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.
About the Author
Varun Pratap is working in online business as a pro blogger from 2004. His blog on Imbasics (Internet marketing Basics) is all about making money online ethically without resorting to tricks, techniques and gimmicks.
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2 Responses to “Traffic Tactics 7: Indexing and Starting traffic”
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It takes experience to see that a natural and slow (but steady) link-building campaign is best for rankings. A site that shoots up from PageRank of 0 to PageRank of 3 or 4 can just as easily slide back down to 0 again if the linking pattern was unnatural. What do you think?
well if you are thinking technically, building any kind of link pattern (even slow n steady) will be un-natural. If your PR is dropping, it doesn’t mean because of your agressive link building. You have to do lot of things wrong to get your PR dropped.
There are viral sites who becomes hit and people just start linking back like crazy. They often gain few thousands back link in matter of few hours. I don’t remember google banning them or penalizing them.