The Top Ten Traffic Building Techniques
| Category: Traffic and Tracking | Date: 2001-03-12 |
The question that beginning web marketers ask me most often is,
"How Do I get Traffic to My Web Site?"
Having tested just about every type of traffic generation tool in existence, I will usually give them some specific ideas. Then, they always ask exactly how do I produce traffic at my own sites.
I own many different web sites and domains, and the stats at each show some slight variations of where the traffic is coming from. That is part of the reason I teach so many different techniques you can use. Some traffic techniques work better than others for specific sites and products.
To make this article as simple as possible for people to understand and follow, here are the ten best traffic building techniques of my main web site at http://www.bizpromo.com during the past month.
Understand that the ranking of each of these techniques change from month to month at my site depending on exactly which tools I am focusing on, but these ten almost always are the top traffic producers for this site.
1. Publish an Ezine
Publishing an ezine is number one in my book even though it doesnt produce the largest number of actual hits to my site. Its impact is significant in traffic levels though. I will always notice an increase of around 500 to 1,000 visitors on my traffic stats the two days after my newsletter is published.
The reason I have ranked it number one on this list of traffic building tools is that this is when the largest number of buyers hit the web site.
It isnt traffic that you really want at your site. You want sales. When you are publishing your own ezine, you will notice that you will have a much higher sales ratio to visitor ratio on the days your ezine comes out.
You have built a relationship with your ezine subscribers, so many of your buyers are going to come out of this group.
2. Give away free ebooks.
This is a traffic strategy that came to me as a surprise back in December of 1998. I created a short ebook on different businesses you could start online and gave it away as a Christmas gift to my Web Gold subscribers.
The book, originally intended only to be offered once as a Christmas gift, has spread like wildfire around the Internet.
Every day, I get at least 2 new requests for permission to place this book on a web site.
Add that daily number up and include the fact that around 500 sites asked permission the first month it was out and you will have a pretty nice set of free links out there for my web site...and that isnt counting those who may have listed it without informing me!
3. Give away free articles.
This is a major traffic generating strategy to use when you write your own articles.
Whenever I check my traffic stats, I will always end up finding one or two new web sites listed as referring visitors to me.
When I go over to the domains to check them out I will inevitably find that they have listed some of my articles on their site. I have over 70 articles at http://www.bizpromo.com/free and
anyone who wants to use them has my full permission to do so as long as they keep my contact information in tact at the bottom
of every article.
4. Publicity
I never send out "press releases" for bizpromo.com as most people think of one. What I have done is send out articles with a resource box in them which brings the reader to my web site.
Then, those articles get picked up by magazines, newsletters, and even some of the large Internet sites. This type of promotion doesnt drive long term traffic like the above methods, but it can sure give you a big jump in traffic when the article runs.
5. The Major Search Engines
The major search engines like Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, and MSN drive the majority of traffic to a site. This is usually true, but at bizpromo.com during the past month I have noticed that the largest portion of my search engine traffic is coming from google.com and dogpile.com. So these two are definitely becoming top dogs in the search engine industry, at least in my book.
6. Pay-Per-Click Search Engines
If you arent currently using Goto.com as one of your sources of traffic, then you are missing out on a real opportunity. During the past few months Goto.com has become extremely popular and many of the bids are reaching astronomical levels,but you can still find many keywords to bid on in the 1 cent to 20 cent per visitor range.
To create my large keyword lists, I will go through my pages and then use the Search Term Suggestion tool which is available at:
http://www.goto.com/d/about/advertisers/othertools.jhtml
Another technique for coming up with additional keywords is to do a search on any of the other major search engines for some of your keywords.
Then you can scan competitors pages for additional keywords you could be using. For example, I did a search for "marketing" and came up with hundreds of other keywords I could use by looking at twenty of my competitors pages.
7. Ad Exchanges with Other Sites
I have used both my web site and my ezine to joint venture with other companies online for mutual traffic growth. For example, every week I receive a large number of new subscribers to my ezine through the joint promotion of ezines at
http://www.ezinehits.com
This was a wonderful idea that Kris Stringham came up with to team up ezine publishers such as Jim Daniels, Mark Joyner, Kevin Needham, and others while at the same time giving away a 100,000 Ezine Ad Impression Prize every week.
