Jump to content

How To Get Traffic To Your Site


roban

Recommended Posts

We're all trying to sell something. To do this we have to get people to our sites and more importantly...keep them there. Here are some tips to help get traffic:

Track all sources of traffic generation

Track where all traffic comes from and at what cost. It is crucial to know exactly how many sales, newsletter sign-ups, or other leads your particular marketing campaign is generating. This enables you to work smarter and not harder. By tracking all traffic to your site you can make twice as much while working fifty percent less. Get a good stats generator!

Content is King

On the internet, people are searching for one thing....... Content! Load your website with as much content as possible. Then, continuously add content. Search engines love information and they will love your site if you've got lots of it. There's plenty of free content for the taking on the internet so search for it. You can load up your site with articles from article directories like ezinearticles.com. Be aware also that spiders pick up what is in your side boxes so these are a valuable piece of real estate and perfect for testimonials and other snippets of information you'd like to get out on the Web.

Affiliate Programs

An affiliate program is critical to maximum traffic and sales. Lots of internet marketers don't take advantage of this powerful traffic-generating technique. An affiliate program allows you to have your own personal salesman spread all over the web. The best part about it is that there is absolutely no risk involved but tons of traffic and sales to gain. Your website simply cannot grow to its full potential without an effective affiliate program.

Take advantage of your virtual real estate

Take advantage of the different parts of your website. Don't let any of your web pages go to waste. You can do this by adding a link to another one of your web sites or pages on your thank-you or sales confirmation pages. If you have articles on your site, place links to related articles on the bottom of the page. The longer you keep a visitor at your web site, the more valuable they become.

It is very important to funnel traffic from within the multiple sites you may have.

Continually seek out other web sites to link to you. Now, we're not just talking about any kind of link here, but powerful, traffic-generating links from respected sites.

Online group participation can produce a no-cost stream of traffic and sales

Get involved in email discussion lists, online groups and forums that are related to your target market. Becoming involved in discussions makes you very credible. Traffic from forums can produce a much higher sales conversion rate.

This method can produce quite a bit of traffic for you just by helping others out. Not to mention, you'll learn a lot along the way.

* Spelling is important so make sure that you've spelled things correctly. If you're selling 'shirts', don't spell it 'shiets'. Be careful.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey I would like to offer my two tips on this topic...

Affiliate Programs

An affiliate program is critical to maximum traffic and sales. Lots of internet marketers don't take advantage of this powerful traffic-generating technique. An affiliate program allows you to have your own personal salesman spread all over the web. The best part about it is that there is absolutely no risk involved but tons of traffic and sales to gain. Your website simply cannot grow to its full potential without an effective affiliate program.

... I would advise anyone that is starting up a store 3 things in regards to Affiliate Programs.

- NEVER pay out big amounds of money to big affiliate companies.

You end up paying the hundreads of pounds just for finding you affiliates who you are going to pay for finding the sales --- then your stuck paying out twise. (Try Software like idevAffiliate where you host it yourself, and try and keep to Per-Sale Commison, i am running a affiliate program at the moment the affiliates have sent me 80% of my vistors and only 2% of my customers are from them if i was paying per click id be paying them for sending me unrelated visitors)

- Get your store working first...

Dont jump straight in with an affiliate campain, get your store up and running and wait for the first few sales, this could take upto 6months, but trust me its worth it... you could find that your store booms just from recomendation and search engine refurals.

- Target the adverts,

Target and monitor adverts which ones are bringing you the most sales, drop the ones that are bringing you less and enhance on the more profitable adverts...

I hope this saves alot of you alot of hastle...

I have seen many scams out there with Pay-Per Click, and some with Affiliate Companies that offer Pay-Per Sale (saying that an affiliate had generated 4 sales when the store hadn't even sold anything yet)...

Hosting an affiliate campain yourself lacks in the original affiliate base but saves you the risk and expence... funnily enough it leaves you having to advertise the affiliate program so that you can advertise, but there are hundreads of free affiliate directories out there...

