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You've got dozens of gurus vying for your attention and every one of them has thesolution to all of your problems. Right? The proliferation of messages that promisea traffic explosion using new techniques can become overwhelming.
Time out.
Take a deep breath.
Sit back in your chair.
Relax.
Now, if you will focus your energy on a very short list of traffic generationstrategies that actually DO work, and commit to continually improving your skills inthese few areas, you will be amazed at what you can achieve... WILL achieve.
In part 1 of this article series, we discussed the fact that...
There are only 3 ways to get traffic to your website: 1) Buy it. 2) Borrow it. 3) Steal it.
Since 3 is not an option we're going to consider, that leaves us with "buy it" and"borrow it".
We also talked about the "Holy Grail" of web traffic. What is it? FREE TRAFFIC! Iwant it. You want it. Every disillusioned internet marketer wants it.
Here's the truth...
It's a myth.
It doesn't exist.
There is no such thing as free website traffic.
We'll resume our discussion where we left off...
In parts 1 and 2 of this series we discussed what your first two priorities shouldbe for buying website traffic (PPC search engines and ezine advertising). Next,let's talk about borrowing traffic.
There are 2 traffic borrowing strategies that we'll talk about here. 1) Search engines. 2) Writing and submitting articles.
There's no disguising the fact that the print books, eBooks and reports written onthese two strategies number in the hundreds and even thousands. Therefore, I'll makeno attempt to provide comprehensive treatment on either of them.
However, they're both important and worthy of at least a primer. So, let's startwith search engines.
If you want to make money with your website today, this week or this year, what isthe absolute worst investment of your time?
Search engine optimization.
I know that some marketers don't want to hear this, but it's a fact for some of thereasons stated above and plenty of others. The mathematical (imp)probabilities ofachieving a top ranking for a search phrase that will result in meaningful trafficthat includes buyers is let's just say the odds aren't in your favor.
There are strategies that work with search engines to drive traffic to websites, butone thing they absolutely do not include is any attempt to optimize a sales page orfor that matter an entire website that's designed to convert visitors intocustomers. The strategies that work with search engines offer them what they cravemost, which is content. Perhaps in the future we can discuss this in some detail.
The next big time waster that's closely related to search engine optimization issubmitting your website to the search engines. If your site won't be listed in thetop 2, 3 or 4 pages of a search engine, nobody's going to see it anyways. Thisdebate rages back and forth even with SEO experts who make their full time livingdoing nothing but consulting on SEO. Submit? Don't submit?
Following is an excerpt from Jill Whalen's High Ranking ezine. Jill does this stufffull time and she's well respected. I'm including this because it's enlightening.Here we go...
*** BEGIN EXCERPT ***
READER QUESTION: Is manually submitting each site better?
JW: You don't actually need to submit your site at all to search engines -- neithermanually nor in an automated fashion. They all have spiders that "crawl" the Web andfind all pages that exist, as long as there is a link to them from a page theyalready know about.
READER QUESTION: Once submitted ...do you keep submitting ...if so how often? (Soyou don't get kicked out.)
JW: Never.
READER QUESTION: The Microsoft submits supposedly submits to hundreds of searchengines and directories
JW: It's a waste of time and bandwidth.
READER QUESTION: Is this good or bad (the number of SE's submitted to)
JW: It's neither, just useless.
READER QUESTION: I heard the more the better ...but there are some pretty cheesysearch engines out there
JW: "The more the better" is incorrect. There are only 4 major search databases thatmatter: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask Jeeves. Their databases power all of the otherengines that make a difference.
*** END EXCERPT ***
Interesting, huh? So, let's move on.
Writing and Submitting Articles:
I KNOW that there are talented writers online who have not capitalized on theirwriting skills yet.
If you're in this group, you need to write and submit articles.
IF YOU'RE NOT IN THIS GROUP, you need to write and submit articles.
You see, nobody is out there grading you. Google does not moralize over your ability(or lack thereof) to write a coherent article. Google will, however, spider thelinks back to your IBSoftShop if you include it in your article's resource box. Themore you do this, the better you'll get.
Writing and submitting articles is a long term approach to generating traffic thatyou should start right now. Set time aside weekly to consistently get your name andyour site's URL out there in various article directories. Can you spare one hour aweek? If yes, do this.
I just published an article on this topic titled "How to Vote for Your 0wn Websitein the Search Engines." You can read it here:http://www.gothrive.com/ articles/vote-for-your-own-web site.html
Next, can I save you some time?
Here's a short list of activities and "programs" that will consume your time withvery little if any result:
- Start Page Networks - Exit Traffic Exchanges - Safe lists - FFA Pages - Lurking in Forums
There are others too, but who really benefits from a start page network, exittraffic exchange, safe list or FFA page? The person who owns and runs it. Theybenefit because they get to market to you and you get to market to other people whowant nothing other than free traffic. Remember free traffic? Forget it.
You could spend the next year whiling away the hours on free traffic schemes or youcould find PPC traffic that will turn your $10 investment into $49.85 in profit andthen duplicate this success 10 times, 50 times or 100 times. Which will you choose?
