I love finding solutions to problems. When I can’t find an answer or a solution to a given problem, I get very frustrated. I have spent a lot of time researching how people drive traffic to their site.
In traditional marketing, you have the phone book, city busses, newspaper, radio, tv and a whole slew of other types of print media. Traffic on the net poses a few other challenges. One challenge is just traffic, the second is how to get targeted traffic.
Trafficcan be difficult to get, take a long time to build, and be a very time consuming process. Targeted traffic can be the same, and if you pay for it, it can be expensive. So here are some proven ways to drive general traffic to your site, keeping in mind my standard equation Content = traffic = money.
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Article writing/submission. You must write unique content for this to work effectively. The premise is that you write the article and other people use it as content for their sites while maintaining a link to your site, which results in traffic.
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Backlinks. Links from relevent content to your site help with your ranking in the search engine. If your site is real estate related, see if you can get a real estate blog to mention it in their blog for a backlink.
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Adding content to your site and submitting it to be indexed to google via an xml sitemap. Submission to google via an xml sitemap is really quite easy, and lets google know that your site is legit. Most webmasters never take the time to do this, and it is time well spent.
These are just 3 basic things that will bring more traffic to your site. In a future post I will be discussing some of the paid traffic resources that are available.
PeggyKarrGifts.com showcases fused glass items on ebay auctions. This is a great site to find all the PKG retired glass. If you are looking for a specific piece to complement your collection, you are sure to find it here.
I started this site because I thought is was a great niche -my wife loves these glass items and has an extensive collection.
Seems like there are quite a few searches for this particular artist on the web too.
I am planning on installing a new piece of software to make it even better, Build a Niche Store . This will hopefully make the conversions even better. I have already earned money from this shop.
Many clients have this question, either because they don’t see the potential, or they don’t see the value in their site. I have said before, and I will say it again – the most basic formula for dollars is content = traffic = money. So, lets walk through this using 2 business models.
First there is the brick-and-mortar store that has a web site. They want local traffic so that they can have buying customers walking through their doors or calling them on the phone. Or perhaps regional or national traffic buying from their shopping cart. I always tell my brick-and-mortar customers to attempt to get the answer to “How did you hear about us?” and track it from their walk-in or phone-in customers. The answer to these questions is vital to any advertising, but it really helps you develop your sales copy for the web site. The content on your site is vital for 2 things – the organic traffic, which we have discussed in other posts, and also the compelling copy that gets the person to visit your brick-and-mortar shop or pick up the telephone.
The second type of monetization is a content site – attract the traffic with general information about a subject, and put advertising on your site. This works well if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar store or ecommerce. You are capitalizing on the traffic because you want them to click on the ads in your site. You can get people to pay by the impression(usually expressed in $/1000 views of the ads), by the click(google adsense or, I prefer bidvertiser to publish on my sites) or by the month (say $10 per month for a text link – how much someone is willing to pay is ultimately determined by your traffic volume as well)
So, these are the 2 basic methods of monetization once you get visitors to your site.
Most of my clients have no idea how to begin building traffic to their web sites. One of the first things I usually discuss with them is how links from other sites help them. Of course, I often see their eyes glaze over, and always they ask where to go to get links. A good example of a general link is a directory like www.lotsalinks.net. Directories like these are free or nominal charge. This type of directory gives your site a link. Search engines pick these links up and this helps to boost your site in the natural search.
The general link directory is good, but a link from a blog or directory that has related content is incredibly valuable. For instance for a Realtor to have a link directing traffic to their site from a blog about real estate investing would be a premium link for the Realtor. Sometimes you have to pay for these links, and sometimes you can contact the site owner and ask nicely.
The more inbound links you can get coming into your site, the better off you are. There is some discourse as to weather the page rank of the site that is providing the link comes into play. I think that this is another discussion.
As always, please provide comments if you find this interesting. I am always open to questions, comments, or critique!
My clients are generally small business people who enjoy 2 things: doing things for themselves, and doing them for cheap. In this post I am going to explore 3 marketing ideas that are free or very inexpensive.
1. The client is generally an expert in their field, say real estate. I usually recommend joining a forum or answering questions on yahoo answers. The more they can establish themselves as an expert, the better relationship they can establish with the participants of the forums. Place the link to your web site into the signature of your profile and this will translate into traffic to your site. Cost: Free – not including your time.
2. This tip may be more obvious to some, but simply putting your url into every available, newspaper ad, yellow pages ad, email signature, letterhead, and any other customer communication that your firm creates is often overlooked, and since you are doing these things anyway, adding the location of your website is very inexpensive. This may even include your back window of your vehicle(s).
3. One final tip is to start a newsletter. This is a commitment that some would be better off outsourcing, but it is relatively inexpensive to do it yourself. I usually recommend a service like ConstantContact.com
to manage your list, send the emails and administer the emails. I have one client who implemented this and saw an increase in his traffic through the door of his practice in the week immediately following the release of the newsletter. Newsletter marketing is fairly inexpensive and can be more effective than direct mail if implemented properly – more about this in a future post.
Hope you enjoyed this post and Happy Marketing!
There are 3 basic website monetizing strategies. When I consult with someone, I usually recommend one or a combination of 2. What most people don’t understand are the basic principals of monetizing their site. So, today we will discuss the topic: Content.
I get a lot of questions about why a particular site ‘doesn’t even show up in a Google Search – what can I do?’
Well the short answer, that usually causes the deer in the headlight look is ‘Content, Content, Content’ It is really a simple equation – Content = Traffic = $$$$$. Let’s first define content: content is text of a readable size and contrast on a site that fits the context of the site as a whole that can be indexed by major search engines – now, this is my opinion, of course and could be debated, but should fit in most cases. What content is NOT: Content is not the background code used to render the web page by a browser OR Flash files or any other kind of jpeg, gif or graphics file, in and of itself. A page that contains text embedded in a jpeg and nothing else may look great to a human, but there is nothing there for the search engine to grab. Search Engines CAN NOT read or index graphics or flash.
Now, what is the meat of the content. I tell all my clients that THEY are the expert content provider on their web site. Only they can write the material that their site will be found on. If your sites topic is Real Estate, adding real estate articles to the site will give it the material it needs to be indexed by Search Engines. If the owner of the site does not have the time to provide the material, then content is best purchased to help with search engine optimization.
Lets face it. Working from home is not the easiest job in the world. It can be one of the most rewarding jobs, however because it provides one thing we all want – FLEXIBILITY with our TIME. I personally love being able to get out and run an errand early in the morning after dropping the kids off, and maybe meeting with a design client, and THEN sitting down to do some online work. My days are never identical to each other, and I get to see my kids before and after school.
If you are having trouble getting started working from home, trust me, that is the hardest part. Once you get rolling, it just gets better with time. BUT – you must take action – I spent years, and dollars, never taking any real action. Grab a blog name, a domain or subdomain and start something – blogging, affiliates, or ecommerce. You don’t have to start big, just get started. I can’t stress this enough.