Traffic Tactics 7: Indexing and Starting traffic
In this article, we’ll discuss 2 key points of getting traffic. First is Indexing and Second is getting starting traffic.
Indexing…
Couple of years ago, Internet marketers declared blog and ping technique as the Holy grail of getting traffic. According to them this technique had no equal… later they deemed it dead when marketers started abusing this method.
Why I am talking about this instead of indexing?
If you understand indexing then you can tell why blog and ping is important. Google has basically 2 types of Bot spiders. One is for indexing new content and other is its main Spider which take care of ranking etc. Your Indexing will deal with first kind of spider.
If your content is brand new and google comes to your website & notice it. It’ll be added to their new content “databank”. To be indexed or found by this spider, you need an incoming link to your website(or specially to the new content page). After indexed google knows that you have new content. This is what you should understand when we are talking about indexing from now on.
Now understand this, unless your pages are indexed in google, you cannot get organic traffic. That’s why I am stressing so much on indexing.
Getting indexed is not tough at all… If you have a regular updated blog, then you can get your new content indexed in matter of few minutes. All you have to do is blog and give link to your content. That’s it. And this is what blog is ping is all about. Its not holy grail of getting traffic. But you can call it holy grail of indexing for sure.
Note : Blog has a pinging system with blog search engines which let them know about new updated content almost immediately.
The thing is this blog & ping technique is going to be your major focus. Of BTW, don’t take too much into indexing too. You see, indexing is about getting spiders know of your content existence, so this doesn’t bring any traffic (sometimes this can bring if your article is focussed on long tail keywords).
Indexing becomes more important when you have more than just few pages (I used to start with at least 30-40 pages of content in new website). So you have to make sure your linking structure and incoming links to your articles/content is proper.
Here are other methods of indexing your website content fast.
- Blog and ping : We just discussed this. Create a blog on your website, no matter what kind of website it is…
- Using google sitemaps: If you go to google webmasters page, you can upload your sitemap and let google know about your every single page of content. www.xml-sitemaps.com/ is one site where you can go and create XML sitemaps to be uploaded for google.
Oh you can use google sitemap plugin for your wordpress blog and create sitemaps too (that’s why I am telling you to start a blog)
- Using Articles :You can submit articles to ezine directories and link back indvidually to each page of your content.
I prefer to use all the above strategies. Why? because it create just another way to get to my content. And all the above strategies ultimately work in long term. Oh I almost forgot, blog and ping is not dead like the rumors says and chances of it dieing in next few years is pretty less.
Getting Starting traffic.
After you have gotten all your pages indexed(it should take you anywhere from an hour to 48-72 hrs). You have to start worrying about getting your first traffic as just getting indexed will not bring you whatsoever.
One of the fastest way to get traffic is using Adwords and Yahoo Search marketing. Yes it’s Pay Per click type of traffic. You can set it up and start getting traffic in matter of few hours.
Now often beginner in internet marketing starts very conservatively. They have this belief, why waste money when there are free ways to get traffic. Now that’s true, but even implementing free methods will take time.
For example, if you don’t have a Platinum account on Ezinearticles, your articles will take 5-7 days to be published on ezinearticles.com.
You need to spend at least couple of hundred dollar to get your press releases published by Google, Yahoo news and other websites (free press releases doesn’t work that good). Moreover, there’s no guarantee that you’ll get targeted traffic that’ll buy whatever you are selling.
Of course all of these methods works in long term (sometimes short term too, if you know what you are doing). But PPC is sure shot way to getting targeted traffic.
This is the reason I am trying to think about using PPC. If you are still against of paying for traffic, then you should read this old post of mine “Should you pay for traffic or not“
I hope you decided to use adwords traffic method because its powerful. If you are ready then download Adwords Made easy ebook and print it out. Read it at least couple of times. This is the best education you can get on adwords (trust me, its better than few of the paid ebooks out there). There is only one Paid guide that I can remember is good enough for beginners/intermediate or advance marketers. Its called Campaign Blast Method.
