9 Ways To Drive Targeted Traffic To Your Website
by: Guillermo Jalil
Every online business needs targeted traffic - whether it is selling a product, service, affiliate marketing site or Google Adsense site. An affiliate marketer may have all the things needed for him to be able to succeed in a business such as affiliate marketing. He/ she may have the necessary drive, diligence, passion and perseverance to be able to understand how the system works. He/ she may have all the tools necessary in maintaining the business, including a really unique and interesting website which could earn him/her a fortune if only the whole world could see it. However, all these would prove useless if he/she does not know how to drive traffic to his website.
Getting people who matter to see one’s website is a difficult undertaking if he tries to consider the fact that there are rivals everywhere waiting to pin him down. The immensity of the internet as well as the internet business world has given birth to the fierce competition between online businesses, each of whom has his own great product to offer. With all the websites piling on top of each other, how would one be able to stand out? Here are 9 ways to drive targeted traffic
1. Search engines: What they can do for the affiliate marketer concerned. Because they are popular for driving free targeted traffic, they should not be ignored by all means. Having top search engine rankings is vital in building popularity links, and the use of the right keywords is important in attaining this goal. Once a website is on top of the list, it is easily accessible to anyone who wants to see it for himself.
2. Give unrestricted rights to Ebooks and reports: Create Short ebooks and reports branded with your website link on the footer of every page. Give them away on their website or to your mailing list also give them rights to sell it on their websites and auction sites. What can be better than this for driving traffic to your website? If you give resale rights, come of them will sell it to others and in turn you get more visitors!
3. Link Exchange: Contact other webmasters for a possible link exchange partnership. Locating websites that are related to one’s own website is the primary task. Once there, he should be able to establish communication by personalizing everything as much as possible. It is then possible to make reciprocal link exchanges between webmasters whichever way the affiliate marketer prefers.
4. Join link exchange programs: This is the new way of linking. This can drive targeted traffic. There are many free link exchanges services. Paying for a link exchange program is also worth your money.
5. Write your own articles: This is an effective way in promoting a website, because good content that are appreciated by readers will lead them to visit the writer’s very own website out of sheer interest.
6. Discussion forums: Participate in discussion forums of your area of expertise and respond to someone’s question. A discussion forum may user of all levels - beginners to advanced users. There are many questions that newbies ask. Make sure you respond to it. After this invite them to visit your website. Make sure your signature file has your links with a very good caption.
7. Joint venture marketing: This is one of the most effective ways of promoting a product or a service. Having a partner through ad swap or link exchange is beneficial to both parties as it allows them to reach a wide customer base in a short amount of time.
8. Newsletter subscription: Creating a list of subscribers that one can refer to every so often, because they are those which would prove to be valuable assets for the marketer concerned. The use of autoresponders and personalized newsletters is one way of keeping track of them all, and holding on to them by letting them know about new products and services is an essential task that should be done by the affiliate marketer concerned.
9. Knowing one’s market through and through. It is important for traffic to be targeted to those who might have a special interest in the theme or topic of one’s website. This way, a solid customer base is going to be created. Once a potential customer shows an interest in a particular website by paying it a visit, one must not waste time in trying to show him that his effort is worth it. Keep contact info (atleast name and email address) of your customers is critical. Once someone is interested in your product, it is easier to promote other products including affiliate products.
Traffic generating strategies are important in trying to make one’s affiliate marketing career inch forward. It is always advantageous to plan one’s moves in any business that he might undertake. This is particularly so in affiliate marketing. If one knows how to get people to see what he has to offer, then he is on the right track. Last but not the least, have some scripts/ tools to perform these actions - bookmark page, set home page, tell a friend and exchange link.
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About The Author
Guillermo Jalil owns several businesses including eBay business and other internet businesses. For more Ebay shopping tips on how to find great bargains visit http://www.startbuyingonebay.com. For tips on how to make on the internet from multiple sources of income visit http://www.internetandmoney.com.
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Permanent link to this post (917 words, estimated 3:40 reading time)
August 25th, 2006
Keywords, Competition and Being Number One- Uncovering the Algorithm
by: John Krycek
By following these steps you will see that most closely guarded secret– the search algorithm. Remember the movie “the Matrix?” The Matrix is there, you just can’t see it. So is the search algorithm.
It’s easy to pay a Search Engine Optimizer to give your pages some ranking power. Unfortunately, given the inherent time factor involved in climbing the ranks, your money may be long gone before you know if you’ve spent your money well.
