77 Ways to GetTraffic
- Please share,like,comment,subscribe to out blogs
• Traffic tip #1 – High quality, unique content.
•
Traffic tip #2 – Keep adding content.
• Traffic tip #3 – Memorable domain name.
• Traffic tip #4 – Buy the wrong domain name.
• Traffic tip #5 – Easy to read domain name.
• Traffic tip #6 – Keywords in image files.
• Traffic tip #7 – Serious keyword research.
• Traffic tip #8 – Improve page titles.
• Traffic tip #9 – Organic SEO.
• Traffic tip #10 – Submit to directories.
• Traffic tip #11 – Submit to niche directories.
• Traffic tip #12 – Article distribution.
• Traffic tip #13 – Write articles for other sites.
• Traffic tip #14 – Submit articles to newsletters.
• Traffic tip #15 – Submit hints to blogs.
• Traffic tip #16 – Keywords in online profiles.
• Traffic tip #17 – One way links.
• Traffic tip #18 – Invite others to publish content.
• Traffic tip #19 – Newsletter publication.
• Traffic tip #20 – Newsletter directories.
• Traffic tip #21 – Publish a mini-course.
• Traffic tip #22 – Write testimonials.
• Traffic tip #23 – Be helpful in forums.
• Traffic tip #24 – Post free ads in forums.
• Traffic tip #25 – Be helpful in discussion lists.
• Traffic tip #26 – Keyword rich press releases.
• Traffic tip #27 – Create a lively blog.
• Traffic tip #28 – Blog RSS feeds.
• Traffic tip #29 – RSS to email.
• Traffic tip #30 – Remove broken links.
• Traffic tip #31 – Podcasting.
• Traffic tip #32 – Use reliable hosting.
• Traffic tip #33 – Tweak internal linking.
• Traffic tip #34 – Chase new fads and hot topics.
• Traffic tip #35 – Chase new affiliate programs.
• Traffic tip #36 – Analyze your logs.
• Traffic tip #37 – Join business associations.
• Traffic tip #38 – Add a forum to your site.
• Traffic tip #39 – Write free reports or white papers.
• Traffic tip #40 – Write brandable reports.
• Traffic tip #41 – Submit to ebook directories.
• Traffic tip #42 – Offer to be a columnist.
• Traffic tip #43 – Offer to moderate part of a forum.
• Traffic tip #44 – Do something funny.
• Traffic tip #45 – Be outrageous or controversial.
• Traffic tip #46 – Tag your blog.
• Traffic tip #47 – Newspaper websites.
• Traffic tip #48 – Upload and tag your photos.
• Traffic tip #49 – Use gimmicks.
• Traffic tip #50 – Create deliberate “link bait”.
• Traffic tip #51 – Syndicate your material.
• Traffic tip #52 – Position yourself as an expert.
• Traffic tip #53 – Create a profile on Amazon.com.
• Traffic tip #54 – Combine JV’s with email capture.
• Traffic tip #55 – Try offline advertising.
• Traffic tip #56 – Place a link in Yahoo! Answers.
• Traffic tip #57 – Get links from eBay.
• Traffic tip #58 – Get links from AdSense.
• Traffic tip #59 – Add useful comments to blogs.
• Traffic tip #60 – Add sticky content.
• Traffic tip #61 – Add classified ads to your site.
• Traffic tip #62 – Social networking.
• Traffic tip #63 – Create your own fanclub.
• Traffic tip #64 – Effective PPC advertising.
• Traffic tip #65 – Buy ads in newsletters.
• Traffic tip #66 – Buy text links – carefully!
• Traffic tip #67 – Advertise in less obvious places.
• Traffic tip #68 – Create free web-based software.
• Traffic tip #69 – Create downloadable software.
• Traffic tip #70 – Get publicity for your software.
• Traffic tip #71 – Create a funny video.
• Traffic tip #72 – Use a signature file.
• Traffic tip #73 – Think viral.
• Traffic tip #74 – Email page to a friend.
• Traffic tip #75 – Add to favorites.
• Traffic tip #76 – Start an affiliate program.
• Traffic tip #77 – About us pages.
• Bonus tip #1 – Get free publicity online.
• Bonus tip #2 – Remember your other websites.
• Moving forward
• Set some goals
• Important resources
• Did you find this report useful?
Brief introduction
Two million visits and more….
Why should you listen to me?
I don't claim to be an expert, but I know enough about traffic generation to
regard getting a million visits a year as an achievable target.
I've done it, doubled it, and more - with FREE traffic.
If you haven't reached a million visits a year, you should find this report
useful.
When it comes to traffic generating, many affiliates and other website
owners tend to get stuck in a comfortable rut. We often use a small number
of favorite techniques and rarely venture beyond them.
I'm hoping this report will encourage you to look beyond the techniques
you're using and try a few new ones. By using a wider variety of techniques,
you'll attract new visitors from new places.
The wider you cast your traffic net, the more you future-proof your business.
You probably won't use EVERY method listed here. Choose the ones that
best suit your site, your skills, your interests, and your temperament.
All the techniques I describe here involve work - but that's a GOOD thing.
Many of your competitors will be too lazy to do the work involved, so when
you do it, your traffic will leap ahead of theirs.
To do one or two of the things I describe, you may have to go to eLance or
Rentacoder and hire a programmer. However, the vast majority of the
techniques are free and relatively simple. Most of them require time, not
money.
About 95% of this report describes strong, solid fundamentals -
techniques that build a solid, long-term business. About 5% deals with
gimmicks. Don't ignore the gimmicks. Sometimes they can work brilliantly.
I like to think of search engines as my unpaid slaves, working for me 24
hours a day, 365 days a year. Back in 2003 when I was seriously ill and
running my business from the hospital, my websites carried on like magic,
receiving thousands of visitors every day. I LOVE free search engine traffic.
How to get traffic to your site is a HUGE topic. Whole books have been
written on just small aspects of it. This report is an introduction to the topic.
For many of the techniques here, I'm just reminding you that they exist.
Please don't just nod your head and think, "I know that." Take action. Try
some of the techniques you're not using.
Other websites use these techniques successfully so why don't you?
At the end of the report, there's a brief list of carefully chosen traffic generating resources I recommend.
This report is aimed at affiliates, but you don't have to be an affiliate to find
these traffic-generating tips useful.
Traffic tip #1
You MUST have high quality, unique content if you want long-term,
free search engine traffic.
This is the most important tip of all. Sadly, it's one which many websites
owners ignore.
Provide LOTS of information-rich, keyword-rich, useful content for the
search engines and humans to find.
You know that search engines are being clogged with junk at an alarming
rate. The other day, I came across a marketer who was boasting that he
owned more than 20,000 blogs - and he's not the only one.
Consider the scary effect of this exponential increase in low-quality blogs
and websites. Old, large, well-established sites will inevitably become more
and more important and trusted by search engines.
Owning a large, well established, high-quality site is a very solid investment
in your future.
These days, even Google's webmaster guidelines advise affiliates to
publish "unique and relevant" content.
If you spend time thinking of ways to provide truly USEFUL content that
people will talk about, you'll automatically end up with lots of free, one-way
links to your site as people recommend it without even being asked to do
so.
I've been building information-rich websites ever since I created my first site
in 1996. This method has worked extremely well for me and continues to
work very well.
If your website helps solve people's problems, they'll love you for it.
Traffic tip #2
Keep ADDING fresh, relevant, and useful content.
According to Google, about half the 2.5 billion searches done a day at
Google is for unique, one-off phrases.
The more pages you build full of on-topic material, the better the chances
your site will be found.
When it comes to keywords, think big. You want your site to be found via
THOUSANDS of different phrases every month.
