Without traffic to your website, you're not going to make
any money in your online business (unless you're able to
tap into someone else's traffic).
For many websites... especially new sites, one of the
fastest, surest ways to drive traffic to the site is pay per
click search engines. The RISK in using pay per clicks
is that you don't know how well that traffic is going to
convert before you've paid for it. You can adjust your
webpages and your pay per click listing fairly quickly, but
today I want to share with you two of my MAJOR free
traffic generation methods.
The most powerful weapon I've used in my marketing
arsenal lately is actually... blogging. A blog is simply an
on-line diary or weblog. Since they are usually updated
frequently, the search engines love them and visit them
often.
The way that I use my blogs is that when I make a post,
I include a link to a site or webpage that I want spidered
by the search engines. Google actually visits my blogs
daily, and takes snapshots of everything there, and
follows links from the pages, and takes snapshots of those
pages! So, I make minor changes to pages that I want to
get ranked higher, and then I "help" Google to find those
updated pages. It's a simple, ethical, and very powerful
method.
I'm fairly new at blogging, but I'm quickly getting the hang
of it. Most of what I know about blogging I learned from
a course by my friend Paul Short. The course is called
RSS Exposed. I recommend you get a copy of Paul's
course today and set aside 2 hours to digest it. Get it at:
http://www.profitautomation.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=109478
Paul is like me... he's very busy, and doesn't have time for
fluff. So his course is under 100 pages, and it's all "stuff"
that you can read and then immediately implement.
Does this stuff work thought. My friend Stephen Pierce
taught me that NOTHING is more powerful than concrete
PROOF. So let's look at how I rank for a few keywords
that I'm focusing on right now. I'll show you with a few of
the more than 100 niches that I have top 10.... often top
3 rankings for. I know that showing you these examples
may attract the attention of potential and existing competitors,
so I won't show you the most lucrative ones :-)
Readers who know me, know that my real online success
started with a simple soul food or southern cookbook!
That one cookbook still generates a very nice six-figure
income! This season of the year, I know that people are
on-line searching for holiday recipes and also gift-giving ideas.
My logs show me how my market finds me... keywords and
sources. They show that for the cookbook, most find my site
through Google, with MSN being a distant second. Here's
how I ranked for a few cooking related terms (as of
November 21st, 2004):
Soul Food Recipes - #2 out of 1,220,000
Soul Food - #3 out of 8,840,000
Soul Food Cookbook - #2 out of 273,000
Deep Fried Turkey Recipe - #3 out of 257,000
Deep Fried Turkey Recipes - #4 out of 302,000
Sweet Potato Pie - #2 out of 614,000
Sweet Potato Pie Recipe #2 out of 394,000
Fried Chicken Recipe - #2 out of 861,000
Fried Chicken Recipes - #2 out of 1,160,000
Southern Fried Chicken - #2 out of 436,000
Deep Fried Turkey - #14 out of 330,000
Pound Cake Recipe - #2 out of 547,000
Macaroni And Cheese Recipe - #1 out of 207,000
Collard Green Recipe - #4 out of 21,200
Southern Recipes - # 15 out of 4,970,000
... I guess I need to work on that last listing :-)
One of my other markets is "Internet Marketing," and those
looking to start or improve upon an online or home-based
business. How do I rank there? Here are a few of the
thousands of terms that bring me in free search engine traffic
(again based upon my website logs):
Internet Marketing 101 - # 1 out of 5,550,000
Internet Marketing Course - #2 out of 10,600,000
Free Internet Marketing Course - #2 out of 11,800,000
Free Internet Marketing Lessons - #2 out of 2,810,000
Homebased Business - #9 out of 1,930,000
Homebased Business Course - #1 out of 522,000
Free Homebased Business Course - #1 out of 483,000
For those of you without your own product, let's see how
I do with products I have reprint rights to. One is a web
copywriting course by Bob Serling called Power Copywriting
For The Internet. When someone is searching for that course
they search on very specific terms... but... since their
search is so specific, a higher percentage of them will buy
when they get to my website. This is a more niche market,
but some of my rankings are:
Internet Copywriter + Bob Serling - #1 out of 985
Web Copywriting + Bob Serling - # 7 out of 918
Web Copywriting Course + Bob Serling - #5 out of 16,400
Power Copywriting For The Internet - #2 out of 128,000
Another product that I have reprint rights to is an excellent
course on how to increase your website, and advertising,
conversion rates. It's called, "Small Changes - Big Profits."
Here's my ranking on keywords customers have recently
used to find (and buy) this product:
Increase Website Conversion - #6 out of 2,480,000
How to Increase Website Conversion - # 6 our of 2,490,000
Note that when you enter that last phrases, Google tells you
that "how to" is a very common phrase and therefore not
included in the search. However, notice that Google found
an additional 10,000 pages when I gave it that expression.
Ok, so I'm confused too :-)
My second most powerful weapon right now is that I write
lots of ezine articles... like this one. Since 1998, I would
estimate that I've written over 300. Those articles are a very
powerful way of getting one-way links to my site. Those
articles are a powerful way for people with specific problems
or interest to find my sites.
Here's a simple example of how powerful articles can be.
I know for a fact that the majority of people in network
marketing aren't doing that great. I also know why. The proof
that I know what they are doing wrong, and how to correct it,
is provided by the fact that I was recently the #2 producing
representative in a major network marketing company for 2
consecutive months. The only reason I wasn't #2 longer is
that I've only been with the company a little over 4 month,
and that in my fourth month, I was the #1 top producing rep
in the entire company!
Recognizing what many network marketers are doing wrong...
especially those that market over the internet, I wrote an
article on the topic. This article targeted those who wanted
to know why their network marketing is failing. So if you go
to Google and enter...
"Network Marketing Failing" without the quotation marks,
you'll see that the returns for webpages featuring my article take
up the entire first page. If a person were to type in the
statement "My Network Marketing Is Failing" my page ranks
#1 out of 312,000. Do people search on these terms? Not as
many as search on more competitive terms, but why not go
after easier terms... why not go after "the low-hanging fruit."
People do visit my sites after reading the hundreds of articles
that I've written, and they do make purchases and join my
network marketing team. That's proof that writing and properly
using articles is a very powerful traffic generation technique.
I have lots of resources on how to properly do this inside my
private membership site. If you're not a member, you should join
today. Inside the site you'll find lots more solid, usable
information like you just gotten in this article.
I've just shared with you two of my most powerful free traffic
generation methods. I actually know HUNDREDS but only use
a handful. I believe that it's better to get really good at
using a few rather than tinkering with (but never mastering)
many. You need to do your research and find the techniques
that work best for you.
If you'd like a really comprehensive course on website traffic
and sales generation methods, I recommend John Reese's
Traffic Secrets Course. Check out John's course to learn
a ton of ways to outflank your competition at:
http://www.profitautomation.com/app/adtrack.asp?AdID=110203
It's 14 DVD's, so realize that it will throw a LOT of information
at you. Make sure that you pick just a few techniques he
covers, and then put them into immediate action rather than
letting the sheer volume of information overwhelm you.
As I've demonstrated, being a master at generating free,
responsive traffic doesn't have to be complicated or even
difficult :-)
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