Posts filed under 'School of Traffic Building'
July 28th, 2009
There are numerous factors to consider when evaluating the potential commercial success (i.e. profitability) of a website. A few of these include content, quality of the content, items being marketed, appearance, etc. I could go on forever about the various website building blocks needed in order to be successful, but without traffic (visitors), no website is going to be profitable.
You may think that the site you have created is top-notch, but if the only ones visiting it are your family and friends then chances are very good that you’re not going to make many sales (or whatever it is your site is designed to accomplish).
So how, as a Webmaster, do you tackle the seemingly huge task of getting traffic (that’s so vitally important to your success) driven to your site? To answer that, we first need to look at two types of visitor categories:
Non-targeted: A non-targeted visitor is defined as a person that is not truly interested in, or searching for, what your site offers. They may have stumbled across your site while searching for something else. While they may or may not purchase goods/services from your site, it should be assumed that they were not actively searching for what you’re marketing.
Targeted: A targeted visitor to your website would be a person that found your page using some type of search parameter. This person would have been actively searching for the content that your site offers. This person is much more likely to purchase from your site than the non-targeted visitor. Obviously, targeted traffic is what a website owner needs in order to be profitable.
Now here is the dilemma of the day: How do you generate traffic and then how do you determine if that traffic is targeted or non-targeted? Below I have listed some of the major ways of driving traffic to your website along with the type of visitor to expect from each one.
Search Engines: If you have optimized your site correctly, visitors you receive from the major search engines such as Google, MSN, and Yahoo (and many of the lesser engines) should be targeted to your site. These people have actively searched out the keywords that have led them to your page. The best thing about this traffic is that it is free.
The downside of generic search engine traffic is getting your site ranked high enough so that people actually find your site. Most people will not look much beyond the first three pages of search results. So if you are not in the top thirty results for a certain keyword, the chances are good that you’re not going to see much traffic from them.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC): Pay-per-click, much like the generic search engine results discussed above, should be highly targeted traffic. The basic premise with PPC is that you place your ad with the different search engines, directories, etc. and then they distribute your ad according to your selected keywords. When a person clicks on your ad, you pay a set price. When done correctly, PPC can be an excellent way of driving targeted traffic. The downside of PPC is that you pay for every single click. Though many of the top PPC companies allow you to set up a monthly budget, it can still become very expensive.
Cost-Per-Action (CPA): Cost-per-action works much like PPC. The main difference between the two is that you pay only when the visitor performs a required task at your site (purchase, sign up, etc.) Of course the cost for this service is much higher than standard PPC. Also, CPA services usually require that you place a piece of code on your “Checkout” or “Thank You” page which alerts them to the fact that the visitor came from their service in order for them to charge you accordingly.
Traffic Exchanges: A traffic exchange website (Traffic Swarm, etc) is based on the idea of “You scratch my back, then I’ll scratch yours.” I.E. they will display your ad the same number of times that you’ve clicked to view someone else’s. Some offer ratios of 1:1 (meaning for every time you click on another ad, your ad will be displayed), while others offer differing plans. The downside of traffic exchanges is that most of the people clicking on the ads are doing it for the same reason you are - to get their ad placed. Therefore, any traffic generated through a traffic exchange will more than likely not be targeted. It is possible to make the occasional sale or sign up through these services, but they will probably be few and far between.
Article Submission: Writing & submitting articles about a subject that’s relevant to your website content is an excellent way to receive targeted traffic. This can normally be done for free or at a very low cost. An added benefit is that each time a website posts your article you will receive a one-way link to your website– which is highly favored by the search engines.
The process is really quite simple: 1) Write an article about a subject that visitors to your site would be interested in. At the bottom of the article place a “resource box” that contains a little blip about you and/or your website along with your link. (See my example below entitled “ABOUT THE AUTHOR”). 2) Submit your article to the many online article directories. This can be done manually or with software programs designed to automate the process for you.
If your article is well written, it may be placed on hundreds of highly visited websites. When a person reads your article and decides to click on the link you’ve provided in the resource box, you get the [usually] free targeted traffic. It doesn’t get much better than that!