Then you can lure that traffic to your best money-generating pages or to
your newsletter sign-up page.
Also, search engines prefer fresh sites which keep gradually adding new
content. Don't let your site go stale.
Super affiliate James Martell says:
"My own rule of thumb is this: Add a minimum of 1 article per week, 2
preferably. Adding an article daily is euphoria and adding 1 every six
hours, well, that's the best."
Traffic tip #3
Choose a memorable domain name.
If you're launching a new site, choose a name people will remember easily.
Years ago, I visited a site called "forkinthehead.com". Its logo is a man with
a fork in his head. Sounds dreadful, doesn't it?
However, all it took for me to remember that unusual site was ONE visit
years ago.
You may not wish to go to such extreme lengths, but at least ask yourself:
"Will people remember my domain name?"
At my four main sites, a large percentage of the visitors are people who
have remembered the domain name and typed it directly into their browser.
(I also own a site built in 1996 which has a totally impossible to remember
URL, but that's another story.)
Try to choose a name that won't be confused with similar names. You
don't want people typing your competitor's domain name when they’re trying
to find your site.
NameBoy.com has a handy tool to help you choose domain names. Also,
you can find a surprising number of good deleted (expired) domain names
Traffic tip #4
Buy the wrong domain name, too.
If you think people may confuse your domain name with a similar name, try
to buy that name, too.
I noticed that sometimes when newsletters mentioned
AssociatePrograms.com they put the "s" in the wrong place and called it
"AssociatesProgram.com".
It even happened at an Internet marketing conference I was attending. The
speaker kindly mentioned my site but got the name wrong. Whoops!
So when that wrong domain name became available, I bought it.
you're automatically redirected to AssociatePrograms.com.
It occurred to me that people in the United Kingdom, Australia and New
Zealand, who thinks "programs" is spelled "programmes", might also have
trouble getting my domain name right.
So I bought AssociateProgrammes.com, too. It also redirects to the
correct domain.
A good domain name registrar will make it very easy for you to redirect one
domain name to another. 000Domains.com is one that does.
Traffic tip #5
Make your domain name easy to read - especially if it's a .NET
Which of the following is easier to read and understand?
See how using a capital letter at the start of each word makes the second
domain name easier to read - and easier to remember.
Whenever you mention your domain name anywhere, ALWAYS present it
in its most readable form. A good place to start doing this is in your email
signature file.
If you're unfortunate enough to have bought the ".net" version of a domain
name because someone raced you to the ".com", help people to remember
your site by writing it like this...
Example.NET
Being MEMORABLE helps you get more repeat visitors.
Traffic tip #6
Use appropriate keywords in your image file names.
One of my websites gets hundreds of visits a month from people who are
searching for images. I'm not sure how valuable those visitors are, but I
didn't have to do anything very special to get them.
Search for graphics online.
To take advantage of this, when choosing the file name of an image on your
site, use an appropriate key phrase, for example, "book-ends.jpg" if you're
promoting book ends.
Here's a tip I just discovered...
When I searched in Google Images for "book ends" I discovered that the
very first search result was for a page which did NOT contain a graphic of
book ends!
Instead, the page contained a "book ends" LINK to a book ends graphic on
a second page. It if suits the design of your site, you may want to
experiment with this technique.
I'm not sure how much use traffic to images is, but if it's ADDITIONAL traffic
you can get simply by choosing image file names carefully, it's worth
having.
Traffic tip #7
Do REALLY SERIOUS keyword research.
If you want to get LOTS of traffic from search engines, you need to find out
the exact phrases which people are typing into search engines.
There are free tools available for this, but they're not nearly as useful as the
more comprehensive paid tools.
For example, if you're using the Overture keyword tool for your research, be
warned, its results can't be trusted.
As my Special Projects Manager, Jay Stockwell likes to point out, the
Overture tool shows you the SAME number of searches for all these
searches:
bikini girls
girls bikini
bikini girl
girl bikini
bikinis girl
girl bikinis
This is obviously nonsense.
The Overture tool is useful to give you a quick rough guide, but NOT for
serious research.
Here's a good tip from "Charlie" on our affiliate forum:
"The harder it is to discover a certain search phrase (getting traffic), the
less competition you will have in the SERPs (for that search phrase). If
a keyword research tool is free and popular, how many competitors will
you have for the phrases you discover there?"
Jay has spent hundreds of hours researching and analyzing keyword
research tools. He's built the best site on the Internet reviewing keyword
research tools - KeywordWorkshop.com.
You need to visit Jay's site whether you're using search engine optimization
(organic SEO) or pay-per-click advertising.
Traffic tip #8
Try this page titles experiment.
Here's a good way increase your traffic.
Go to Google and type any phrase into the search box. Look at the titles of
the websites in the top 10 rankings.
Which ones catch your eye and tempt you to click on the link? Some are
dreadfully stodgy, boring. Some are merely a long list of keywords. Some
are good. Some are junk.
Good titles are written for search engines AND humans.
Now look at the titles on your site. Start with your most important pages.
Rewrite them to make them more eye-catching.
Now go to Google and do a search of your site like this...
site:example.com
Study the page titles. If you own a large site created over many years, you
may be horribly embarrassed at just how BAD some of your page titles are.
Do you want to find some examples of good titles? Simply go to Google and
do some more searches. Don't stick to your industry.
Type in all sorts of different phrases and study the titles that appear in the
top 10.
You'll soon be brimming with ideas on ways you can improve your page
titles.
Checking how enticing the information is in your meta description tag can
help, too. Some search engines display this information in their search
results.
If you have a well established site, you may have written many of your page
titles and meta descriptions years ago when you knew less about marketing
than you do now. If so, it's time for another look at them.
Traffic tip #9
Organic SEO - a few key points.
Search engines are getting cleverer all the time. You can try to outsmart
them but to me it makes more sense to work WITH them.
They're gradually getting better at sifting out low quality websites and
ranking them poorly. So build high quality websites containing genuinely
useful material that other people want to link to.
The basics of good search engine optimization are fairly simple. Here's a
very quick summary:
• You need to make it easy for a search engine to figure out the topic
of your page.
• Find appropriate keywords or key phrases and use them in the title,
in the page heading, in the introduction, throughout the article, in the
meta description, in alt tags, at the end of the article, in links on the
page, in bold or italics, and perhaps in a list on the page.
• Use key phrases in your file names, for example: keyword1-
keyword2.html.
• Use synonyms and word variations naturally throughout the page.
• When linking to your pages, use appropriate keywords in the anchor
text (the words people click on). Do this for links throughout your site,
and also on other people's sites which link to yours. Vary the anchor
text.
• For internal links, it's better to use text than graphical links.
• Create a logical navigation system so that humans and search
engines can easily find the content on your site.
• Get links from other sites to internal pages as well as to your main
page.
This is just a brief overview of a big topic.
If you want excellent, reliable advice on search engine optimization, there's
one place I recommend above all others.
It's the resource the professionals use - Stephen Mahaney and his team at
Planet Ocean. These guys do nothing but search engine optimization.
They're experts.
I've been a subscriber for years. Planet Ocean is an often recommended
resource because it publishes a search engine optimization newsletter and
an excellent book which is updated every month, so you can rest assured
the information you're reading is right up to date.
Traffic tip #10
Submit to the main directories.
The more high quality links you have to your site, the more impressed the
search engines will be.
Start with major directories such as...
Yahoo!
DMOZ.org
sbd.bcentral.com
...and move on to...
Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
GoGuides
Business.com
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear
LookSmart (probably too expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the Web
GeniusFind
Here's a good list of directories
http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
Be sure to read the submission rules carefully at each site. This will slow
you down but it increases your chances of getting your site listed. Listings
can last for years, so it's worth while taking your time to get the details
correct.
You may want to outsource this task by finding someone at a site like
eLance or hiring a student.
Traffic tip #11
Submit to niche directories.
Search for smaller, specialist directories in your niche. For example, if your
site is on a health topic, look for health-related directories.
How to find niche directories:
• Go to Search It! (It's a very handy free research tool.)
• Scroll to the Search Category, "Specialty Hubs and Directories"
• Choose one of the 4 options in STEP 2
• Read the "Click Here for Information..." help before proceeding
• Complete STEPS 3 and 4, and then click on Search It!
• Read the tutorial. It tells you what to do with the search results
• Get your search results. You should be able to find relevant, themed
hub sites and directories which will list your site. Some charge a fee,
some are free.
Traffic tip #12
Distribute USEFUL articles to article directories.
Write articles and submit them to article directories. Make sure they're
USEFUL, interesting articles, not fluff. Other websites will pick up these
articles and use them on their site.
If you've added a link to your site in the "About the author" box at the
bottom of the article, you can get hundreds or thousands of links to your
site. You also boost your reputation.
When writing the article, you need an eye-catching heading. You also need
to give people a strong incentive to visit your site.
Here are some ways to do that:
• Give people a link where they can get a free report.
• Tell them where they can subscribe to your newsletter.
• Tell them to visit your site for Part 2 of the article.
• Tell them to visit your site for a more comprehensive version of the
article.
Distributing articles to directories is tedious and time-consuming. You can
either do it manually or you can speed up the process - and receive a very
helpful instruction manual - if you use ArticleAnnouncer. It's expensive but
good value.
Another popular way of distributing articles is to use the Article Marketer
service to do all the hard work for you. iSnare is another good one.
Here are some popular article distribution sites.
One annoying thing about this technique is that some unscrupulous website
owners will publish your articles without linking back to your site. Oafs like
that should be tarred and feathered, I reckon.
Over all, the advantages outweigh the minimal disadvantages.
You can find a long list of places to submit articles in this discussion on our
affiliate forum:
Some people publish an article on their site and a few days later submit it to
article directories. I'm cautious. I believe the search engines will eventually
get much tougher on duplicate content, so I believe a safer approach is to
distribute articles which are markedly different from the ones you publish on
your site.
Traffic tip #13
Write articles directly for other sites.
Getting high quality links to your site is hugely important. Ideally, you want
links from "authority" sites - sites which have a lot of links to THEM.
As well as reading what search engine optimization experts say, study what
they actually DO. One common tactic they use is to write expert articles and
get them published on related websites. When they do this, the links they
get to their site are beautifully on target - those links come from a page
which is all about search engine optimization - which perfectly matches the
theme of their site.
To a search engine, such links look much more important than a boring link
which is just one of dozens on a page in a little mini-directory tacked on to a
mini-site.
Traffic tip #14
Submit articles to newsletters which are archived online.
Submitting articles to newsletters has been popular since the early days of
marketing online. In the "Internet marketing" niche, publishers tend to be
swamped with offers to publish articles. Other fields aren't so ridiculously
competitive.
You're likely to have more success if you take the time to establish a
relationship with a newsletter publisher. Also, if you're prepared to write an
article exclusively for one newsletter, your offer is more likely to impress.
Subscribe to each newsletter and study it carefully. Study the online
archives. The article you offer needs to be genuinely useful.
Traffic tip #15
Submit brief hints to newsletters and blogs.
A brief, useful hint published in an archived newsletter can give you a link to
your site for many years - perhaps even a decade or more.
You can also submit tips to blogs.
Traffic tip #16
Include keywords in your online profiles.
Whenever you create an online profile anywhere online - on your blogs, on
a forum or on sites such as LinkedIn - always use carefully chosen key
phrases.
This increases the chance that people will find you, either via search
engines or, for example at LinkedIn, via the site's search facility.
The other day a friend of mine, Phil Tanny, mentioned that he'd started a
forum. To try to find it, I typed...
Phil Tanny forum
...into Google. The No.1 search result surprised me. It was Phil's profile on
OUR affiliate forum.
(The ranking may have changed by the time you read this.)
Profile links probably aren't very valuable in Google's eyes, but they're quick
and easy to set up. Try it on our forum:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/discus/index.php
You can often find forums in your industry by going to Google and typing
in...
keyword +forum
Traffic tip #17
Get one-way links and a few reciprocal links.
Reciprocal links aren't as important as they used to be. They should not be
your major traffic-generating strategy. They ARE still very useful, especially
when you're getting a new site established in the search engines.
Here's an article I wrote describing in detail how to get reciprocal links.
For a comprehensive look at ways to get links, I recommend you read this
article by Bill Hartzer:
Linking Campaigns Lead to Increased Online Visibility
Stephen Mahaney offers a wealth of information in this article:
12 Essential Strategies for Building & Structuring Inbound Links
(Both those articles are excellent examples of experts getting articles
published on other people's sites.)
Also, here's one of the many warnings from Google:
"Keep in mind that our algorithms can distinguish natural links from
unnatural links. Natural links are links to your site that develop as part
of the dynamic nature of the web when other sites find your content
valuable and think it would be helpful for their visitors. Unnatural links
are links to your site placed there specifically to make your site look
more popular to search engines."
Source: http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/
Google's webmaster guidelines say plainly:
"Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's
ranking or PageRank."
Traffic tip #18
Publish articles on your site and invite other sites to publish them on
their sites, with a link to you.
Some websites make it very easy for other sites to reprint their articles. At
the end of each article on their site, they publish a note giving people
permission to reprint the article providing the source box at the end is
published, too.
(Caution: Although this technique apparently works well for those who do it,
I don't use this technique. My goal is to have almost all unique content on
my sites. I wonder if the technique may not work quite so well some time in
the future. I could be wrong, but I speculate that as search engines become
more and more clogged with junk sites, search engines will get much
tougher on duplicate content. Sites which don't publish duplicate content
will benefit, I believe.)
Traffic tip #19
Publish a lively, useful newsletter.
Let's say you have 3,000 people a week - or month - visiting your site. Most
of them are going to look at one or two pages and then disappear, perhaps
never to be seen again.
You need a way to persuade them to return.
Writing your own newsletter is an excellent way of boosting repeat traffic. A
newsletter reminds readers that your site exists.
To encourage repeat visitors, you can tell your readers about new articles
you've added to your site. You can also remind them of articles they may
have missed. You can tell them about a survey you're running on your site,
a special report, or interesting new posts on your forum.
While you're writing your newsletter, keep asking yourself, "Is this item
useful? How can I make it MORE useful?"
If you're not keen on writing, you can outsource the writing or simply publish
brief notes which let your readers know that your site has been updated. My
newsletters tend to be long, but yours doesn't have to be.
Newsletters enhance your reputation, add to your credibility and - best of all
- give you repeat opportunities to make a sale.
Another advantage of publishing a newsletter is that when you want to
launch a second or third website, you can give it a flying start simply by
mentioning it in your newsletter.
If you haven't published a newsletter, you'll find that the technical side of it
is much easier than you imagined.
A good, reliable way to publish a newsletter is to use Aweber to distribute it.
Aweber takes the hassle out of newsletter publishing.
Using a professional service like Aweber and a double opt-in sign-up
process gives you protection against spam complaints. Aweber has been
around for years, has an excellent reputation and one of the highest - if not
THE highest - successful delivery rates online.
It automatically handles subscribes and unsubscribes.
