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.