Link Exchange: Once upon a time link exchanging was the BIG thing. I believe that has changed and no longer is as heavily-weighted by the search engines. The whole point of exchanging links was supposed to be because you believed your visitors would benefit from your link partner’s content. Link farms changed & abused all of that, so the search engine “points” given for backward links have been adjusted down. Don’t count them out completely as a way to drive traffic to your site, but don’t count on them solely either. Exchanging links with like-minded websites can still deliver some decent traffic, which, in theory, should also be the coveted targeted type.
In conclusion: As a website owner, targeted traffic is the name of the game. You can have the best looking site with the coolest graphics, but if no one can find your site then all your work isn’t going to do you much good.
Seek out highly targeted traffic for your website. Optimize your site for the search engines and then choose a few of the options listed above to start driving visitors to your site today. Once you get the visitors there…well, that’s another article for another day.
Copyright 2006 Craig Binkley
Craig Binkley is a husband, father and home business owner. Visit his Work From Home Directory located at http://www.workfromhomehelper.com for legitimate work from home opportunities and ideas.
June 5th, 2009
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June 4th, 2009
Many people currently doing business on the Internet. Those who are more than interested in getting their feet wet on the Internet, understand the importance of driving traffic to their website. If you are in the market for an online marketing company that can help you increase traffic to your website and thereby increase your sales, there are many things to consider.
When choosing the right business, it is important to ask as many questions of the online marketing company as possible. Without traffic, you will not have any sales and all of your efforts will be in vain.
The best place to start is to ask family and friends if they know of any online marketing companies that can be recommended to you. This is especially helpful if your family and friends have developed a successful and well known presence on the web. Keep in mind, that you should only take the advice of someone you consider trustworthy and have a high opinion of. As well, the company recommended should be one they have personally done business with in an online environment.
If you are unsuccessful finding an online marketing company this way, you can start your search on the Internet. However, it is a good time to caution you. Like in the real world, there are many scams out there. This is also true online. It is best to take some time (do the research) and find reputable companies that will help you drive traffic to your web site.
A company that makes ridiculous or outrageous claims should be avoided at all costs. They may send only a trickle of traffic your way or none at all. In the end you might be held responsible for paying them for doing nothing for you. This happens more often than you might think.
However, it is best to find a company that is able to provide examples of previous sites that they have worked on in which the traffic for the sites has increased and remained steady. As well, it is a good idea to find a marketing company that presents you with a step-by-step strategy that is well thought out. In this way you will know that they are putting forth their best effort to take you to the top of the search engines.
In the end, the time you spend checking the reputation of any online company you consider working with is time well-spent. There are a number of web sites that rate others and don’t forget to check with the better business bureau where the company is located. IMPORTANT: Always, I mean always locate the name, address and telephone number of the owners of the site. Also check online forums and do search engine searches to see if the company has a history of negative dealings with past customers. With that being said, get going. You can do it. Begin now.
January 29th, 2009
Their is an old Saying it goes something like this ‘Figures Lie and Liars figures. While it is true that you can skew Statistics anyway you want, it is also true that with properly gathered statistics you can learn a great deal about your web site traffic if you know what to look for.
In a previous Article ‘All You Need to Know About Your Website Traffic is Contained in 5 Key Stats’ I discussed AWStats and 5 key areas related to Search Engine, Back Links and Reciprocal Links. In this article we will learn how to use a few more Statistics from AWStats.
Most Web Hosts will provide you with a Cpanel, where you can create E-mail Accounts, Upload Web Pages and check your stats. Most of the Cpanel’s are very similar if not identical to the one my Hosts uses.
When it is time to check my web page traffic statistics I click on Log and then Web/FTP Stats and finally AWStats. I am now presented with a List of Stats to look at. This Article will discuss
- Navigation: Full list
- Navigation: Entry
- Navigation: Exit
1 - Navigation: Full list
This will list all of your web pages that were visited and how many times they were visited. If you have web pages about sports and you notice that your golf pages were visited the most and your Bowling pages are visited least. You may want to think about either how to make a bigger profit by having more golf pages. You may also want to see what you can do to make your bowling pages more popular.