It gives you a form you simply paste into your website to start collecting
email addresses, and it even provides newsletter templates. It's a wonderful
service. I use it for two of my newsletters and highly recommend it. It's
much better than a more expensive distribution service I also use.
It's tricky switching one from service to another. Because of inertia, you're
likely to lose a large percentage of your readers if you have to switch to a
new service. So make sure you start with a well established, reliable
company that's here for the long haul.
Traffic tip #20
Submit your newsletter to newsletter directories.
Search in Google for...
ezine directories
ezine directory
newsletter directory
newsletter directories
...and submit your newsletter to newsletter directories.
It's time-consuming and you probably won't get a lot of traffic from this
technique. If you have more money than time, outsource this task. You
could hire a student to do it.
Traffic tip #21
Publish a mini-course.
This technique encourages visitors to keep coming back to your site.
Publish a short (or long) informational email mini-course. Provide genuinely
useful content.
Starting gradually, after you've won the trust of your readers, weave
relevant affiliate links into the messages.
Also, give your readers reasons to visit your site, giving them links to related
articles on your site. These pages can contain both affiliate links and
AdSense ads.
To retain your readers' interest, at the end of each message, give them a
little teaser telling them what they'll get in the next message in the series.
The autoresponder service I use and recommend is Aweber.
With only one subscription, it allows you to publish newsletters and
autoresponder courses from different domains.
Some smart marketers using this technique don't send the mini-course via
email. They just send out a memo announcing when each new part is
online.
Doing this helps you evade spam filters - the shorter the message, the more
likely it is to get through. Also, it gives you an opportunity to get eyeballs in
front of the affiliate links or AdSense ads on your site.
Traffic tip #22
Write testimonials that are worth using.
When you read an ebook or newsletter or some product which you find
useful, write a quick note to the author. Sometimes, your quick note will be
published as a testimonial, with a link back to your site.
Joe Vitale has taken this tactic to extraordinary lengths. For examples,
trying doing a search in Google for
"joe vitale" +testimonial
Don't go crazy over this technique. Remember that every single thing you
write online builds - or damages - your reputation.
Traffic tip #23
Make helpful posts in forums.
Join forums in your niche and promote your site in your signature.
Be careful. Read the forum instructions first or you're likely to annoy forum
moderators and forum members who have been there for years. Lurk and
learn.
Some forums allow signatures. Some don't. Some won't allow words like
"See the link in my signature". Tread carefully.
You also need to remember that many affiliate agreements specifically say
that posting an affiliate link on a forum is regarded as spamming. Ignoring
this rule can get you dumped from an affiliate program. You could lose any
commissions you've earned.
Build your reputation by posting genuinely, helpful, useful comments.
If you think carefully of ways to provide truly USEFUL content that people
will talk about, you'll automatically end up with lots of free, one-way links to
your site as people recommend it without even being asked to do so.
Do a search in Google for
yourkeyword + forum
yourkeyword +"message board"
A good place to start is our friendly, helpful affiliate forum:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/discus/index.php
Traffic tip #24
Post free ads on forums which allow it.
I doubt if posting free ads will produce much benefit, but if you have lots of
time you could try it. Our affiliate forum has a Free Ads section.
As I write this, we're discussing scrapping the Free Ads section because it has
been abused so often.
Selfish oafs pollute the world in which we live.
Traffic tip #25
Make useful posts to email discussion lists.
You can subscribe to free email discussion lists and participate.
For Internet marketers, LED Digest is a good one. It has more than 40,000
subscribers. The moderator, Adam Audette, won't accept blatant
advertising, so be cautious. Lurk and learn before you post.
Traffic tip #26
Write keyword-rich press releases.
Write keyword-rich press releases and submit them to such places as
PRWeb, URLwire, BusinessWire, PR Newswire and Market Wire,
publicizing your new site, or a new section of your site.
Press releases can give you a burst of immediate traffic AND provide longterm links to your site.
They may even result in journalists phoning you for an interview.
A few years ago, the main aim of a news release was to catch the attention
of an editor or journalist. These days, you're often aiming directly at Internet
users.
When writing the news release, keep the reader in mind all the time. You
must catch the reader's attention very quickly, using phrases that entice the
person to read the article AND click on a link to visit your site - either to the
main page or to a special landing page.
Write the press release as though you're writing an article for a newspaper.
This means you must have a short, snappy introduction.
Write concisely.
Write the most important point in the FIRST sentence. Then write your
second most important point, and so on.
Here's useful article by Larry Chase:
How to Attract Traffic to Your Site Using Press Releases.
A useful tool to speed up news release distribution is PressEqualizer.
Traffic tip #27
Create a lively blog or blogs.
You can create a blog easily and free, without knowing any HTML.
When you add a new page to your website, mention the new page in your
blog.
Make friends with other blog publishers and get links from them.
Here are some good tips on how to increase the chance that someone will
link to your blog post:
http://www.howlinkable.com
When you post a message in your blog, your blog software should
automatically send a ping to the main blog search engines, such as
Technorati, and other sites. Learn how to do this.
Here's a nifty tip. You can get your lastest blog post listed in Google quickly
by using Google Sitemaps. The Blogging For Dollars ebook has a bonus
report which describes how.
Services such as Feedburner.com allow your blog's feed to be distributed
easily to your site's users. They also allow email subscription of your feeds.
Here's a post on our forum with useful tips:
31 useful ways to promote and improve your blog.
Here's a sometimes contradictory post by Seth Godin:
54 ways to get traffic to your blog.
Traffic tip #28
RSS: Make it easy for people to read your blog.
Some people will visit your blog to read it. Others will use an RSS reader on
their computer or a web-based service such as MyYahoo!
You can make it easy for such people to subscribe to your blog by adding a
special little RSS, XML or MyYahoo! graphic to your blog.
Some websites add a dozen or more such special graphics to their blogs.
For an extreme example, scroll down to the bottom of this page:
http://www.theinternetone.net
(Some of those graphics are for social bookmarking sites.)
Traffic tip #29
RSS to email.
Some people don't like using RSS readers. They would prefer to get your
blog posts via email. You can help them do so by using RSS to email
services such as FeedBlitz, Bloglet or Rmail.
Traffic tip #30
Remove broken links.
Remove all broken links from your site. Search engines don't like them.
You can get free link checking software - Xenu's Link Sleuth - which you
download and install.
A web-based link checker I've used for years and recommend is
LinkAlarm.com. It's very easy to use.
If you're fortunate enough to have built your site using Site Build It! you'll
have discovered that it has a free link checker which automatically advises
you of broken links. That's a wonderful bonus.
There's another good - free - way to check for broken links. If you create a
sitemap using Google SiteMaps, one of the benefits is that Google will tell
you about pages it can't crawl and links it can't follow.
You can see where problems are occurring and fix them.
Using Google SiteMaps is also a reliable way of making sure that Google
knows about every page on your site.
Site Build It! also automatically creates your Google SiteMap for you. You
don't have to lift a finger.
Traffic tip #31
Attract new audiences with your own podcasts.
A podcast is a sort of audio blog, distributed via RSS. The audio files can be
downloaded to iPods or any computer or MP3 player.
People can subscribe to your broadcasts via RSS feeds and automatically
receive them.
If you create your own informative, useful podcasts, you can reach a whole
new audience.
You'll need to get your podcasts listed in podcast directories such as
Podcast.net. Make sure you use an eye-catching title for people scanning
the directories.
Large, popular directories of podcasts can be found at Feedburner.com and
Apple's iTunes Music Store.
If you get Blogging For Dollars with it you'll receive a booklet titled "WOW
Your Audience with Hottest New Technology: Podcasting". It explains
podcasting and describes how simple it is to create your own podcasts.