THERE IS NO MAGIC PILL
Forget any advertisement you see for instant number one search results or automated this or that. Most are scams, and the ones that aren’t might get you positioned, but it will be very short lived.
Search engine optimization is an ongoing process. Achieving and maintaining a high rank, especially on highly competitive keywords, requires constant maintenance. If you do find a legitimate SEO firm, it is well worth the money to pay their monthly maintenance fee and let them continue to help you after the initial project. At least for 6 months or a year as you establish yourself.
In this article we’ll look at some of the intricate and complex tasks of optimizing a page for long term ranking power. You will learn how to read between the code and the content to find what is necessary to bring you to the top. Being number one is easy to say, but is quickly overwhelming when you stare at tens of thousands of pages you want to out rank. So how do you begin?
The starting line on the road to that first page SERP (search engine results page) ranking is not as blurry as you might think. In fact, you can uncover the starting line, the route, and all the scenery along the way to the finish line without knowing the search engine algorithm.
STEP 1- YOUR KEYWORDS ARE THE CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT OF GRUELLING DAYS OF WORK
If you have investments in the stock market you know how much research and thought goes into choosing those securities. Now take that same effort and multiply it by three. That’s how much planning and revision your keywords should take.
A simple, broad key phrase like “shoes” could hypothetically bring you up in a countless stream of different searches. Women’s shoes, baby shoes, sneakers, high heels, etc. If somehow you manage to settle into a good ranking (which would be difficult) you would have more traffic on your site than you could handle. But traffic is worthless is it doesn’t get to it’s destination. Chances are, you weren’t that destination.
Your keywords must be focused and precise, specific to what you are selling. Using a key phrase like “Gucci mens black leather loafer” will bring a targeted lead to your site. You may not reach as many people as the more generalized keyword, but the people that do come to you have a much deeper interest in the specific product you are selling.
Therefore you have much greater chance of converting that targeted lead to a sale. Your keywords are your magic beans, your winning lotto numbers, your energizer bunnies, your sales force, whatever you want to call them. They must be perfect.
STEP 2- WANT TO BE NUMBER ONE? LOOK AT WHO ALREADY IS
Competition Analysis- no SEO book can give you this information.
Now take your keyword list and type them into a search engine. Who comes up in the first ten results? That company that is number one is because they have most closely matched what the search engine algorithm says should be number one. You can learn a great deal from them.
A. INTERNAL FACTORS
Take that number one page, and the other top 9 pages and study them, look at the code, break them down. You are looking at the first half of what is needed to rank in the top 10 pages for your key phrases on that particular search engine. The list of what to look for is enormous.
Studying the Internal Factors on a page is taking it apart to see how it’s put together. Not how it works, but statistical research into the precise construct and layout of keywords and phrases in relation to each other within the page.
Start with these areas:
URL address, Page Title, Meta description, Meta Keywords, First sentence on the page, Body copy, Bold or Emphasized Phrases, H1 or other tags, Alt Tags, Navigation system
In each of those sections, look at:
Keyword densities- the number of times your phrase and each word in your phrase appears compared to the text around it
Where and in how many times the same phrase and words appear in different sections
The word and character position of each phrase in each
The total number of characters
The total number of words
The quality and thought of the content
Beginning with these comparisons should keep you quite busy for a while. A spreadsheet is quite useful. Some commercial products are also available that can make this daunting task much more feasible. Keep looking for other patterns and differences. You want to duplicate them in your own page. NOT copy and steal. You want to mimic the patterns that are bringing that page to the position it is. Then move onto to examining the external factors of these pages.
B. EXTERNAL FACTORS
External factors of a web page deal with the links to, from and within a web page, both inside the same site, and out into the web. This analysis usually takes more time because it involves more dissection of pages beyond the one you’re trying to optimize.
In this analysis as with Internal Factors, you want to compare and contrast your page versus the top 10 competitors, find similarities and differences. Here is a list of criteria to get you started.
Number of internal (to the same site) on that page
Number of external links
Number of links pointing TO that page* (see below for details)
The link/anchor text- which keywords are used and where
Google Page Rank value of incoming links
Alexa Rank of incoming links
*To get a listing of the links that point to a site, type the following into Google, MSN and Yahoo searches: “link:www.domainname.com”. Google tends to only show a small portion of the links back, but MSN and Yahoo will give you much more pertinent data.