2 - Navigation: Entry
This is a very important stat. It will tell which was the first web page each visitor saw. You should look for patterns. If you have been trying very hard to send traffic to your buckwheat pillow pages is it working? Are you surprised to learn that your loan page is doing well but your life insurance page isn’t? You may want to look at your pages that are performing well and see if you notice patterns that you can apply to other pages.
3 - Navigation: Exit This stat tells you which was the last page each visitor saw. A good way to use this page is to do split testing. You have 10 pages about golf. You want to send your golf page visitors to a golf vacation-planning page. By creating 2 different golf vacation planning pages you can see which method link methods works best.
About The Author:
Mike Makler has been Marketing Online Since 2001 When he Built
an Organization of over 100,000 Members
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Copyright © 2005-2006 Mike Makler the Coolest Guy in the Universe
January 21st, 2009
Links are important to you because of two main reasons:
- Google’s PageRank: Google is probably the top search engine currently, and because of that, having a good ranking affects your traffic significantly. One main part of Google’s algorithms to determine the ranking of a site is by the amount of incoming links the site is receiving.
- They are how people find your site: Readers who click on the links will find your site, so naturally you will want as many incoming links as possible.
But how do you get those big and mighty sites to provide a link to someone like you? It is impossible right?
Wrong!
You just need to go about it differently. This is where article marketing comes in. The most valuable thing that you can offer the Internet community is your knowledge. And by offering useful snippets of it in the form of articles, you make yourself instantly very well-received.
Create articles that are purely informative and to-the-point. Remember that making it a long sales letter will not work. You will have to remove all links to order pages, affiliate sites, whatever. Do not even mention your company or your product/service in the main article body (but the author’s bio or resource box is perfectly fine).
Then, submit your articles to various sites of your choice. These can be directories, newsletters, or highly focused sites that are relevant to your articles’ content. Some sites do allow HTML links in your author’s bio or resource box, and that is probably the best. Those sites are usually of a really good PR - imagine getting free incoming links from a >PR6 site!
Remember to do this on a regular schedule. Due to the large number of other people submitting articles, you must make an effort to stand out from the crowd. It is best if you can create and submit an article every month, so that people will get to recognise and know you.
Once you develop a certain following, it becomes much easier to market your product or service!
Alvin Poh has been specialising in web development, content distribution, advertising and marketing strategies since 1995. His goal is to provide practical information based upon his years of experience to help webmasters, website designers, and self-employed people achieve their goals in today’s competitive Internet. At his site, you can learn how to make money online.
January 2nd, 2009
Using this method you will be able to setup a great affiliate programme,no affiliate link theft and provide affiliate with all the stats and resources they need
To make good money, you will need to get high traffic to your site. This isn’t easy to achieve but with an affiliate programme you can increase your traffic considerably. An affiliate programme works by providing a unique code for each affiliate that is linked to your sales site. When a visitor sent by an affiliate buys a copy of your ebook, you give them commission.
So what our affiliate page needs to do is, convince as many people as possible to sign up and become an affiliate. You have got to let your potential affiliate know, how the product sells, the commission you will give them and the training you will give them to help them sell your ebook. Therefore your affiliate’s page is like your sales page, it really needs to sell.
Now the big problem with affiliates is that very few that sign-up actually make a sale for you. I’d say roughly 15% and that’s doing well. The reason affiliate programmes falter, is the inexperienced people need support. Remember if you can increase the chances of the inexperienced 85% selling your products, it will lead to considerable extra profits.
So what we need to do is educate the non-experienced affiliates. The best way we can do this is an affiliate course. This will allow your affiliate to educate themselves. Having an affiliate course also allows you to stay in regular contact with your affiliate after they have signed up for your affiliate programme. You are “in their face” more.
Now I am sure you are saying to yourself how do I set up an affiliate course to educate my potential customers? It’s simple you already know how to. It’s the exact same as setting up a newsletter. Remember I spoke about getting Getresponse as an auto responder. Well you can also use this to take care of your affiliate course.