Traffic tip #32
Use reliable web hosting.
Use a good reliable web host. If your site is down when Google's robot
comes visiting, your site is likely to disappear from the index. Many really
"cheap" web hosts can end up being very expensive.
When Jay was preparing to launch KeywordWorkshop.com, he
thoroughly researched web hosts. He was looking for a solidly reliable web
host, with good features at a reasonable price.
We've been delighted with the service provided. Here's the web host Jay
chose.
If you have a bunch of sites, use several different web hosts. It's a form of
insurance in case of disaster. Web hosts sometimes go out of business
without warning.
Use backups.
Traffic tip #33
Analyze and tweak your internal linking.
Consider how your pages are linked. Changing your linking structure can
increase or decrease a page's PageRank, which can give you a little boost
in search engine rankings on your most important pages.
There's a logical, sensible reason for doing this. You WANT more links to
your important, income-generating pages and fewer links to obscure pages.
Some webmasters use rel="nofollow" tags on links to certain pages,
reducing PageRank flow to those pages. To me, this seems risky - surely
Google would regard it as behavior aimed directly at search engines, not
humans.
You could play around for hours testing various linking structures with Mark
Horrell's free PageRank Calculator.
Traffic tip #34
Chase new fads and hot topics.
Some affiliates monitor popular TV programs and news items. When a hot
topic catches their eye, as fast as they can, they create a new web page, a
new blog or new website discussing the new product or new fad.
These fast-moving affiliates are the ones who get to capture the early rush
of traffic.
Traffic tip #35
Chase new affiliate programs.
Monitor new affiliate programs and quickly create a new page, new blog or
new website to cover the new topic.
A good place to keep an eye on is our AssociatePrograms.com affiliate
directory, where several new programs are added almost every day.
Traffic tip #36
Find new topics in your logs - and where your traffic is coming from.
Study your referral logs to see what phrases people are typing into search
engines.
SEO specialist Brett Tabke says: "If your site is about 'oranges', but your
referrals are all about 'orange citrus fruit', then you can get busy building
articles around 'citrus' and 'fruit' instead of the generic 'oranges'".
Here's another reason you MUST have a decent tool to show you your
traffic stats. You need to know where your traffic is coming from.
You need to know which of your many traffic generating experiments are
most effective. Then you'll know where to allocate your time and energy -
on the winners.
If your web host doesn't provide you with good stats, one option is to use
AWStats. It's free.
If you're comfortable with letting Google know just about everything about
your site, you can also use Google Analytics, which is also free.
Traffic tip #37
Join business associations which list members' sites online.
There may be business associations in your niche which publish members'
websites online. It's worth checking.
Try a Google search for "business associations".
Traffic tip #38
Add a forum to your site.
A forum has big advantages and big disadvantages.
A popular forum can attract a large number of repeat visitors to your site. It
can enhance your credibility as an expert.
A forum can also involve a great deal of work. Before you decide to launch
one, carefully consider who will moderate it, seven days a week, 365 days a
year.
Who will remove the spam? Will you have three moderators working in
different time zones around the planet?
If you are going to moderate the forum yourself, who will take over when
you want a few days off?
The most effective way to launch a forum is to add one to a popular site. It
takes a lot of time and energy - and usually money - to launch one from
scratch.
Also, if you do launch a forum, make sure you have a way of enticing forum
members from your forum to your newsletter or to the rest of your site. If
you don't, they'll just take part in discussions and leave, burning up
bandwidth without generating any revenue for you.
Traffic tip #39
Write free reports or white papers.
Write a free ebook or free report (you can use free Open Office software to
create one in PDF format), and ask website owners and newsletter
publishers to give it away.
Traffic tip #40
Write brandable reports.
Write a report and allow other affiliates to put THEIR affiliate links in it and
give it way. What you need is a nice win-win arrangement.
Here's an article describing how to do it:
http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/articles/213/1/Brandable-ebooks
Traffic tip #41
Submit your free ebooks to ebook directories.
Search in Google for "ebook directory" and "ebook directories" and list your
free ebook everywhere you can.
Traffic tip #42
Offer to be a columnist.
Locate a popular site in your niche which would appreciate having you as a
regular columnist. Write tips, lively commentary, product reviews, or
whatever topics suit your niche.
Traffic tip #43
Offer to moderate a section of a forum.
A forum which is growing fast may appreciate an offer from you to moderate
a section of the forum, in return for free publicity for your site.
Traffic tip #44
Do something funny.
Put zany, funny stuff on your site and ask a friend to submit a link to it to
BoingBoing.net to get the publicity ball rolling.
If possible, try to make sure the topic of the article is related to the topic of
your niche. Remember that you want TARGETED traffic to your site.
Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing.net blog says the blog gets 1.7 million visitors
a day.
(Source: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2006/05/01/1146335641312.html).
Reporting a link to BoingBoing is very simple.
Traffic tip #45
Be outrageous or controversial.
Here's a traffic tip from Russell Beattie of RussellBeattie.com:
"Take on Apple. Writing something bad about Steve Jobs or a new
Apple product is the sure-fire way to get the zealots in a state of fury.
Two days later and I've got 2000+ individual people visiting that post
about the iPod photo, over 52 comments and lots of emails. This is to
be expected of course, but of the two or three times that I've done it
and gotten such a response, it still surprises me."
Mark Daoust says: The Surprising Truth About Ugly Websites, an article
recently published on Site-Reference.com, single-handedly brought in over
200,000 unique visitors in less than 24 hours. Initially it was featured on
Slashdot, and subsequently it was featured in hundreds of blogs and
forums, and thousands of new websites added a link to the article.
Traffic tip #46
Make it easy for people to make you famous - tag your blog.
Sometimes at the bottom of an article in a blog you'll see a link that says
something like this:
"Did You Like This Article? Bookmark it at Del.icio.us"
OR
"Digg this article"
OR
"Bookmark this at..."
Providing such links makes it very easy for readers to spread the work
about your article.
Some blog owners provide a choice of social networking and social
bookmarking links or graphics at the end of their articles.
Here's an example where the author has made it easy for visitors to "Share
and Enjoy" (tag) the article:
9 Tips in Life that Lead to Happiness
To find more examples, try a search in Google for "Digg this article".
Social bookmarking sites include:
http://del.icio.us
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com
http://www.furl.net
You can see a long list of social bookmarking sites here and free code you
can add to your blog template to make tagging easier.
Here's another LONG list of social bookmarking sites.
Using a tagging service like Technorati attracts people to your blog.
You label your blog with a tag, such as "pet food". Any Technorati user who
has subscribed to that tag will be notified each time you make a post on
your blog about pet food.
Social bookmarking sites allow you to share your bookmarks publicly,
tagging them to enable others to find them.
If people who visit these sites decide your pages are worth sharing, they'll
bookmark and tag them so that other people can find them.
You can also share an RSS feed of your bookmarks. When you add a
bookmark, they learn about it automatically.
If you take the time to create genuinely USEFUL collections of bookmarks,
people will be more inclined to use them.
The Internet community is just starting to catch on to the enormous potential
of using social bookmarking tagging to get high quality links to your site
from authority sites. Sean Wu explains exactly how to do it in his ebook Tag
and Ping.
As Sean explains, there are basically two types of tags – the ones you
place on your blog and the ones you place on social bookmarking sites.
You can create what he calls your "authority site network".
For maximum effectiveness, he recommends you do both.
Here's my advice: If you're going to set up "authority" pages on social
bookmarking sites, tread carefully. It's a bit like entering a new forum where
you don't know the rules. DON'T spam these places. Create pages which
contain, useful, relevant content. Then get links to those pages. Sean tells
you how to do that.