Anyone reading this can go there and have the chance to reach 100,000 ezine subscribers while receiving the best online ezines. Each of the publishers gives a little ad space to the promotion in exchange for receiving a number of new subscribers each week. Everyone wins.
8. Post Card Decks
This isnt a major promotional strategy of mine, but I have found that by using postcard decks it is possible to obtain quite a few new buyers at a web site. Whenever a postcard deck comes out that I have advertised in (either with the whole card or as an advertiser on a card),my sales jump up at the web site for the next
week.
You will find that it is easier to reach a large number of buyers for your products or services with offline advertising instead of only limiting yourself to the web. This type of advertising gives lower actual hit numbers, but a larger number of buyers than most online advertising sources.
9. Banner Advertising
Even though banner advertising is one of the most well known forms of online marketing, it is still a small element in my overall promotional strategy for http://www.bizpromo.com
I participate in some free banner exchanges and do purchase click through banner ads (where you pay for each person who actually clicks through your banner instead of per impression), but these are only for very special promotions that I run.
I absolutely never run a paid banner campaign to the front page of my site. It must be for a specific promotion and straight to the sales page or a sign up for information to be sent through email. When using banner advertising,you have to solicit a response from the visitor immediately...or you will lose out on your money every time.
10. The Smaller Search Engines
Many people put down the small search engines and Free-For-All Links pages as a useless waste of time, but they are forgetting a very important purpose they can serve for your site. I have them listed last because they do send very little traffic to my site, but I use them for another reason.
Many of the major search engines are now using what they call "link popularity" as one of the determining factors in how high your pages rank.
The more links that are to your pages, the bigger advantage your site has at the search engine.
By using an automated program to submit your site to thousands of search engines at one time,you will be able to produce a little higher link popularity for yourself, and possibly give yourself that little edge you need in the major league search engines that really count.
About the Author
Terry Dean is the author of Scientific Internet Advertising which will show you an incredible new Internet marketing system that makes you money even while you sleep.
Click here now for more information:
http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R249_WG10
webmaster@bizpromo.com
http://www.bizpromo.com
"How Do I get Traffic to My Web Site?"
Having tested just about every type of traffic generation tool in existence, I will usually give them some specific ideas. Then, they always ask exactly how do I produce traffic at my own sites.
I own many different web sites and domains, and the stats at each show some slight variations of where the traffic is coming from. That is part of the reason I teach so many different techniques you can use. Some traffic techniques work better than others for specific sites and products.
To make this article as simple as possible for people to understand and follow, here are the ten best traffic building techniques of my main web site at http://www.bizpromo.com during the past month.
Understand that the ranking of each of these techniques change from month to month at my site depending on exactly which tools I am focusing on, but these ten almost always are the top traffic producers for this site.
1. Publish an Ezine
Publishing an ezine is number one in my book even though it doesnt produce the largest number of actual hits to my site. Its impact is significant in traffic levels though. I will always notice an increase of around 500 to 1,000 visitors on my traffic stats the two days after my newsletter is published.
The reason I have ranked it number one on this list of traffic building tools is that this is when the largest number of buyers hit the web site.
It isnt traffic that you really want at your site. You want sales. When you are publishing your own ezine, you will notice that you will have a much higher sales ratio to visitor ratio on the days your ezine comes out.
You have built a relationship with your ezine subscribers, so many of your buyers are going to come out of this group.
2. Give away free ebooks.
This is a traffic strategy that came to me as a surprise back in December of 1998. I created a short ebook on different businesses you could start online and gave it away as a Christmas gift to my Web Gold subscribers.
The book, originally intended only to be offered once as a Christmas gift, has spread like wildfire around the Internet.
Every day, I get at least 2 new requests for permission to place this book on a web site.
Add that daily number up and include the fact that around 500 sites asked permission the first month it was out and you will have a pretty nice set of free links out there for my web site...and that isnt counting those who may have listed it without informing me!
3. Give away free articles.
This is a major traffic generating strategy to use when you write your own articles.
Whenever I check my traffic stats, I will always end up finding one or two new web sites listed as referring visitors to me.