In a few minutes I am going to tell you about a piece of software that will automatically set up an affiliate sign-up page for you. It’s the same as the opt-in form we produced for the newsletter earlier. All you need do then is get your sign-ups to be forwarded to your autoresponder. With getresponse you can programme it to send out an email every three, seven or fourteen days (this is at your own discretion). So you can write a 6 part affiliate course on your autoresponder and send one part out every week.
You are probably saying too yourself, where am I going to get an affiliate training course, well this is simple! All you have to do is sign up to my affiliate programme. You will be automatically subscribed for the six part affiliate course. Save the course in your inbox and you have full rights from me to use this course for your own affiliate programme. So basically your copying and pasting my affiliate course into your own autoresponder when you set up your programme
Ok, how to set up your own affiliate programme. I mentioned earlier that if you sign up for clickbank, they will also take care of your affiliate programme. What I love about clickbank managing your affiliate programme is that they provide the accounts, the sales reports and they pay your affiliates every two weeks.
Earlier we setup an affiliate sign up template page. It’s easy to get affiliates to sign up to your programme. All you do is get the potential affiliate to sign up for a clickbank account of their own. Now the link you use to get them to sign up to their own clickbank account is as follows.
http://AFFILIATE.reseller.hop.clickbank.net
All you need to do is replace the “affiliate word”, with your own clickbank nickname. What this does is it activates clickbanks affiliate link. So if someone signs up using the previous link with your nickname, you will receive commission for clickbank if the person signs up for the full account. So if your refer someone and they activate their account fully (activation fee $50), you will receive $10. Also you will receive a commission from clickbank for every sale they make with their own product in the future. Roughly this will work out around .10c for every 10 sales they make.
Now the code an affiliate will provide to link to your site will look like the following
http://(yournickname).(their nickname) .hop.clickbank.net
In order to let your affiliates generate the code they need to link to your site and earn credit for any sales they generate, Clickbank will create an automated affiliate link generator form just like they generated an automatic order form for your product. Below is the interface needed to create your affiliate link
http://www.clickbank.com/build.html
By then creating a link on your affiliate signup page to this form, your affiliates will be able to receive their own unique affiliate linking code for your website
Once a potential affiliate enters his/her clickbank nickname and clicks submit, the system then generates their own linking code. This links from their site to yours, showing that the visitor was sent by them.
Now you can use this affiliate programme if your budget is tight but I personally use a different programme and here is why I don’t use the programme outlined above
Firstly anyone can become an affiliate of yours. That means that if one of your hard working affiliates is promoting you and an interested individual sees his unique affiliate link to your website, he can just substitute your first affiliates link with his own, then buy your product. Your affiliate loses money which was rightly theirs. Not a good start.
What about someone who you get to your site? Well they can just buy through their own affiliate link and cut you out of some profits that were rightly yours as you got them there in the first place.
Thirdly, you don.t actually know who any of your affiliates are because they don.t have to register with you to become an affiliate. Its easy to work out the affiliate code they.ll need so they go off promoting you.
Also your affiliate can’t actually see how many visitors they are sending to your site. All they know is the commission their making.
It is for the above reasons I use a programme called easyclickmate . This programme solves the above problems and obviously works in conjunction with clickbank, to maximise the potential of your clickbank account. It will also turn your affiliate programme into a very powerful money making machine!!
The way this software works is simple and very effective:
Affiliate will actually sign up to your programme. They will provide their name, email, website address and country.
What I love about this software is that it includes its own control panel. This powerful system gives you comprehensive marketing statistics such as click-throughs, sales and conversion ratio (hits/sales) of your affiliates. It will display your top performing affiliates, top referral urls, top product(s) performance summary.
Your affiliates can login to the affiliate center to check his/her stats, and retrieve their custom affiliate links which are automatically generated each time you add new products. The affiliate codes cannot be switched so the affiliate wont lose commissions he rightfully earned.
They will also receive an automatic email notification from easyClickMate when they’ve made a sale. Details of the email includes the merchant’s name (i.e. you) and how much profit they’ve made. You will also receive an email regarding the affiliate sale. This is a value-added feature as Clickbank has decided stop sale notification to affiliates.
The reason this software is worth it and why you will actually save money when you purchase the product for $70 is as follows. The system works in conjunction with clickbank. You can sell a number of products using the one clickbank account.