You'll save yourself a lot of time figuring all this out if you get Sean's book.
Traffic tip #47
Get mentioned on 440 newspaper websites.
Sounds like a dream, doesn't it? You make a post on your website and 440
newspapers quickly link to your blog.
Here's how it works...
Technorati has teamed up with Associated Press (AP). First, you post a
blog commenting on an AP news item. When readers visit an AP member
website that uses AP Hosted Custom News, they will see a module
featuring the "Top Five Most Blogged About" AP articles right next to the
article text, dynamically powered by Technorati.
"Additionally, when readers click on an AP article, Technorati will
deliver 'Who’s Blogging About' that article. Now, if you have
commentary about an AP story, you can get mentioned in that module
simply by linking to that AP news URL," Technorati says.
Here are the details: http://technorati.com/weblog/2006/05/107.html
Please note: The "Top Five Most Blogged About" box displays VERY
LITTLE. The most emphasis is on your blog's name (NOT the title of your
latest post). So to take full advantage of this, you need a really eye-catching
name for your blog.
Traffic tip #48
Upload your photos. Tag your photos.
As technorati says, if you'd like your photos to appear on Technorati's tag
pages, join Flickr or join Buzznet, two online photo sharing communities,
and post your photos there. "Just tag them and set them to be public and
they'll appear on Technorati Tag pages."
Sometimes if you're doing a search in Google, links to photos uploaded to
Flickr will be displayed in the search results, because of the keywords in the
captions. There's all sorts of potential here for subtle promotion of your site.
If you explore tagging, bookmarketing and social networks, you'll find that
one links leads to another, to another, to another...
The challenge is to make the most of this opportunity without wasting an
awful lot of time.
Traffic tip #49
Use gimmicks.
If people see something odd on a website, they'll often tell other people
about it. You can also alert newsletter publishers and blog owners and
suggest they mention your gimmick in their newsletter. For example, Jim
Crawford tells us how to make a sound play with a mouseover.
http://crawforddirect.com/laugh.htm
Some tips on using gimmicks.
Traffic tip #50
Create deliberate "link bait".
Link bait is website content that other people voluntarily link to. Here's an
example.
Do a Google search for "link bait" for more examples.
Traffic tip #51
Syndicate your material.
Syndicate your material to other sites. Create a content syndication feed
(RSS feed) and include a link to your site. Use PHP rather than Javascript
to ensure search engines parse your headings and links.
You can also syndicate your articles or tips by using a script available from
a popular programmer, Will Bontrager.
You don't have to have a blog to publish your material via RSS.
Traffic tip #52
Position yourself as a personality or expert.
Positioning yourself as a personality or expert in a particular field has all
sorts of advantages, one of the most important being that it can help you
get links to your site without having to ask for them. It also builds trust,
helping encourage people to buy from your site.
Positioning yourself as a personality or expert - or both – is much more
challenging than building an anonymous mini-site, but the rewards can
make it worth while.
It's also a way of future-proofing your business because it makes your site
stand out from all the hundreds or thousands of other sites in your niche.
Once you start receiving a bit of publicity, people who are writing articles or
books will want to interview you. The resulting publicity leads to more
interviews... It has a nice snowballing effect.
Here's an article containing some tips by Matt Bacak:
Become a Recognized Authority in Your Field - in 60 Days or Less!
Traffic tip #53
Create a high profile on Amazon.com.
This tip is for authors.
Authors can join Amazon Connect and tap into Amazon's millions of
visitors. If you do it right, you can create mentions in dozens of different
places which lead to a page which links to your website.
Create a blog. Create a Profile. Review books. Create a "Listmania" list.
"Tag" dozens of keywords, creating lots of breadcrumbs to your Profile,
which has links to your websites.
Authors with at least one book for sale on Amazon.com are eligible to
participate in AmazonConnect.
Explore the huge possibilities. It's free.
To learn more about the program and to sign up, visit
www.amazon.com/connect
Here's an example - author Bob Baker's profile.
Traffic tip #54
Combine joint ventures AND email captures.
Ebook authors do joint ventures with website owners and newsletter
publishers not just to sell products, but also to get a huge rush of website
visitors and to collect email addresses.
Consider how most ebook authors do joint ventures. They write a book or
create a product, contact a few dozen newsletter publishers giving them a
review copy and ask them to promote the book for a generous share of the
revenue.
Depending on the quality of the preselling and the quality of the sites
salesletter, about 90 to 99% of the people who arrive at the site leave
without buying anything.
What a dreadful waste of hard-earned traffic!
More cunning marketers create an email capture or NameSqueeze page.
They give away a useful free report or mini-course. If visitors want it, the
only way to get it is to hand over an email address.
Their free report or mini-course then promotes the ebook.
It's extra work, but this technique captures many more email addresses (for
more repeat visits) and increases the number of sales.
John Reese uses this technique brilliantly to promote his newsletter and
CDs. You can see it in action here.
I'm a keen subscriber because I like to keep a close eye on whatever John
does.
Traffic tip #55
Try offline advertising.
Try experimenting with offline advertising, in newspapers and in magazines
in your niche. Tempt people to reply by offering a free report or free minicourse.
You're likely to have a better return on investment if you concentrate on
collecting email addresses, rather than trying to sell directly on the first page
of your site.
Traffic tip #56
Place a link in Yahoo! Answers "sources".
At Yahoo! Answers, the people who answer provide free answers.
Answer some questions there. In your answers, you can list "sources"
(links) for more details.
The "asker" can vote a particular answer the "Best Answer" and that answer
is given special prominence. Other users can vote, too.
If you click on the "Report Abuse" link and check the available categories,
you'll see that "advertisements" are banned. However, I've spotted some
affiliate links posted as sources.
Rather than posting an affiliate link, I think it would be more useful - and
natural - to link to your own website, perhaps to a newsletter sign-up page
or to a page offering a free report.
Traffic tip #57
Get links from eBay.
Set up an account at eBay and on your "About Me" page, link to your
website.
Read eBay's links policy before you create your page:
http://pages.ebay.in/help/policies/listing-links-aboutme.html
Some affiliates also create special reports containing genuinely useful
information - and affiliate links - and sell those reports on eBay, usually for a
very low price, just a dollar or so. I've no experience with this. You'll need to
do your own research.
Traffic tip #58
Get links from AdSense.
Did you know that AdSense has an AdSense Help discussion group?
You can go there, answer someone's question helpfully and provide a link
to your site at the bottom of your post.
Some people offer genuinely helpful answers. Some offer a few words as
an excuse to flash their site's URL.
You don't have to be Einstein to figure out which method is more effective.
Traffic tip #59
Add thoughtful comments to blogs.
Dave Taylor of AskDaveTaylor.com says:
"Add thoughtful comments to their discussions. Sometimes, when
appropriate, link back to your own articles, but other times add your
own comments just to participate in the ongoing discussion and, yes,
gain some visibility in your marketspace."
Selfish oafs distort this tip and add off-topic spammy junk to blogs, polluting
the global village. Where are the tar and feathers when we need them?
Traffic tip #60
Add sticky content.
Sticky content, says Wikipedia, is website content:
".
.which has the purpose of getting a user to return to that particular
website. Webmasters use this method to build up a community of
returning visitors to a website".
Examples of sticky content include chat rooms, forums, web mail, Internet
games, weather, news, horoscopes, and recipes.
This is a HUGE topic. Try a Search in Google for "sticky content".
This technique works brilliantly for many websites.
Look for opportunities where you can encourage other people to add free
content to your site.
Also, remember that sticky content isn't just words. It can be photos, audio,
and video.
