Introduction to Traffic :
Really, traffic doesn't involve any technical aspects. A website's traffic is largely defined by the flow of people coming to and leaving it. It is obvious that your traffic is crucial since your customers are also your traffic.
In order to achieve this, it is understandable that you wish for as much traffic as possible. Sadly, at this stage, many people run into some difficulties because, in order to get traffic to your website, you cannot just relax after you set it up.
No, there must be at least one way to promote, although it is always appreciated if more ways are found.
Additionally, merely having a constant stream of people visit your website is not necessarily likely to yield great results. If you are going to make the most of your traffic, you must make sure that it is targeted.
Summarizing: What you need, and what you want in any internet marketing venture, are sources of targeted traffic.
What is Targeted Traffic?
Using this example, targeted traffic can be explained best:
Assume you have a website focused on dog grooming. You'd be able to show visitors how to groom dogs, give them information about some common problems, and so on.
If somehow you end up getting a ton of traffic, but it all came from people looking for alien conspiracy theories, well. Undoubtedly, you will notice that most of your visitors leave your site right away since it is not what they were searching for.
Although that is a slightly wild example, it serves to illustrate the point quite well. It does not matter if your visitors searched for something more closely related to your niches, such as When they discover that you are not offering what they want, the end result would be the same.
Therefore, you want the traffic that does reach your website to be made up of people who are genuinely interested in dog grooming and who want to learn more about it. Your conversion rate will surely be higher if you can get a steady stream of such visitors.
In fact, you may be able to obtain traffic that is even more targeted.
In the case that you monetized your blog to sell eBooks about dog grooming, then if the traffic that goes to your website consists of mostly people who intend to purchase resources about dog grooming - well, that would be very beneficial for you.
As a general rule, the more tightly targeted and focused your traffic, the better results you'll get.
How to Start Generating Traffic?
In many cases, a website does not get traffic because there is no genuine and reliable effort made to promote it. Many times, this is due to a lack of knowledge about how to do it, but more often, it is the result of overanalyzing the problem and not taking action.
Even if the action taken is not perfect, taking some action is far better than not taking any action at all.
To attract traffic, it is, therefore, advisable to select a single topic and stick with it. After you've finished, pick another thing and stay with it. In this way, you'll get at least a couple of well-developed streams of traffic, which may not be perfect, but will still be able to bring you, visitors.
Here are some of the best sources of traffic that you should be using:
1. Search Engines
When someone is looking for something online, where is the first place they would go? You're right - search engines.
By being the navigation method of choice, search engines have been the center of the internet experience for a long time. Over the years, all that has changed is the popularity of different search engines, with Google currently dominating the pack by a wide margin.
In light of this, it is reasonable to want to get your share of search engine traffic, and one way to do that is simply to ensure that your pages appear on the first page (or at least, the first few pages) of search engine results for keywords of your choice.
They're known as keywords, and they're what you need to get targeted search engine traffic.
Basic Keyword Research
There is some research to be done in order to find out what keywords are most important. It isn't too difficult, but there are a few concepts involved in selecting 'good' keywords that should be discussed.
1. Search Volume:
The number of searches for the keyword you're looking at is measured either as 'searches per month' or 'searches per day. It should go without saying that more searches are always better.
2. Competing Websites:
Each keyword is bound to be targeted by at least some competitors (even if not on purpose). Using Google to search for the keyword you're interested in will give you an idea of how many competing websites there are. This is great for the keyword if there aren't many.
Essentially, you're looking for a keyword with a high number of searches and little competition. Google Adwords Keyword Tool is one of the easiest keyword tools to use.
Then, to further narrow down keywords, there are questions of how targeted it is, and also, how profitable. A targeted keyword is simply one that is relevant to the niche you are in fairly well, but the profitability of a keyword is a completely different story.
Marketers typically measure profitability by looking at whether any advertisements appear when the keyword is searched on Google. Chances are if they do, it's a fairly profitable keyword.
Alternatively, you can simply try and error.
Based on these factors, it should not be too difficult to come up with a reasonably sized list of 'good' keywords that can be used to target search engine traffic.
Creating Keyword Rich and SEO Content
Having created a list of keywords, all that remains is to insert them into your content. The bottom line is, this does not mean that you should cram them in as many as you can. At the end of the day, the traffic that you get will be in the form of actual people, who probably won't respond well to illegible keyword content.
A keyword density between 1% and 3% is widely accepted by search engines and people alike. For each keyword, this means you should have between one and three appearances per 100 words. Generally, keeping it to 1 or 2 words is enough if it is a particularly long keyword.
As far as formulas go, the idea of having 1 'short' keyword and 2 'long' keywords per article or piece of content is quite effective.
You will at least appear in the right 'target' bracket as soon as search engines latch onto these keywords. All that remains is to scale the pages until you appear near the top of the search results.
Although meta-tags are largely unused nowadays, it's still a good idea to have them, just in case. In particular, title tags, description tags, and keyword tags are important, with title tags and description tags of lesser importance but still relevant from time to time.
Whenever possible, it never hurts to cover as many bases as possible when it comes to SEO.
Importance of Backlinks
Your ranking in any search results actually relates closely to the algorithm search engines use to 'rank' websites. Different search engines will do this differently, of course, but it is only logical to focus on the largest and most popular search engine of them all: Google.
