One of the most frequent questions I am asked is “Will your ebook teach me how to get more traffic to my web site?” Lots of people have written books — and series of books — on generating traffic. The focus of this article is to show you how to maximize the traffic that you already have. And while tips for building pages through forums and free content are excellent ideas, they are no replacement for a solid course on how to get more people to visit your site. Because this question is so common though, I will address it briefly in this chapter. I’l l give you the basics, describe some unusual ideas that some people are using and tell you where you can get all the i nformation you need. In the next chapter, you’ll also find a quick run-through of search engine optimization.
1. Advertising
Let’s start with the obvious: buying advertising. We’ve already talked about AdWords/AdSense arbitrage but exactly the same principle applies to buying your traffic from other sources too.
For example, the minimum pri ce for advertising at Overture is ten cents per click and you must spend at least $20 each month. If you can see that the ads being served on your site are generating less than ten cents per click then you’re never going to make a profit.
Exactly the same is true of any other pay-per-click advertising campaign.
One of the advantages of following your AdSense stats is that you can estimate how much th e clicks on your ads are worth. That can tell you how much you can afford to pay for clicks from other sites when you buy advertising.
It mi ght well pay to advertise, but before you buy make sure it pays a profit.
2. Recipro cal Linking
Many people focus on linking in order to improve their search engine rankings. That’s important but don’t forget that the links themselves can be one of your biggest sources of traffic!
Probably the easiest way to invite links (apart from searchi ng out related sites and writing to each one) is to add a “link” section to your pages where webmasters can choose a banner, button or text link to place on their site. On the same page, they can also submit their own site for linking. That should help you swap links without being swamped by sites looking for free placement.
The most critical factor when requesting a link though is where the site places it. Links on the home page alw ays do better than a link buried on one of the internal pages and a good banner or graphic link on a site with content related to yours will usually get more clicks than a text link.
If you find that your links aren’t appearing on the pages you want, there are a couple of simple remedi es that you can use.
The first is to ask for a better position! If you have a good relationship with
the webmaster or if it’s a small site, there’s a good chance that they’ll agree.
It certainly won’t hurt to ask.
Not everyone is so generous though, and another option is to offer something in return. A link in a simil ar position on your own si te can make a good deal if your sites are of similar size but you can also offer content or even a special page for that site’s users.
If you have a si te about furniture for example, and you want a link at a top directory for home furnishings then you could create a special welcome page for users of that site to draw them deeper into yours and deliver targeted ads. You might even want to go as far as creating a sort of co-branded version of your site for their users to click into. As long as you’re getting paid when the users click on the ads, what do you care whose design they’re looking at?
3. Send A Friend
There’s nothing like viral marketing to promote your site! It’s free, it comes with trusted recommendations and it gives you great CTR.
Each of your content pages should have a link marked “Send a friend” which opens a form so that the user can send your URL onwards. Until Google allows ads in email, there’s little point in AdSense members sending actual content but there’s no reason why you (or your users) can’t send links to pages with ads.
4. RSS Feeds
One of the challenges of keeping your user base is that readers can be pretty forgetful. Adding an RSS feed to your site is a great way to let people know that a new post has gone up and that they should stop by and take a look You’ll want to make sure that your headlin es are attractive and inviting. Many users don’t look past them, so if they don’t do the job, the post won’t be opened or read, and the user won’t click to your site. Images can also help you r feeds to stand out.
It’s rarely a good i dea to send more than RSS post to a subscriber each day.
The most common reason that users unsubscribe isn’t poor content or too much advertising, but too many posts.
One good strategy then is to divide your RSS feeds by theme and let subscribers only receive posts on the topics that interest them most. If you’re writing about a range of different themes, that should already help to keep the deliveries down to a manageable level.
The only other choice you’ll have to make is whether to include the whole
post in your feed or just a teaser to bring people to your site. When the goal
of the feed is to get people back to your site to click the ads, you might think
that there’s little point in giving them the whole article in their feed reader.
But readers will often unsubscribe if they can ’t see the whole article. That would reduce your subscriber base. You might be better off givin g them the whole article and inviting them back to your site to add and see comments. Test both options and see which works best for you.
5. Of fline Marketing
One of the biggest mistakes that people make when they build an Internet business is to forget that there’s a world outside the Internet! Just because you make money out of traffic doesn’t mean you h ave to source all of that traffic online.
You should make sure that your U RL is listed on all of your marketing material: your business cards, Yellow Pages ads, flyers, envelopes, freebies and just about anything else you can think of.
You should certainly have your site address in your email signatures.
6. Promo ting Yo ur B log
I’ve tal ked quite a bit about blogging in thi s book, mostly because I know
from experience that it’s possible to make a very nice income from a good blog but also becau se a lot of people aren’t making the most of the blogs they have.
If you’ ve got AdSense on your blog, there’s a whole range of different things
that you can easily do to increase your traffic and earn extra cash.
The first thing you should do is make sure that your blog is set to ping rpc.pingomatic. com as soon as you’ve updated. Pingomatic.com offers a free all-i n-one pinging service that covers all the large blog directories and search engines. On Blogger.com, you can find this in your settings; other blog tools, such as Movable Type and Wordpress have a similar option.
You should also set up an RSS feed to l et people know w hen you update. Apart from the fact that you can now place ads on your feeds, it will also keep your regu lar users coming back to see more ads (and to see your latest posts).
Instead of linking to the previous month’s or the previous week’s posts, each page should also have its own link. Sounds obvious, right? And yet how many blogs have you seen with one l ink to about twenty different entries?
One link per entry means more pages for ads, better links from external sites
and higher search engine rankings.
You should certainly comment on other peopl e’s blogs, especial ly those that write about the same sort of things as your site, but ultimately the best way to get traffic to your blog is to make it good. If your writing is dull or difficult to read, it doesn’t matter how hard you push it, no one will want to read it — and those who do stay won’t stick around to cli ck the ads.
7. Public Relations And Publicity
Just about all of the methods that you use to bring people to your site will
cost you money. You’ll have to pay for ads on other sites, you’ll have to give up valuable real estate on your site to li sts of links and you’ll have to decide how much you want to pay for an AdWords campaign or to get yourself promoted through Overture.
Publicity can be free.
It doesn’t have to be of course. You can pay a PR expert to publicize your site for you and place articles in the press on your behalf... bu t it’s not necessary and they can be too expensive for most sites, especially at the beginning.
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