Ok here are the few things you should remember while building your adwords campaign.
- Your adwords ad and your landing page should be highly related. This is the advice Mr X(author of adwords blackbook) gave when google slapped around marketers implementing arbitrage. Actually this slap killed business that were’nt build on solid foundation. Google adwords is not for quick fast money. Think of it as a business builder.
- Focus on one keyword (one ad) per landing page. This is something that has worked with me. I do not try to implement many keywords in one ad and then use one landing page. I always try to be make sure I am following first advice to the core.
Of course this takes more time and effort and I know for sure, many people won’t put this much efforts.
- Focus of multiple keywords, long tail keywords. At least have a list of few hundred keywords which you can go out and create adwords ad on.
- Don’t worry about people preaching against “name squeeze pages” on landing page. You can build list using this method.
- Test your adwords ad copy. Keep close eye on the ads you are converting. If you cannot afford testing software or other top adwords software then just focus on basic A/B split testing.
- Immediately prune adwords ads that are not generating any profit for you.
- Last important tip: Find out how much you can spend on PPC. Another $5 /day will not work. If you are worried, you’ll spend too much on PPC, then you shouldn’t play this game. Don’t forget if you think you are spending too much, then you can immediately stop the campaigns.
Do whatever it takes to become an adword expert. This is a great skill like Copywriting or selling which will help you succeed in internet marketing.
Phew, I am finished. So today’s advice was on getting indexed properly (understanding blog and ping) and getting starting traffic.
Traffic Tactics 7: Thinking about Long term
As Promised I am going to give you 7 day fix to build massive traffic. Please remember, they are not quick fix or magic tricks that’ll bring truckloads of people to your website.
Here are few reasons if you are not getting traffic to your website…
- Not a targeted Niche : If you start with home business as your main keyword, you have really stiff competition. Don’t be surprised if you don’t have enough traffic.
- Not targeting keywords
- No Search engine optimization done on your website (not even basic one).
- Not spending time on regular marketing
- Do not have process to check your marketing methods.
Of course the list doesn’t stop just here, but I have found these common reasons in almost every single website devoid of traffic. Now all we have to do is fix these issues and we’ll get traffic.
Building Traffic is about Planning.
One of the biggest mistake webmasters do is they forget to plan this little detail. They are giving site design, their logos and what not more preference over some basic planning of website traffic. If you are serious about this then here are few things you should do before you even start building a website.
1. Find out where your prospects gather.
2. Find out key influencers (people) in this group.
3. Find out what kind of tactics other webmasters are using to get attention of these groups.
4. Find out how you can differentiate yourself.
1. Building a Regular Promotion Schedule
Every promotion you do no matter how small it is, will go a long way towards building traffic to your website. So You have to include posting on forums, blogs, link building etc in your regular promotion schedule. For example your weekly schedule should look like this…
Monday : Article marketing, write on forums
Tuesday: Link building, blog marketing
Wednesday: Looking for joint ventures, forums
and so on… Now this promotion schedule is not complicated at all… For example, it doesn’t take more than 30 minutes to write a good article and post it to article directories. Or if you take a look at joint venture, it doesn’t take much time to email other webmasters with a simple request.
So my point is to promote yourself on daily basis. No matter how small the technique is, promote yourself. In this blog, I get more traffic from forums, blogs and other websites than from organic searches.
2 : What if Your not targeting a good market
Now, if you are one of those few who have started with a very wide & competitive market, then let me me completely frank with you. Scrap the Idea completely. I have been there, done that and it doesn’t work.
If you know my embarrassing story then you know thanks to this mistake I only made $21.67 after 5 months of efforts. If you cannot scrap this topic for whatever reason, then start a completely new website focusing on a niche.
Read these two article I wrote on How to chose hot rabid niche. This is the process I follow to go into new market and even if you pay for my consultation fee, I am not going to give you any other secret method other than this. Why? because its the easiest way to find a good market.