As far as Google is concerned, there is one thing that has been proven to affect search engine ranking, and that is actual links to your website from other third-party websites, which are known as 'backlinks'.
Accordingly, these 'backlinks' are considered as 'votes' regarding the quality of your website and are based on the logic that the more websites that link to you, the better your site is.
As a result, one of the ways to start scaling search engine results is to build up a solid backlink profile. The quality of those backlinks does matter too, and link exchanges tend not to work anywhere near as well as a backlink from a high-authority (and high-ranked) website.
Note: Page Rank is essentially a quantity, between 0 and 10, which Google assigns to websites based on how good it deems them to be.
Later, we'll talk about social bookmarking, but for now, it should suffice to note that social bookmarking is one way to acquire backlinks. It's the same for directories, forums, and blog comments.
We'll talk about the latter two later as well. For now, that should suffice.
If you build links too fast, Google will latch onto your website and penalize you. In short, backlink building is fine, but spamming is not, and if you get 1000 backlinks in a short period of time, it may be flagged.
2. Social Bookmarking and Social Networks
Social bookmarking and social networks often referred to as 'Web 2.0' promotion, are two new types of promotion that are rapidly gaining popularity. It was mentioned previously that these were a valuable source of backlinks, and that much is certainly true.
Aside from the backlinks that are part and parcel of marketing efforts that involve these websites, there is also the possibility of receiving traffic from those backlinks. The point is, if there is an interesting bookmark that attracts the crowds of people who flock to social websites, then there will probably be a correspondingly high number of visitors who want to know more.
Despite this, there are two things to be aware of regarding social bookmarking and social networks:
1. Social bookmarking websites will not work for every piece of content. Most of the content that does well with social bookmarking is deemed to be 'fresh', 'hip', expertly informative, or even controversial.
2. It has been shown that traffic from social bookmarking websites tends to have a high bounce rate. This means that very few visitors who come to your website through social bookmarks will actually stay around long enough to browse it.
3. Social bookmarking websites are sometimes very niche-specific, so finding those that are in your niche may not only boost the value of the backlinks but also allow you to do a lot better due to their relevancy and ability to target traffic automatically.
Social bookmarking is a relatively painless and easy way to gain backlinks and build up another traffic stream.
3. Article Marketing
Article marketing is an easy way to get both backlinks and traffic. In fact, some people use it solely for the backlink value, and by doing so, they ignore a potentially incredible source of highly targeted traffic.
The entire article marketing process can be summarized by describing it as writing an article and submitting it to article directories. By including a link in the resource box, you will gain backlinks.
If it is to be a true source of traffic, there is much more to it than that. To make sure that people can find it, the article must be keyword targeted, just like your content.
In addition to that, your article itself must 'presell' your website, although non-promotionally. Articles for submission should relate to the content of your website and lead the reader to the resource box, which contains a call to action.
Here is where the article's usefulness is emphasized, and the call to action should be compelling and provide the reader with reasons to visit your website.
Note: Some basic promotion of your article through social bookmarking may help it rank higher and thus increase traffic.
The argument against article marketing is that it is a 'short-term solution, requiring you to submit content to a third-party site rather than building your own. However, it is a way to take advantage of the already high page rank and reputation of article directories.
As a result, you get a high-ranking search result that advertises your website, which is not too shabby at all.
4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
In addition to advertising, yet another way to increase traffic is advertising. In PPC advertising, you only pay when your advertisement is clicked, so you are essentially paying per visitor.
In terms of value for money, this would appear to be a no-brainer.
Running a PPC campaign, however, is not as simple as it sounds. When there is high competition for a certain keyword, you will need to pay more per click for your advertisement to appear frequently. Therefore, it comes down to keyword research and finding low-competition keywords that you can then exploit.
When done properly, this is one of the simplest ways to get traffic quickly, although you will have to pay for it.
5. Forums
Online forums exist for almost every niche where people discuss the issues surrounding it. Obviously, this represents a potential source of traffic that you can tap into, but how?
Sometimes it can take a long time to get traffic from a forum. Good forums tend to have been established, so you'll need to establish yourself so that others view you as an important contributor.
If you are able to do this, then your suggestions, as well as your links, will be taken more seriously.
Even before you get to this level, you can start by including a link in your signature, as is generally accepted in most forums. Be sure to read and abide by the forum's rules, the last thing you want is to be banned for an offense you weren't aware was an offense.
Once you have a good reputation, you may be able to tap into a huge stream of traffic from forums.
6. Blog Commenting
As a matter of fact, this is quite similar to posting on forums, but in most blogs, there is no need to establish a reputation. If you want to comment on a blog in your niche that welcomes comments and that doesn't mind backlinks, you should try to find those blogs.
Make sure your comments and links are relevant, otherwise the moderators are likely to remove them.
Keeping Traffic Flowing
If you have covered the initial traffic bases, you might even consider other options to keep traffic flowing. List building, Joint Ventures, and setting up your own affiliate program all work fairly well, but only after you're already established in your niche.
Even in the most competitive of niches, you should receive a steady and good amount of traffic as long as the basics we discussed above are in place.
All that remains for you to do is start converting that traffic into sales, and you'll be well on your way to building a successful online business.
