|
A number of different methods exist for driving traffic to your website. The holy grail of traffic is so called “targeted visitors” - and this type of visitor usually finds their way to your site as the result of a search or click - i.e. they have taken some positive action to find you. As this type of visitor is so highly prized you might expect to pay more for this type of traffic.
At the other end of the scale is untargeted traffic, and this normally consists of visitors who have found their way to your site by chance - or perhaps have viewed your site, or an advert for it, in a pop-up or pop-under window. Because this traffic is less targeted, it is less likely to get you recruits or customers and it costs less.
Different Methods of Getting Traffic
There are many different ways to get traffic to your website. There have been a lot of ebooks written on the subject and it’s too diverse to explore fully here, this can only be a very basic introduction. What it is possible to say here is that you should not rely on one method alone, no matter how well it seems to work. The internet is constantly changing and evolving - you may find the surefire hit that worked so well yesterday turns into a damp squib today. always have a backup plan.
Listed below are just a few methods which you could consider:
- Traffic exchanges.
- Writing articles.
- Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.
- Search engine traffic - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
- Exchanging links.
- Buying traffic.
Traffic Exchanges
Being in a traffic exchange is like being in a club. You surf, using a specially designed “surf bar” unique to the traffic exchange in question, and view the other member’s websites. Every time you view a website you get a credit, or a point, and these are exchanged for visitors who view your website. Normally there is a “ratio” involved and - for free members - it is usually one return visitor for every two websites that you view.
Most exchanges are free to join but many have a “pro upgrade” option where you can get a better view/return view ratio (say 1:1) for a monthly fee, typically a few dollars a month.
Traffic exchanges are a perfectly reasonable way to get traffic to your website, especially when you’re just starting out. Certainly, you couldn’t describe this as high quality or targeted traffic - but it is free and it allows you to test new websites and promotion strategies at no, or very low, cost before you decide whether or not you want to invest money in a paid campaign.
Despite what many people will tell you, traffic exchanges do work. they may work more slowly or more sporadically than other traffic generation methods, but they will provide you with signups and customers if you have a little patience.
There are many traffic exchanges on the internet today and the quality of these varies wildly. Just a few of some of the best ones are listed in the resources area. One of the very best exchanges on the net is Traffic Swarm and you should certainly consider joining this. For some reason, it seems to have a higher conversion rate than the other exchanges.
Learn more about traffic exchanges...
Writing Articles
One of the best ways to get no cost traffic is by writing and submitting articles to “article banks”. Just pick a subject that you know something about and write a brief article between 500 to 2000 words and then submit it to one of the specialist sites on the internet. You allow the users of the site to read your article for free and some of them may even choose to use your article on their website or in their ezine.
You benefit from this because it gives you credibility and, in time and with the production of suitably high quality articles, you may become established as an “expert” in whatever field you choose to publish. You also include a brief biography (it’s an advert really) in your signature file along with a link to your website(s).
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
When you do a search on Google, you will see some small boxes containing adverts down the right hand side of the results page. These normally contain adverts which are directly related to the search performed and are pay-per-click adverts. The advertisers have an account set up with Google and they pay only when someone clicks on their adverts.
This is a very effective form of advertising as the visitors have already indicated that they are interested by typing in a related search term - they are “pre-qualified”. They show even more interest by clicking on the advert so, by the time they arrive at the website in question, they should probably be more receptive to the sales message being delivered.
The best know PPC system is Google adwords. Using this you can place ads on Google and whenever someone searches for a related term then they may see your ad. Google is the most popular search engine on the net so you have the potential to reach many prospective customers. However, you definitely shouldn’t overlook Yahoo! Search Marketing - formerly know as Overture. This service positions your ads on a number of different search engines, including Yahoo (of course), MSN and Alta Vista.
Search Engine Traffic
Traffic from search engines is often considered to be the very best you can get - simply because of the fact that it is targeted due to the visitor searching on a related term. However, getting to the top of the search engines - search engine optimisation (SEO) is no simple task. You may need to spend a lot of time optimising your site (and that will only be a fraction of the time you spend learning exactly how to do this) or you may need to pay a professional to do this for you.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, then the search engines change their “ranking algorithms” periodically and you may find out that your previously high ranking site disappears of their radar overnight. PPC can be a good - and more economical - solution if you want quick results.
Exchanging Links
Exchanging links is a good method to improve your search engine ranking. It is currently a major factor in how important search engines consider a site to be and this is likely to continue for some time. However, and more importantly, even if there is a change in the search engine algorithms exchanging links is still a good idea as you will receive some traffic directly from the sites you link to regardless of the search engine’s perspective on things.
This relies upon the fact that you link only to sites which are in some way related to the basic subject matter of your site. Don’t get links just for the sake of it and don’t use “link farms”.
Buying Traffic
There are sites which will sell you traffic. You will see adverts on the internet offering 10,000 visitors for $20. Do not use these under any circumstances. Some of these sites will just take your money and either, deliver no hits or deliver fraudulent hits - hits generated by software programs.
The majority of these traffic vendors are honest of course and will deliver you some hits. However, you will probably receive hits from visitors who were looking for something completely unrelated to your site - and this can sometimes be adult related themes. Even if you do get lucky and get a few interested visitors out of the thousands that you pay for, they will probably be seeing your site in an annoying pop-up window which they certainly didn’t go looking for. What do you think when that happens during your surfing sessions - does it put you in the right frame of mind to buy?
Don’t waste your money.
|
