How to Get More Traffic

Traffic is the most important element in any business, whether online or offline. Without traffic in the form of website visitors, foot traffic, shoppers, etc., you have no way to make money. Every single business on Earth needs traffic to survive.

Of course, getting traffic is also potentially the hardest part of running a business. Most businesses struggle to get enough traffic, and many end up closing because they never figure out how to do it.

It’s not as hard as it seems, it’s just that most people have no idea how to generate traffic. They put up a website and expect that people will eventually find it, but they usually end up disappointed. If you want traffic, you have to go get it!

There are two main types of traffic available online – paid traffic and free traffic. We’ll talk a bit about both in this report, but we’ll focus mainly on free methods. After all, not all websites make enough profit to support paid traffic.

So let’s get started.

Paid Traffic

If your website makes a good profit, and you’re relatively certain you’ll make a profit after you pay for traffic, you can use these methods. I wouldn’t use these methods for content sites and blogs, because your profit margins will probably be pretty small since you will likely be using AdSense or affiliate programs. But if you’re selling your own products and are making higher profit margins, paid traffic methods can work well.

PPC – Pay Per Click

Pay-per-click marketing through Google AdWords and other similar systems can a great way to get traffic. If done correctly, it can be very profitable, too.

When using PPC, you need to proceed carefully. You can use up your entire marketing budget in the blink of an eye if you don’t monitor your campaigns constantly.

Remember – Google isn’t the only PPC company! There are others that have high-quality traffic available, and have more lenient rules and better prices, so consider trying others before settling into using strictly Google.

Facebook Ads

Facebook has a great system for selling ads. Not only can you target by keywords as you can with PPC marketing, but you can also target by other demographics such as gender, age, and education.

If you think Facebook will only allow you to target college kids, think again! These days, more and more older individuals are using the site to connect with friends and family.

A large and growing segment of Facebook users are women between 30 and 50 years of age, and almost every demographic has some presence on the site.

With the ability to target so well, ads often convert extremely well. You might think this translates into higher prices, but that’s not typically true. In fact, many buyers report cheaper prices with Facebook than with PPC networks! This makes them a great place to buy ads.

Solo Ads

Email is widely known for being an extremely effective promotional method, especially if you use a targeted opt-in list. Of course, not everyone has a large list in their niche. It takes time to build a list.

That doesn’t mean you can’t use email marketing for your business. You just need to make use of other people’s lists by paying them to send an email to their list on your behalf.

If you run an affiliate program, you may be able to talk list owners into emailing on your behalf for a commission, however this isn’t always possible. Many list owners prefer to use their lists to promote their own products and for joint ventures, but some will sell you a mailing for an upfront fee.

When you pay a list owner to email their list with your ad, it is known as a solo ad. You can also buy a spot in a mailing with several other people for a lower price, but this is usually ineffective. It’s much better to pay a higher price and be the only ad in the mailing.

There are solo ad directories that can put you in touch with list owners, or you can post on webmaster forums looking for people who might be willing to mail their list for you. You can also find list owners by contacting them directly. You should be able to find high-profile list owners simply by browsing websites in your niche and looking for those that have opt-in boxes or squeeze pages on their sites.

Free Traffic

Free traffic is great for both product owners and affiliates. As an affiliate, you may not make enough of a profit to justify paid traffic – at least not in the beginning. However, free traffic is certainly valuable to anyone!

Free traffic isn’t really 100% free. You do have to spend some time on these methods. But you will need little or no upfront investment to use these methods.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Search engine traffic is some of the best quality traffic in the world. If someone searches for “buy golf clubs”, they are almost certainly in the market to buy golf clubs, or they are at least thinking about doing so.

Most free traffic methods rely heavily on search engine traffic, because they depend on using the resources and popularity of other websites to get high rankings which can then be used to funnel traffic to your own websites.