Traffic tip #61
Add a classified ads section to your site.
It won't make you rich, but you can generate a little extra revenue as well as
attract new visitors by adding a classified advertising section to your site.
Brad Waller's EPage.com makes the whole thing painless.
Traffic tip #62
Social networking.
Some social networking sites, such as MySpace, have many millions of
users and are growing fast. MySpace gets truly massive traffic - 38.4 million
unique visitors in April, 2006, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
Because these sites have millions of users, you can guarantee that
innovative affiliates are cashing in on this traffic.
Good luck!
Here's an article which will give you some ideas:
Making friends - and money - on MySpace
You can find a list of social networking sites here.
If you figure out how to make the most of this opportunity, I'd love to hear
from you.
Traffic tip #63
Create your own fan club.
Here's something which may work for sites in some industries.
I was visiting a site the other day and saw a link which said "Join My Fan
Club". Curious, I clicked the link and was taken to Frappr where you can
invite people to join your "Group Map" or "Friend Map" to see where they all
live.
Getting on your Friend Map will help your website visitors feel they're part of
a community and help them remember your site.
Try a "See Where We Live" link to spark people's curiosity.
Traffic tip #64
Effective PPC advertising.
Create special landing pages for your paid traffic.
If you're using tips No.1 and No.2 - providing lots of fresh, high quality
content - there's a strong risk that your paid advertising visitors will be
distracted by your free content. Too many of them are likely to click around,
read a lot of stuff and disappear without buying anything.
When you're paying for traffic, you can't afford to let that happen. It's
essential that you have a high conversion rate.
So, for paid traffic, either create simple, uncluttered landing pages with no
distractions, or special mini-sites with no distractions.
You need to focus your visitors' attention on the link to the affiliate product
or on the sign-up form for your newsletter or mini-course.
If your conversion rate is high enough, you can buy advertising on Google's
AdWords, at Yahoo! Search Marketing, at MSN AdCenter and in pay-perclick search engines.
Among all the options, Google's AdWords is a big favorite.
However, there are pitfalls aplenty.
If you get things right, AdWords works brilliantly. If you get things wrong,
you can lose lots of money fast.
AdWords specialist Perry Marshall has written a quick free email course.
Reading it should stop you from making costly errors.
You can find out more about the free course here:
5 days to success with Google AdWords
Buying pay-per-click advertising is also an excellent way to test your site's
conversion rate. You can buy a little traffic and experiment, changing the
heading on the page, the introduction, the graphic, the preselling, etc, to
see which version gives you the highest visitor-to-sales ratio.
You can find out more about pay-per-click search engines at:
PayPerClickSearchengines.com.
Traffic tip #65
Buy ads in newsletters.
People reading online newsletters are often skimming, not reading carefully,
so you'll need a bold, eye-catching ad.
Instead of merely advertising your website or an affiliate product, send
people to a page where you offer a free report or mini-course in return for
their email address.
You'll get more bang for your buck by doing this. Instead of just building the
affiliate vendor's business, you're building YOUR business.
An expert on this NameSqueeze technique is marketing veteran Jonathan
Mizel, who was marketing on the Internet long before most of us even knew
it existed.
When you subscribe to his newsletter you get access to a vast database of
incredibly useful information and marketing ideas.
Traffic tip #66
Buy text links - carefully!
Consider buying text link ads on other sites, for example from Linkadage or
Text Link Ads. However, be aware that Google engineer Matt Cutts has
made it clear in his blog that Google looks unfavorably on sites that buy text
links.
Matt argues that anyone who is selling text links ought to place
rel="nofollow" attributes in the links.
One option is to arrange link purchases directly with other sites and avoid
making them look like bought links.
Even better, think of innovative ways of getting an article containing a link to
your site published on another site.
Traffic tip #67
Advertise in less obvious places.
Look for other, less obvious places to advertise online. Experiment and see
what happens.
For example, here's an article which describes how CommonTimes.org
experimented with advertising on BlogAds, using eye-catching ads. The
article shows you the ads and reports on the different click-through rates
achieved:
Using BlogAds to Promote Your Web Site
For people in a hurry, here's the main lesson learned:
"Basically, we found that customizing the ad content to the site we
were advertising on wasn't enough. We needed something catchy,
unique and at times - in your face."
In his Online Marketing Letter #88 Jonathan Mizel published a report "Paid
Advertising Resources for 2006" which describes resources his company
and his clients have used successfully.
The document is for paid subscribers only.
Traffic tip #68
Create free web-based software.
Create simple web-based free software, such as a mortgage calculator or a
return on investment (ROI) calculator. Tell other sites, newsletters and
forums about it and ask for a link to it.
This tactic is fairly commonly used by search engine optimization experts.
It may be easier than you think. Your job is merely to produce the IDEA.
You can hire someone from Rentacoder to create the software.
Traffic tip #69
Create downloadable software.
Create free downloadable software which contains links to your site, links to
your newsletter, or affiliate links - or all three.
Traffic tip #70
Get publicity for your downloadable software.
Submit your downloadable software to software directories, such as
Download.com.
Traffic tip #71
Create a funny video - and a keyword-rich transcript.
Create your own video and upload it to Google Video.
This may be a lot easier they you think. One easy way is to use the video
function on your digital camera, edit it using Windows Movie Maker and
save the file in wmv format, which is one of the formats accepted by
Google.
You can submit videos electronically to Google Video, as long as you own
the necessary rights (including copyrights, trademarks, rights of publicity,
and any other relevant rights for your content).
Incorporate your domain name in the video.
Get a few friends to link to your funny video from their blogs. If it's funny
enough, other people will tell their friends, and so on...
Also, you can submit a transcript of your video to Google.
Google says:
"Users will be able to find your video more easily if you add a transcript
to each video file you've uploaded via your Video Status page. We
prefer it if the format of the transcript is time-coded and saved as a .txt
file."
You want to include appropriate keywords in your transcript – so make sure the
keywords are spoken in your video.
• Google Video FAQ
• Policy guidelines
• Video transcripts
At YouTube you can upload a video from your cellphone or PDA. You can
"tag" the video with appropriate keywords.
You can use almost any video format.
Here's how author and musician Bob Baker sees the opportunities:
2006, The Year of Internet Video: Get Ready
The article includes a long list of websites which will host your streaming
video content free.
Traffic tip #72
A signature file IS important - honest!
This tip is VERY basic, yet I'm continually surprised how many apparently
experienced marketers don't use it ALL the time.
Add a signature file to the bottom of EVERY email you send – to anyone.
Here's why:
I receive a lot of email, and I get so frustrated when I receive cryptic emails
from people I half-know saying things like...
"Did you find time to have a look at the ebook?"
John.
I have to stop and think, "Who's John? What was his book about?"
Where did I file his ebook when I downloaded it? Into a file based on his
SURNAME, not "John".
Adding a signature file to every email...
1. Reminds people of the name of your website. It helps make your site
memorable.
2. Gives people a link they can click on, makes it easy for them, and
increases your chances of getting visitors.
3. Can tempt extra visitors, especially if you give them a reason for
visiting, such as a new article or a free report.
I use Eudora and Gmail. In both, you can set up multiple signatures and
choose the one you want with just two clicks. Most of the time, I just use the
default signatures - no extra clicks needed.
Make things easy for the people who receive your messages – and help
make yourself memorable.
Traffic tip #73
Think viral. Where's your backend product?
If you write an ebook or report, add a viral marketing aspect to it.
For example, make your ebook "Volume One". Send readers to a page,
forum or blog discussing Volume Two. Perhaps on that page you could
place a simple survey, asking them what they would like to see in Volume
Two. You could offer them a discount or a bonus special report if they tell a
friend about Volume One.