When I go over to the domains to check them out I will inevitably find that they have listed some of my articles on their site. I have over 70 articles at http://www.bizpromo.com/free and
anyone who wants to use them has my full permission to do so as long as they keep my contact information in tact at the bottom
of every article.
4. Publicity
I never send out "press releases" for bizpromo.com as most people think of one. What I have done is send out articles with a resource box in them which brings the reader to my web site.
Then, those articles get picked up by magazines, newsletters, and even some of the large Internet sites. This type of promotion doesnt drive long term traffic like the above methods, but it can sure give you a big jump in traffic when the article runs.
5. The Major Search Engines
The major search engines like Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, and MSN drive the majority of traffic to a site. This is usually true, but at bizpromo.com during the past month I have noticed that the largest portion of my search engine traffic is coming from google.com and dogpile.com. So these two are definitely becoming top dogs in the search engine industry, at least in my book.
6. Pay-Per-Click Search Engines
If you arent currently using Goto.com as one of your sources of traffic, then you are missing out on a real opportunity. During the past few months Goto.com has become extremely popular and many of the bids are reaching astronomical levels,but you can still find many keywords to bid on in the 1 cent to 20 cent per visitor range.
To create my large keyword lists, I will go through my pages and then use the Search Term Suggestion tool which is available at:
http://www.goto.com/d/about/advertisers/othertools.jhtml
Another technique for coming up with additional keywords is to do a search on any of the other major search engines for some of your keywords.
Then you can scan competitors pages for additional keywords you could be using. For example, I did a search for "marketing" and came up with hundreds of other keywords I could use by looking at twenty of my competitors pages.
7. Ad Exchanges with Other Sites
I have used both my web site and my ezine to joint venture with other companies online for mutual traffic growth. For example, every week I receive a large number of new subscribers to my ezine through the joint promotion of ezines at
http://www.ezinehits.com
This was a wonderful idea that Kris Stringham came up with to team up ezine publishers such as Jim Daniels, Mark Joyner, Kevin Needham, and others while at the same time giving away a 100,000 Ezine Ad Impression Prize every week.
Anyone reading this can go there and have the chance to reach 100,000 ezine subscribers while receiving the best online ezines. Each of the publishers gives a little ad space to the promotion in exchange for receiving a number of new subscribers each week. Everyone wins.
8. Post Card Decks
This isnt a major promotional strategy of mine, but I have found that by using postcard decks it is possible to obtain quite a few new buyers at a web site. Whenever a postcard deck comes out that I have advertised in (either with the whole card or as an advertiser on a card),my sales jump up at the web site for the next
week.
You will find that it is easier to reach a large number of buyers for your products or services with offline advertising instead of only limiting yourself to the web. This type of advertising gives lower actual hit numbers, but a larger number of buyers than most online advertising sources.
9. Banner Advertising
Even though banner advertising is one of the most well known forms of online marketing, it is still a small element in my overall promotional strategy for http://www.bizpromo.com
I participate in some free banner exchanges and do purchase click through banner ads (where you pay for each person who actually clicks through your banner instead of per impression), but these are only for very special promotions that I run.
I absolutely never run a paid banner campaign to the front page of my site. It must be for a specific promotion and straight to the sales page or a sign up for information to be sent through email. When using banner advertising,you have to solicit a response from the visitor immediately...or you will lose out on your money every time.
10. The Smaller Search Engines
Many people put down the small search engines and Free-For-All Links pages as a useless waste of time, but they are forgetting a very important purpose they can serve for your site. I have them listed last because they do send very little traffic to my site, but I use them for another reason.
Many of the major search engines are now using what they call "link popularity" as one of the determining factors in how high your pages rank.
The more links that are to your pages, the bigger advantage your site has at the search engine.
By using an automated program to submit your site to thousands of search engines at one time,you will be able to produce a little higher link popularity for yourself, and possibly give yourself that little edge you need in the major league search engines that really count.
About the Author
Terry Dean is the author of Scientific Internet Advertising which will show you an incredible new Internet marketing system that makes you money even while you sleep.
Click here now for more information:
http://www.roibot.com/w.cgi?R249_WG10
webmaster@bizpromo.com
http://www.bizpromo.com
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