Many people feel that SEO is extremely difficult – a myth that is perpetuated by SEO specialists whose jobs pay them obscene amounts of money to help websites rank well. Obviously, they want everyone to believe that SEO is difficult so they will be more likely to pay for their services.

Fortunately, SEO is a lot easier than most people think. In fact, many websites rank well without doing any optimization. They simply create quality content and eventually it just happens. Of course, this is rare. Most people actually do have to do some work to make it happen.

There are three vital components to proper SEO:

  • Creating high-quality content
  • Using proper keywords
  • Backlinks

Quality content is extremely important. Not only can search engines increasingly tell the difference between quality, unique content and recycled garbage, but quality content is much more likely to gather unsolicited backlinks.

Proper keyword use is also very important. Keywords should be used in the domain name, if possible. They should also be used in the site’s content, page titles, outgoing links, incoming links, etc. Using keywords that people are searching for and that have little competition is the most important thing you can do to get good search engine traffic.

Backlinks are the links that point to your website, or to pages on your website. They are like “votes” that tell search engines that your site is good enough for people to want to link to.

It’s important to get out there and get links back to your main site, because chances are, you won’t get many for free. Most people won’t link to competing websites.

Many other free traffic methods can help you get backlinks to your main site. Just remember that some sites have the “rel=nofollow” tag on links, so they may not always count for backlink purposes. Still, they are good for direct traffic, so you should never turn your nose up at a link!

Article Marketing

Article marketing is a great way to get free traffic. It’s very quick and easy to write articles and submit them to article directories, and you can get both backlinks and direct traffic from the links in your resource box at the end of each article.

Many article directories already have existing authority in the search engines, so articles submitted can often rank on the first page of Google with no additional work. Of course, it’s better to use social bookmarking and other methods to link to your articles, but this isn’t always necessary.

Articles should be between 300 and 600 words. Any shorter and you probably won’t have your article accepted, and any longer and you risk boring the reader before they make it to your resource box.

In your resource box, be sure to give people a clear call-to-action. Tell them what you want them to do (visit your site) and why they should do it. You might give away a free report, provide additional tips on the subject in the article, etc. Just give them a real reason to want to visit your site. Remember, people just want to know “WIIFM” – or “What’s In It For Me?”

Don’t forget keyword research! Article marketing relies heavily on search engine traffic, so you need to be sure you do everything you can to make sure your articles rank well for important keywords in your niche.

Don’t worry about your articles outranking your main site. Eventually, your main site will probably outrank your articles. Until then, your articles can send your main site a lot of additional traffic.

Social Marketing

Social marketing can be a huge source of free traffic. It does take a while to build up a large following and get them to be responsive. But once you do this, social marketing definitely has the potential to drive a lot of traffic.

One major key to effective social marketing is to remember the “social” aspect. Focus on that, not “marketing”. You have to make sure to interact with the people you want to market to in order to let them get to know you and trust you.

Always be sure to follow the rules of the social sites you use. It’s not a good idea to build a large base of followers and then lose your account because you have broken the rules. It’s better to be safe than sorry. It’s a waste of time to work hard to build a reputation and lose it over something minor.

Video Marketing

Sites like YouTube and MetaCafe.com have millions of visitors, and they also have tremendous power to rank well in the search engines. You can take advantage of this by creating and submitting videos.

It’s not as hard as you think to create a video. You can outsource creation for as low as $25 per video, or use a program like Camtasia or even PowerPoint to create videos that you can upload.

Be sure to put your URL in every possible location. Put it in the video itself, and also as a link within the video’s description if possible. This will give you the most possible exposure.

Don’t forget to name your video with keywords! This will help your video get search engine traffic, as well as traffic from within the video sites themselves.

Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is very simple, and it can be extremely effective in many niche markets. Forum users are often very passionate about the topic, and they may spend hours on the forum every day.

Make sure to follow the rules carefully, never call attention to the link in your signature, and just post regularly. Avoid forum arguments and be polite at all times. This will benefit you more than you can imagine, because as your reputation grows, people will visit your site to find out more about you.

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