7 Ways To Generate Traffic (Part 2)
By Anna Johnson on August 22nd, 2008In today’s Lab article we’ll briefly look at the characteristics and benefits of each of the seven (7) traffic generation tactics mentioned yesterday.
I reckon you want one or two of these to be your mainstay – i.e. those that are most effective for you – while, if you have the time and/or resources (e.g. the ability to outsource), you should also make some effort in the other areas.
1. Joint Ventures
Imagine having a number of trusted, complementary businesses with large and loyal customer bases promoting your products and/or services to their customers? Not only do you inexpensively access many potential customers, but you benefit from the added credibility of being endorsed by someone those prospects already trust. That’s the idea behind entering into marketing joint ventures with other businesses.
2. Search Engine Optimization
If you’ve done your research, you’ll know that people search on hundreds – possibly thousands – of keywords related to your products and services each day. If you put the time, effort and money into getting a top spot on the search results page for those keywords, a large percentage of those people will visit your site. So it’s almost a given that SEO should be a part of your online marketing strategy.
But as I indicated, while there are certain “on-page” techniques to help you get a high search engine rank, there are important “off-page” techniques that are even more important. Which brings me to three strategies that serve an SEO purpose, as well as being stand-alone promotional strategies.
3. Blogging
Blogging is a bit like publishing an online diary to, although, in your case, you’ll probably want the content to be about your business, products and services rather than anything personal. By generating interest in you and your business, as well as referring visitors to webpages about your product and services, blogging can be an effective traffic generation tool.
However, search engines are also attracted to blogs, so having a regularly updated blog can also contribute towards a high search engine ranking.
4. Articles
Similarly, publishing articles has a twin purpose. Firstly, you can publish them in magazines, ezines, news sites, journals and so on, in order to be read by – and generate website visits from – your target market. Secondly, if you publish a lot of articles on sites that are popular with the search engines and considered relevant in relation to the keywords you are targeting, the links back to your website that you include in your article can also contribute to a high search engine ranking.
5. Press Releases
Press releases also have these two advantages. They can generate publicity for, and traffic to, your website and – because you can effectively publish your press release on sites that are popular with the search engines – the links back to your site can assist in achieving a high search engine ranking.
6. Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is word-of-mouth marketing on steroids! In other words, it’s an effort to get a lot of people talking about you – and visiting your website. Common ways to do this are to provide something free and highly desirable among your target market that they can email to their friends and colleagues. This could be an ebook, a game, or anything that captures their imagination and interest.
7. Social Online Networking
Like its “real world” counterpart, online networking is personally getting to know people and attracting their interest in you and your products and services.
A common manifestation of this is regularly visiting, and posting, on forums or message boards. The idea is to contribute valuable information and, in so doing, whet people’s appetites for the value you can provide them through your products and services. Depending on the forum, you can also include a “signature” that can include a brief promotional message and link back to your website.
This is arguably the most time consuming, and somewhat randomly effective, of all the seven strategies I’ve listed here. However, if you visit forums anyway, why not market yourself there?
With the rise of social networks such as Facebook and MySpace, and other means by which you can share information, videos and links with tons of others e.g. YouTube, Twitter, etc you also have a variety of other ways of networking with others online.
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So there you have seven powerful traffic generation strategies. Of course, I’ve only briefly described them, and there are also many other traffic generation strategies, but at least this list gives you a firm idea of what you can do – and should be doing – to maximize your website traffic.
Oh, and did I mention, that most of these strategies are either free or very low cost? That’s right, I have NOT included in this list any form of advertising – such as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising – that may well be MORE effective for you than any of the methods listed.
That’s basically because I really wanted to show how it doesn’t necessarily take a lot of money to begin generating traffic. In all honesty, though, I DO believe that a point comes where you’ll hit the equivalent of a “brick wall” in your business UNLESS you invest in traffic. We’ll leave that discussion for another time!