You can find notable viral marketing examples here.
Traffic tip #74
Email This Page to a Friend.
Add an "Email This Page to a Friend" link on your pages. A good
programmer should be able to do this for you easily.
Traffic tip #75
Add to Favorites.
Place an "Add to Favorites" link on your pages. It may not get you much
extra traffic, but every little bit helps.
Traffic tip #76
Start an affiliate program.
Start your own affiliate program and get hundreds or thousands of affiliates
to spread the word about your product and your site.
The simplest, cheapest way is to use ClickBank.
One disadvantage of using ClickBank is that many vendors who use it don't
know who their affiliates are and have no way of getting in touch with them.
Also, ClickBank doesn't offer sophisticated stats. You can solve these
problems by combining ClickBank with Adrian Ling's software,
EasyClickMate, Lite or Pro.
If you've advanced beyond the ClickBank stage, here are two options for
affiliate managers:
A) Shawn Collins has experience both as an affiliate and an affiliate
manager. His book Pay for Performance is a good, solid introduction to
running your own affiliate program. It was published a few years ago. You
can pick up a second-hand copy from Amazon for a few bucks.
B) In late June, 2006, Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom launched The
Affiliate Manager - 1st Edition, a comprehensive course for affiliate
managers.
This course contains:
1. Over 4 hours of DVDs
2. Over 200+ pages of interactive workbooks
3. Over 15 hours of expert interviews
4. 8 checklists
5. 6 templates
6. and many more bonuses
Its contributors include Yanik Silver, Mike Filsaime, Jeff Mulligan, Shawn
Collins, super affiliate Rosalind Gardner, spyware authority Ben Edelman,
Deborah Carney (CafePress.com), Linda Woods (PartnerCentric), Chris
Sanderson (AMWSO), Clark Douglas Walton, Brian Littleton (ShareASale),
Rachel Honoway (Kowabunga) and Lisa Riolo (Commission Junction).
Learning from highly successful affiliate managers and super affiliates like
these will enable you to avoid the dreadful, costly mistakes so many affiliate
managers make.
You don't just learn how to build an online sales force, you learn how to
attract, train and retain a team of super affiliates.
Find out more here
Traffic tip #77
Make it easy for reporters to write about you.
Check your "About Us" page. Does it provide all the information a reporter
needs to write about you - and up-to-date contact info so the reporter can
contact you with questions?
Is your "About Us" page bland and boring? If so, dump it and create a new,
lively, fascinating one.
Provide a complete media kit containing some fascinating snippets of info
about your business.
Bonus tip #1
Get free publicity offline.
Many affiliates totally ignore offline publicity. Perhaps you can persuade
your local newsletter to write an article about you. I have.
Here's a tip from Bill Hartzer:
"Get free publicity for your website and your business. Jeff Crilley, an
Emmy Award Winning television reporter, will tell you how to write a
'killer' press release, how to come up with ideas that are guaranteed to
get media coverage, how to hold a news conference the media will
love, and how to keep reporters coming back for more. I've used many
of his methods to get a lot of media attention for some of my websites
and client websites, and using the media to get free publicity is a great
way to get noticed, get links, and get articles in major online
publications written about your site."
Another very useful site for tips on getting free publicity is
PublicityHound.com. For publicity seekers, the site's free newsletter is well
worth getting.
Put your URL on your business cards, on stationery, t-shirts, caps, bumper
stickers. Make your message REALLY memorable.
Crazy offline stunts can work wonders. Here's an example of one - a canine
concert where the music is pitched at a level only dogs can hear. It was
organized to promote a Joe Vitale book:
The Stunt that Made the Dogs Dance
If you're scoffing at this stunt and think it's ridiculous, don't be so stodgy.
You're a marketer, remember? The person responsible for this stunt, Joe
Vitale, probably earns your income multiplied many times. Stunts can
generate traffic and revenue.
Bonus tip #2
Remember your OTHER websites.
If you're launching a new website, one of the fastest ways to get the search
engines to find it and index it is to get a link from a high PageRank page on
a large, busy, well established site.
Does that sound like a site you already own? If so, link to your new site in a
relevant way.
Don't provide a link from every page. Search engines regard that as
excessive crosslinking. To them, it looks unnatural.
Moving forward…
What will you actually DO with the traffic.
Once you get more visitors, what will do with them? There's no sense in
putting a lot of time and effort into attracting more visitors if they quickly
leave without buying anything.
If you can increase your conversion rate just a tiny little bit, say from 1% to
2%, you'll DOUBLE your income. So think carefully about the impression
your site creates and look for ways to improve it.
Also, consider the paths your visitors will take through your site. Picture
them landing on ANY page. What will they see? Where are they likely to
click next? Is that what you really want them to do?
Analyze each page. Which is the important link on the page? Can you make
it look more enticing? Can you make it more prominent?
No matter which page they land on, you need to steer visitors in the
direction of income-generating pages.
MarketingExperiments.com has a powerful example of how a few small
changes on a landing page can mean a 40% or more increase in
conversions. The report, Optimizing Landing Pages 2006, is free.
Set some goals
Now you've read this report, here's what I suggest you do...
Set yourself a goal of DOUBLING your website traffic. How long you're
going to take is up to you.
Here's one way.
For the next 50 weeks, each Monday choose one of the techniques listed
above, research it thoroughly, and put it into action. Keep this up for 50
weeks and I'll be absolutely amazed if all you do is double your website
traffic.
Important resources
SEO
For up-to-date, expert information on getting more traffic by using search
engine optimization, I strongly recommend Planet Ocean's Unfair
Advantage Book On Winning The Search Engine Wars and monthly
newsletter. This is the resource the professionals use. I've been a
subscriber for years.
PRESELLING
Preselling is one of the most underestimated skills online. For an affiliate,
it’s absolutely, vitally important. Forget what you learned at school. Forget
what you've read in stodgy books that try to teach you how to write. Ken
Evoy's much-acclaimed Make Your Content PREsell! is the only book of its
kind. It's the book every affiliate needs. For many affiliates, this is a life-changing book.
PPC ADVERTISING
For a comprehensive understanding of how to do pay-per-click advertising
effectively, my top tip is to read Perry Marshall's The Definitive Guide to
Google AdWords.
KEYWORD RESEARCH
Jay Stockwell has spent hundreds of hours researching and analyzing
keyword research tools. He's an acknowledged expert. Before you invest in
any keyword research tool, check Jay's reviews at KeywordWorkshop.com.
BLOGS
For a good introduction to generating traffic and revenue from blogs, I
recommend Blogging for Dollars.
TAGGING
The Internet community as a whole has not yet caught on to the enormous
potential of using social bookmarking tagging to get high quality links to
your site from authority sites. Sean Wu explains exactly how to do it in his
ebook Tag and Ping.
YOUR OWN AFFILIATE PROGRAM
If you're launching your own affiliate program, learn from people who are
doing it VERY successfully. Anik Singal's The Affiliate Manager - 1st Edition
is the course to get.
TRAFFIC GENERATION
The most comprehensive resource available on traffic generation is John
Reese's Traffic Secrets. It's expensive, but excellent value. Read some of
the glowing testimonials on the site.
OUR AFFILIATE FORUM
Would you like to discuss any of the tips in this report? A good place to do
so is on our affiliate forum.
Did you find this report useful?
I hope you found this report useful. Feel free to pass it on to a friend or
colleague.
I've put a lot of time and effort into writing this free report.
If you'd like to thank me, the nicest way would be to provide a link
somewhere to AssociatePrograms.com. Thank you!
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