1. How to choose a Hot, rabid niche - I
2. How to choose a Hot, rabid niche - II
Read those articles and think what kind of website would you like to create?
3. Keywords are your building blocks
When I started 3 years ago, I didn’t cared much about keywords at all. Well, I paid the price in terms of efforts, money I had to spend. It doesn’t matter if you have a website or blog or whatever. You should be focusing on your keywords.
In my “sitebook”, I shared my idea of finding 200 keywords and only then building a website on the topic. I still believe this is the way to go. If you cannot find 200 good keywords you better not waste your time.
Well, if you haven’t downloaded my sitebook (only 40 pages, quick read) then subscribe and download it. I am sharing my mistakes, lessons and things I learnt while I was trying to build my business in that small ebook.
I haven’t changed my keyword research techniques since I wrote “sitebook”. You can read these 3 articles/post on how I research good keywords for a website.
Keyword Research Premier - Sink Or Swim Right Now
Relation with Themed Keywords and Latent Semantic Analysis(LSA).
Mining the Goldmine (Long Tail Keywords)
4. Search engine optimization Made Easy
I am not going into big tutorial on how to SEO your website. Nope I’ll tell you to work on few things like
Title tag, Description tag, H1, h2 tag throughout your articles/webpage. This is the minimum SEO you need to do on your website to get organic traffic. If you are using good keywords (long tail keywords discussed in the articles above), then you can just use these techniques and start getting traffic in 24 hrs after posting your article online.
SEO experts have made this topic into really complicated, but it isn’t. Focus on basics and you’ll get traffic.
5. Improving conversion on your website.
If you want major success with your websites/blog then you have to work on converting traffic into buyers. Though I confess, I hate the idea of testing (it increases workload and I just hate numbers), but the increase in the bank balance always make me happy.
Before I learnt how to get traffic on demand, I HAD to learn how to improve conversion on my blogs. I had no other way around it. At that time I didn’t had enough money to buy all that taguichi powered testing softwares. So I did very basic A/B split tests to improve more conversion.
I have used every trick I could find to improve conversion. Changed headline, color, font, offer etc. Finally I found something that works with my style of blogs.
The idea of improving conversion is : Think about your Major real estate on your blog or website and give reasons for visitors to act NOW.
One of the Biggest, Fastest way to improve conversion is to create a better offer. That’s it. I might be boasting here but I can create better offer than most of the average marketers (well that includes 90% of the crowd). How did I learnt how to create better offers?
Easy I follow few of the top marketers like
Ewen Chia, late Corey Rudl (Now Derek Gehl), Nitro Marketing guys and so on… Find people who you resonate with.
Look at the way they promote their/affiliate products. Its phenomenal. If you take Ewen Chia as an example, you’ll see him in top 5 (often in top 3) in almost every affiliate promotion he gets into.
Here are the top 3 things you should test in the order.
1. Offer.
2. Headline ( benefit VS question).
3. Sales pitch vs Story.
Where to go from here…?
1. Work on your keywords.
2. Work on SEO.
3. Work on regular promotion
4. Improve conversion on your website.
Here’s my formula Targeted traffic + improve conversion = more $$ in your bank.
Today was more of a planning or creating a simple procedure for you to work with. From tomorrow I’ll share simple techniques to increase traffic and my thoughts on it.
Sorry for not updating for last few days…
I have been trying to update this blog as frequently as possible in 2008. But for last week or so I couldn’t. My father got into small accident and had to undergo a simple surgery. Though surgery was minor but I just couldn’t get myself to write. Well now everything is the way it should be so I am here updating my blog again.
Well, To start off this blog again, I am starting “Traffic Tactics 7″ where I’ll share tactics/ strategies to build traffic for next 7 days. That means one tactic per day. I’ll be post today’s tactic later in the evening (I am working on it). If you want to build traffic to your website. You better keep your eyes on next 7 days on this blog.
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