Finaly remember one thing, SEO can sometimes bring you more valid visitors than adverts - As the user is finding your site by searching for something they want...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Content is King

On the internet, people are searching for one thing....... Content! Load your website with as much content as possible. Then, continuously add content. Search engines love information and they will love your site if you've got lots of it. There's plenty of free content for the taking on the internet so search for it. You can load up your site with articles from article directories

;) I thank you and suggest you all get on mine while you still can :w00t:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 5 months later...

There's currently a free ebook on Search Engine Optimization available in many places online.

outside links are not allowed. Please read the rules :w00t:
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

Great list, Roban! Adding to this a bit...

Topsites - if you have a niche or special interest site, listing on topsites can be a great way to generate traffic, espcially if you manage to get your site to the top of them. One of my sites is #1 on a popular niche topsite list and I get about 25% of my traffic every month from it. For best results, find a topsite list that comes up at the top of a search for your niche subject and work hard to become within at least the top 10 on it.

Blogs & Customer Favorite Lists - If you have a customer that raves about you, ask if they have a blog or other site where they list their favorite links and ask if they would consider linking to your store. One of my customers for one of my stores did this from her Yahoo Personals page and I get a ton of hits from it every month. Now I actively ask when I get a customer send me a "thank you! you are wonderful!" type message after completing a sale. If they are happy with you, they will usually be very happy to help tell others about you.

Blogs of Your Own/Your Employees - Encourage your employees to start a blog and include entries about what's happening at your store. Naturally, a store blog is also a great idea. Many blogs are syndicated in rss feeds as well so it multiples your exposure. Any place where you can (legally) include links to your stores, you should definitely do it.

Multiple Stores - Another thing about niche sites - if you can spin off some of your products in your current store into a niche store, do it. I currently have 8 stores and all of them generate traffic for each other and broaden my reach on the web. Yes, it's a bit more work coordinating items between the stores, processing daily orders, etc, but as long as you can stay organized, I'm proof it's worth it. This also gives you more options for advertising and marketing within niche directories, blogs, topsites, etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest etradersing

hi i wanted to know when people talk about getting other companies to lik to you ..(as i put companies on my website) but getting companies to put my website on their website? How do i go about that which companies can i ask etc?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest garysmith

Hi etradersing

There are lots of different ways to go about links with web sites and it is important to remember that this is only one part of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

You can errange to exchange links with other website owners, There are many free diectories that you can submit links to ( see my post: Here. Or you can go the commercial route if you have the cash and buy links on high ranking pages.

If you would like to PM me with your URL I may even be interested in exchanging links with you.

Most people regard SEO as a black art but really it is a question of knowing the rules and alot of hard work.

If you have any questions you can always PM me (although I am not an expert!)

All the best

Gary

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Content is King

On the internet, people are searching for one thing....... Content! Load your website with as much content as possible. Then, continuously add content. Search engines love information and they will love your site if you've got lots of it. There's plenty of free content for the taking on the internet so search for it. You can load up your site with articles from article directories like ezinearticles.com. Be aware also that spiders pick up what is in your side boxes so these are a valuable piece of real estate and perfect for testimonials and other snippets of information you'd like to get out on the Web.

Content by itself is not enough. I just went through another round of testing (using Drupal as my CMS to organize content) to see how adding content to my site affects sales and found that once again, adding lots of content has made my sales drop like a stone

This isn't to say that adding content won't work, but that there is some other variable (condition) to doing so in order to make it profitable.

What I've done was to add an article area, with a few categories under which the articles were listed. New articles (at least 2) were added to the site each week.

I also added a set of forums with only 2 forum groups (one for site questions, the other for general discussion), and a blog module so that all registered users could create their own blog. Both myself and my assistant have created and maintained blogs with about one entry per week.

What I found was that more people were bookmarking the site, but they weren't spending as much time on the site as when it was strictly catalog-based. Also, repeat visits took a downturn.

I've had many compliments on the quality of the articles I've written and posted, and my ezine subscribers get antsy if they think they might have gotten unsubscribed by accident, so I know the quality of content is high enough.

The

Drupal install is still active at the root domain (www.PowerKeysPub.com) in case anyone would care to offer suggestions. At the moment, I'm planning on moving CubeCart back to the root directory in a few days, and Drupal will go to a subdirectory at that time.

Roban - do you have any suggestions on HOW to organize the articles on a site so that it encourages sales rather than detract from them? What other factors affect how content influences sales?