Now you want to compare the content on each of these pages to the one they point to. Is it of similar theme, in what context does the link back appear and where. Subject of much debate, the consensus is that Google Page Rank does not mean what it used to. However, if it is in some fashion a measure of how significant or “important” a site is, it is worth looking more closely at the sites that link back that are of high page rank.
EVEN A SURGEON USES TOOLS
Now, this is definitely a ton of work to do all by hand. There are software programs that can help do some of the digging and mathematical computations for you, figuring out densities and organizing information.
Tools like this are definitely ones a professional SEO will have in their arsenal. But remember, these are tools, not miracle workers. It takes a human being to evaluate and realize connections, similarities, draw conclusions and interpret the data. Then, you have to extrapolate this data.
Remember, you want to do one better than every site you just examined. To do that you have to draw some conclusions and make some educated guesses and link to even better sites.
FINAL THOUGHTS
You have access to the inner workings of every page that you want to beat. Learn from them and do one better. This process is not a one-time shot. It is ongoing. Check your key phrases every week. Do the same people still rank in the top ten?
Some have probably moved. Remember too that they’re going to adapt to maintain their positions too. If you want the ranks, you have to spend the time, and not just once, or pay someone to do it for you.
Don’t ever believe anyone who says they can guarantee any kind of results. And ask them how they will optimize your pages. If they explain to you something like the above, then you’ve probably got yourself someone experienced and honest. You money will be well spent and you’ll quickly recover it.
Permanent link to this post (1449 words, estimated 5:48 reading time)
August 25th, 2006
The Changing World of Link Popularity
by: Michael Pedone
Recently, a buddy of mine got caught up in a link-buying frenzy and purchased numerous text link ads in an effort to improve his search engine rankings and PageRank score. Instead, Google dumped him into the cobwebbed netherworld of search results somewhere beyond page 13. When he wrote to ask why, Google responded:
“Certain actions such as buying or selling links to increase a site’s PageRank value can result in penalization. Please review our quality guidelines at http://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.html for more information. If you identify problems with your website and make the changes necessary to comply with these guidelines, please do not hesitate to contact us.”
My pal learned a hard lesson that many webmasters are having to face these days… that indiscriminately gobbling up paid link ads in vehicles that aren’t relevant to your site and that don’t relate to the interests of your target market is no longer acceptable to Google.
Its guidelines now warn webmasters, “Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank,” and they encourage us to ask ourselves, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
Google’s message seems to be, “Just pretend we aren’t here.”
Leaving Big Bad Backward Links Behind
It’s easy to get caught up in the need-top-rankings-now craze, like my friend did. But Google is letting us know loud and clear that bad linking schemes created only to artificially boost link popularity can no longer be used with impunity.
Does that mean that link popularity is a dead issue? Far from it. Search engines still place a lot of weight on incoming links to your site and it’s just as important as ever. Only now it’s not about numbers, it’s about quality and relevance.
The search engines, particularly Google, want to see links on sites that are related to ours - links that are specifically aimed at attracting qualified traffic. And they’re trying to convince us to promote our businesses the same way we did before the advent of the engines - by investing in marketing strategies that our ideal prospects are bound to see and act upon.
The New Normal
When it comes to linking strategies, the new normal is “How do I increase the amount of targeted, eager-to-buy traffic coming to my webpage?” not “How do I trick the engines into giving me a higher PageRank?”
With that in mind, here are some safe ways to naturally increase your link popularity and website traffic:
- Create an attractive, content-rich website that people want to link to. Fresh, interesting information is key to gaining unsolicited links.
- Do you have business partners in a related field? Contact their webmaster to set up a mutually beneficial link partnership.
- Research business directories that serve your industry. Inquire about their target audience, number of visitors, cost for text ads, etc. An ad on a highly-ranked page in a relevant directory can do wonders for your placement and deliver qualified customers to you.
- Allow your visitors to link to you by creating a “link to us” page complete with HTML code and images they can easily grab.
These strategies can not only improve your link popularity, but if done right will increase your targeted website traffic. And at the end of the day, that is what the game is all about… attracting prospects who need your product or service without risking the wrath of Google!
©2005, Michael Pedone
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About The Author
Michael Pedone http://www.eTrafficJams.com a professional search engine optimization company specializing in getting targeted, eager-to-buy traffic to your site! Want to improve your site’s optimization? Call 877-785-9977 for a free SEO analysis
michael@etrafficjams.com
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Permanent link to this post (617 words, estimated 2:28 reading time)
August 25th, 2006