One of the most perplexing questions faced by webmasters,
especially those with new sites, is "How do I get traffic to my
site?" Here are a few easy, inexpensive, and relatively fast
methods I use to generate traffic.
1) Write and distribute ezine articles. This article you're
reading right now will send visitors to the site mentioned in my
resource box at the end of the article. You can do the same
thing. Write articles on topics that you KNOW your target market
is interested in, and then distribute them to ezine publisher and
websites that publish others’ content. People will read your
articles, and if the articles provides value to them, they will
visit your site to learn more. It's that simple.
The key to getting your articles published is to write something
that provides genuine value to your readers. Actually teach them
something. Potential publisher will see the value, and know that
their readers will appreciate the articles...so they’ll publish
them.
The key to getting your articles READ is writing about something
people want to know more about. For example, this article is
about generating more traffic. Monitor any online marketing
discussion forum, or email discussion list, and you'll see that
EVERY webmaster is interested in getting more traffic. So, I know
that this article will be read.
Writing articles that will be published is both an art and a
science. However, you can become proficient at it fairly quickly.
I've written over 350 articles in the past 4 years, so it's not
that hard. The best system I've encountered recently on how to
write and distribute effective articles is called Article
Announcer. You'll find it at:
http://TheRealSecrets.com/article-announcer/
2) Posting others’ related articles on content sites. You can
create a website around a very focused niche topic, and then post
others’ articles on that site. You can search article
directories such as ArticleCity.com or IdeaMarketers.com and find
thousands of articles others have written and give permission for
you to use. Usually, article writers do this in hopes of
generating traffic and sales from their articles.
You can search through these sites and find articles on your
topic. Then you simple copy and paste them into your website
template, to create a site that will rank well in the search
engines because the site is focused.
When I personally create these content sites, I use software to
both locate appropriate articles, and to turn those articles into
webpages. I have templates that are in my basic site layout.
The software that I use can find dozens, or even hundreds, of
articles and automatically insert these articles into the correct
place on the page. It can even break up the articles, adding
comments or AdSense ads in the middle.
An example of one such site that I've created is at:
http://cheapest-merchantaccounts.com On that site's homepage
is a link to "Articles." Following that link will take you to
literally over 100 articles related to merchant accounts and
ecommerce. ALL of those pages were created in less than 5
minutes. I used a piece of software called Content SiteBuilder,
found at a site called Content Desk. Basically I set up a
template (inserting things such as my AdSense code, and links to
affiliate products) and then I told the software where to put the
articles. In a snap it output the article pages. Then I merely
had to upload the pages to my server and link to them from my
homepage.
"But does this generate traffic?" you ask. If you search on the
term "cheapest merchant accounts" at Yahoo.com you'll see that
this site ranks number 5 out of over 1 million pages targeting
that term. If you continued digging, you'd discover that the
number 1 site for that term is a blog that I own, and the number
2 site also belongs to me... it needs lots of work :-) All of
these sites generate traffic... people looking for the lowest
priced merchant account. So yes it does work. These visitors
earn me revenue by either applying for the merchant account I
recommend or by clicking on AdSense ads.
A key element in the success of the sites above is that I got
them indexed quickly by linking to them from sites that were
already indexed, and that were frequently visited by the search
engines. I also didn't put a lot of time into building any of
these site because of the Content Desk software. You can find
out more about that software at:
http://TheRealSecrets.com/content-desk/
3) I like free traffic, but often when a site is first erected,
you need to use pay-per-clicks to get that initial surge of
traffic. Articles and the other methods I use are SO effective
that I'll only use pay-per-clicks if I'm in a hurry to refine the
conversion rate. With pay-per-click traffic, since they are all
responding to the same ad(s) you get more homogenous traffic. So
it's easier to separate elements in your testing and determine
what's effective. After refining the conversion process, whether
or not I continue with pay-per-clicks often depends upon return-
on-investment. I don’t like to put a lot of time into managing a
site!
4) Create viral tools. Rebrandable PDF special reports work
well, especially if you have an affiliate program. If you don't
have an affiliate program, you can create these same reports on
hot topics, and SEL,L or give, the reprint rights to others. In
these reports you include links to your "backend" products, or to
websites you want to generate traffic to.
Key to the success of getting others to spread your viral tools
is incentivizing them. Structuring your PDF document so that
publishers and webmasters can profit from distributing it is the
easiest way to do that. Money is a great incentive :-) In fact,
you can even structure your articles so that publisher profit
from distributing them. The way to do that is simply to allow
affiliates to substitute their affiliate url for yours in the
articles.
If you don't run an affiliate program, you can even write
articles for programs that you are an affiliate for. Then contact
the affiliate program manager and offer to allow them to provide
the articles to their affiliates. Since you are allowing their
affiliates to change the url for that product (to their affiliate
url), you need to have a link somewhere in each article that
points back to your site too. Most affiliate won't have a
problem with this if it's a good article. It's a win-win
situation.
5) Just as you use PDF’s to generate viral traffic, you can do
the same thing with Camtasia videos. You can create short videos
demonstrating how to do something, and then you make these
available to publishers. Camtasia has a feature that allows you
to automatically redirect the viewer to a specified webpage at
the end of the video. You can either send them to your website,
or you can create special videos for your affiliates that take
the viewer to that affiliates url. The possibilities are endless.
To see an example of how I use Camtasia video to both educate and
generate traffic, watch my video entitled "Secrets Of The
Internet Marketing Titans." In this video I explain why top
Internet marketers seem to have an "inner circle," and then
explain how to break into that inner circle as a welcomed member.
Because the video does educate, many ezine publishers are happy
to tell their readers about it. You can view this video at:
http://TheRealSecrets.com/titans/titans.html
6) Offer 5 to 20-part email courses to your website visitors.
Often your website visitors who won't subscribe to an ezine will
subscribe to a course. That's either because the course has a
higher perceived value, or because the course covers a topic
they're interest in more in-depth that an ezine would. In the
course, you invite your readers back to your website for
additional resources, to see how something is implemented, etc.
This generates repeat visitors to your website and give you many
opportunities to convert that subscriber to a customer.
7) Publish an ezine or some type of list from your website. An
ezine allows you to have repeated contact with a person who may
otherwise never return to your site. As you build the
relationship, you can offer them various reason for returning to
your site. As an example, I try to keep my ezine to a reasonable
length. Things that I can't fit in my ezine - I post on my blog.
So I invite my subscriber to return to my site to read those
extra gems available only on the blog.
Publishing a list doesn't have to be hard work. For example, I
publish a list from a cooking related site that is written
entirely by my readers. It's a recipe exchange mailing list.
Readers submit recipes or requests for recipes. These reader
submissions are compiled into a twice daily digest that is edited
for quality control and then sent out to the list. My editor
inserts two sponsor ads in each issue. Those sponsor ads not only
drive traffic to my site, they drive six-figure sales of a
cookbook that I wrote.
The cooking list, written by the readers, creates such loyalty
that if we ever miss a day of publishing, hundreds of readers
write in to ask us to confirm that they haven't been dropped from
the list. Some subscribers have been on this particular list for
over 5 years. Aside from a little editing, the list is on almost
total autopilot. You can check out how this list is set up by
visiting my cooking site at: http://Chitterlings.com You'll
notice that the number one focus of the homepage is to build the
list, so that we can generate the repeat traffic. It works
beautifully!
So there you have seven ways to generate website traffic
relatively fast, easy, and inexpensively. I even gave you example
that you can examine and model. Implement just a few of these
ideas, and you'll get a nice steady flow of website visitors.
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