So why don’t you consider this
This software will cost you $70. If you are going to write more than one ebook product, you will need a second clickbank account which will cost you another $49.95. Therefore if you are going to write more than two ebooks you will be saving money and this isn’t even including the other wonderful features easyclickmate has.
Remember if you have more than one product, you can check your affiliate stats to see which product is selling the best or the one you need to improve. You will be able to see which website is converting the most browsers into buyers.
With this programme, you will be able to entice more potential affiliates because your programme is so professional looking. Also add that I’ve supplied you with a full affiliate course. So your affiliate programme will be very powerful indeed.
I mentioned earlier about setting up an affiliate info(sign up) page and also an affiliate log-in page. Well the good news is easyclickmate will install these pages for you and upload them to your website.
Installation is simple and is covered completely by the top quality guide Adrian Ling(programmer) will provide you with as soon as you buy his software. This script is written in a language called PHP.
Adrian ling provides a very good manual for installing the software on your hosting account, and he also provides one on how to setup and use the software once it’s installed. The manuals are very detailed, and much like this book, break down the whole process into little east to follow steps.
David Hennebery is the owner and creator of a very successful ebook called ebookprofitmaker. He is regarded as an expert in eBook marketing and selling. To contact him email support@ebookprofitmaker.com. Receive 35% off my ebook for reading this article www.ebookprofitmaker.com/articleoffer.html
January 2nd, 2009
Obtaining Traffic
To convert traffic to sales or actions, first you have to obtain traffic to your website. This can be accomplished in various ways. You can provide top-quality content that is search engine optimized and places you high in the search engine results rankings allowing people to locate your website easily. You can use Google Adwords to obtain traffic. There are tons of traffic generating tools available on the Internet today.
You can even buy traffic, although purchasing traffic is the least effective means for traffic conversion. Sure, lots of people will land on your website, but these people are using pay-per-click reward systems and they usually will NOT convert to sales.
Quality content and Google Adwords and development of a large, targeted mailing list are the most effective means of obtaining targeted market traffic. After all, unless you get visitors to your website that have an interest in what you offer them, they will not convert to sales or action.
Factors Impacting Traffic Conversion
Once a visitor lands at your website, there are factors that will effect whether they remain on the site or move on quickly. Getting traffic to actually read your information or act on an advertisement on your website is determined by several factors:
The website must be attractive and easy to navigate.
It should contain exactly what was indicated in the search engine description. A description that tells the visitor they will find facts but only find a directory will move away quickly.
Any website that appears difficult to read, has too many slow to load graphics or ugly, clashing colors will most often result in the traffic hitting the “back” button and returning to their web search, moving to the next site available. Pop-ups, pop-unders and other annoying means of advertising often results in traffic departures rather than conversions.
Any website that lacks quality content and appears to be only sales-focused will inhibit conversion rates.
You need to give the traffic that you wish to convert something to keep them interested in your information in order to hold their attention long enough to convince them to take the desired action - to convert to a sale or click-through - instead of making a fast departure.
Convince the Traffic to Convert
In order to get your traffic conversion rate to increase, you have to really convince the visitor that they simply can’t live without what you have to offer. Whether you are using Adsense, selling a product or asking them to provide their personal information to add to your mailing list, the traffic must feel compelled to NEED your information.
Many people think the only way to make traffic convert is to use a long sales letter that is highlighted in yellow. Savvy Internet users are on to this technique. As soon as they see a bunch of yellow highlighting, they move away. The traffic wants information first and foremost. Provide them information and they will want to convert. Tell them what you have to offer and what it will do for them - honestly and concisely. No one buys into those sales letters that say “only the next 12 people get this deal” or “you will earn $1 million this month”. Be honest, be real and you’ll find more people convert than if you promise them unbelievable results.
Matt Bacak, Entrepreneur Magazine e-Biz radio show host became a “#1 Best Selling Author” in just a few short hours and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to Retire From Your Job This Year and Still Make More Money Than the Average Medical Doctor… You Can Do It
Once You Know the Proven Steps Outlined here! ==> http://www.internetmillionairemind.com
