-course, "Instant Web Site Traffic" (
http://www.instantwebsitetraffic.com ) along with a FREE month's
subscription to the Keyword Bid Optimizer (
http://www.paidsearchenginetools.com ).
Using ppc search engines is more complicated that what I've
shown here. At the same time, if you will focus on learning how
to use pay per click search engines, you can and should be able
to quickly drive traffic to your web site at costs below your
VTAC...
Or... as the title says,
(You will) "Drive Traffic To Your Site Without Breaking The
Bank."
About the author:
Jon Keel shows you how you can quickly drive targeted traffic to
your web site and get top placement at the major search engines…
in as little as five days with "Instant Web Site Traffic" (
http://www.instantwebsitetraffic.com ).
