I've been marketing online for almost 10 years, and generate
the majority of website traffic to most of my sites for free.
Today, I'll share with you how to create and maintain an
endless stream of highly-targeted website visitors for free.
The secret to generating all of the free website traffic that
you can handle is - understanding why your visitors are online
in the first place.
Many of your visitors are NOT online looking for items to
purchase... they are looking for information. Even people who
are planning on making a purchase soon, often research the
item online - but PLAN on buying it locally.
People go online looking for information. They go online
looking for answers to their questions, or solutions to
their problems. They go online looking for an easy way to
find the information that they need. If you provide this
information, and give your visitors a pleasant experience,
then they will often purchase related items from your site.
Understanding what your visitors are looking for should also
convince you that "content is king." Fill your website with
quality, accurate, current content, and it will attract lots
of visitors.
While articles are the "content" that most often comes
to mind, if you want to totally dominate your niche, you
need to employ content in multiple formats.
Articles are a great place to start. Write, or have written,
500 - 1500 word articles that focus on a very specific topic,
and they will be natural search engine magnets. In addition
to your own unique articles, use content written by others
to round out your site.
There is a science to using articles which many beginning
Internet marketers seem to struggle with. The key to
making articles work for you, is making them so valuable
that other websites and publishers actually search for more
of your material. They read one or two of your articles,
and gain so much value, that they want to offer their readers
and visitors MORE of your content.
At the same time, people who read your quality, helpful
articles will follow links to your sites looking for more of
the same.
Once you have a few articles, you also have all the material
you need to create viral traffic magnets in other formats.
My two favorite formats are PDF special reports and short
Camtasia videos.
You can take the same topic/material that you've developed
an expertise on, and written articles on, and turn it into a
"special report." To turn an article into a PDF special
report, you just expand upon what is covered in the article.
Then you use software to convert the text file to PDF. There
are numerous pieces of software that allows you to do this.
One free tool for converting Microsoft Word ® documents to
PDF is called PDF995. You can find it offered from numerous
websites just by doing a search on it at any search engine.
Microsoft Word treats PDF995 as another printer. So you just
tell MS Word to print your document, and you choose PDF995 as
your printer. In a few seconds, you have a PDF document ready
to distribute.
People place a higher value on PDF documents than they do on
articles. Perhaps it's because the PDF documents appear to
take more work to create. I just showed you that it really
doesn't take more work though. Still, PDF documents have a
longer "shelf life" and get passed around a LOT!
When setting up your PDF special reports, include links back
to your sites. Make these live hyperlinks. Then give people
a reason, or an incentive, to pass your PDF document on. If
it contains lots of useful information, or is brandable and
pays an affiliate commission, the PDF will soon "go viral"
(spreading without any additional effort on your part).
A step up from the PDF, is using Camtasia videos as viral
traffic generators. Take the same material that you used to
create the articles and the PDFs, add some pictures and
sound to it, and you have a video.
Camtasia is a piece of screen capture software that records
whatever you have on your computer screen. You'll find it at:
http://techsmith.com/
Using Camtasia, you can demonstrate using a piece of
software, or show some slides that you've created. AS you step
through your presentation on your computer screen you record
the whole thing. At the same time that you're recording the
video portion, you can add narration, simply using your
microphone plugged right into your computer's microphone jack.
The really powerful feature of Camtasia is that it allows you
to specify what webpage, or where, the viewer will be taken
at the end of the video. You can take them back to the
beginning of the video to watch it all over again if you're
teaching something challenging. You can also have it take
them right to an online webpage or order form for a product
that you're recommending. This is a way of driving traffic
to a target site without requiring any action on the part of
your viewer.
If you'd like to know more about how to use articles or
multi-media content to generate website traffic, I recommend
going through the tutorials at Content Propulsion Lab. You are
taught how to generate and use content in all of the formats
covered above. You're also taught the secret to making your
multi-media content "search engine friendly." You'll find
Content Propulsion Lab at: http://CashThroughContent.com
A final way to generate an incredible amount of website
traffic is to create a website that, just by its very nature,
creates "buzz." Cute, creative, inspirational, or
information-packed sites can develop a following just
because they are that "good!"
An example of a site that's fast-developing into such a "buzz"
site that you can model is at: http://TheBestCatHouseEver.com
The url for the site is a play on words, and is one of the
factors that is causing the site to take off. Another factor
is the fact that the site focuses on cute, cuddly cats...
man's second favorite pet. People will flock to this site
just because of the cute cat photos, and then they'll tell
their friends about the site.
Create a site like http://TheBestCatHouseEver.com - tell the
world about it through articles and press releases - and
before you know it, you'll have a flood of free traffic. If
you choose to, you can then redirect some of this traffic to
your other sites.
You can also set up the viral site so that it's your main
profit center. For example, http://TheBestCatHouseEver.com
can earn money from Google AdSense, sponsor links, affiliate
products, and a store selling novelty items related to the
theme of the site.
I've just shown you ways to generate a FLOOD of highly-
targeted, responsive, free traffic to your websites. The
methods seem fairly simply, but they are proven. I use them
everyday. Incorporate them into your marketing mix and
you'll soon find your website traffic rapidly increasing. Get
started today.
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