Does anyone have an example of when adding content has increased sales?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alan,

Thank you for that very insightful post. It is interesting how visitors interpret content isn't it?

You are quite correct in noting that content by itself will not determine ROI but it is a way of increasing SERPS as long as the content is relevant to the site's intention, key phrases and description tags. Site conversions are based on several factors: the attractiveness of the product, visitors equating to target markets (are they there to buy what you have to sell) and ease of navigation and check out, to name just a few.

Conversion rates have to do with factors such as:

Discounts - why should I buy from you if I think that I can get it for less somewhere else?

Targeted Content with anchor text - It's amazing how some web masters can fill a site with content that DOES NOT lead a potential buyer to a purchase but, in fact leads them away from it by diverting them from their primary purpose with words, words, words.

How you track your results - If you are simply looking at a bottom line then you are only looking at 10% of the issue. Unless I missed it I don't recall seeing any Analytics code on your site.

Who are you trying to please - A large percentage of sites are trying to please everyone who drops in. "Everyone is a potential customer". Not true. Who are your buyers? Where do they come from? How did they get to you? Where do they go on your site? What are the exit pages? How long are they spending? It goes on and on.

The point is that research is within the top 5 tasks that you have on a daily basis. Without accurate feed back it is quite useless and if your main entry page is so diluted from trying to please everyone, your ROI will continue to fall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the helpful reply, Roban.

You are right in that at the current time, there isn't any tracking code on the site itself. I guess that in this case, I'm not exactly sure how that will help the issue. I've never figured out how to track traffic coming from search engine results.

Your paragraph about who I'm trying to please calls to mind much of the tracking and planning I've done over the past 3 years. At this time, most of my new traffic is coming from articles that have been distributed around the web. A lot of my traffic is also coming from my ezine subscribers to whom I send a weekly mailing about new content, changes to the site, and specific product promotions. Response to ezine promotions has remained steady over the past 2 years, proportional to the size of the list.

Discounts wouldn't apply here as (most of) the products sold are not available anywhere else, except on my own sites devoted to the single products.

Your comment about targeted content seems to ring a bell, however. Although I feel that the content added has been targeted to the 2 primary markets (those wanting to feel more empowered and those wanting to empower others), it is quite possible that the articles added have not resonated with that market as well as I thought they might.

Do you have any recommendations on where I can find more information on how to insure the content is doing what it needs to do in order to increase sales?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alan,

I would strongly suggest that you get a Google Analytics account. Aside from being free, the information you will get is invaluable. Not only will you be able to see demographics, you will also be able to set up targeted goals and for an e-commerce site, this is very important because you can determine 'funnel' pages. What is your goal? For instance I run an SEO company and one of my clients is a private wine cellar, very localized. The goal of the site is to have prospective clients click through to a contact page, fill it out and submit it. The 'funnel pages' are all the other pages that they must go through (or better yet, that I WANT THEM TO GO THROUGH) on their way to the contact page. I can track this information, the exit pages, etc. I can then tweak my pages and links to 'force' visitors to do what I want them to do. This is very heady stuff but it works. This particular company had zero presence on the Internet and inside of 3 months they are ranked #3 for our targeted market and ROI is on the rise.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm sure that the Google Analytics will help, although I'm slightly confused. How does this apply to the subject of adding articles?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alan,

Articles are not a sales tool IMO. They are helpful in keeping folks on your site and also to keep them coming back for more information. Information of one kind or another is what people surf the web for.

If you want conversions from your articles, you'll have to set them up in such a way as to encourage your readers to perform an action. Just reading an interesting article is fine if that's what the site is about but if you want to urge them to buy something as a result, then you'll have to write them in such a way as to make this happen either by using links or writing them in such a way as to create a need for your product then lead them to the 'Buy' button.

How this is accomplished is site-specific and is what SEO is all about.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ahhhh, that makes a lot of sense.

So, what I've learned is that in order to make adding content effective, that content needs to create a desire for the products being sold. Adding articles will only be effective if those articles direct the reader to want the products offered on the site. If the articles are not serving that purpose, they are diluting the conversion power of the site.

You have opened my eyes, o' wise one! :cry:

One final question. What would be the best way to add articles to a CubeCart site?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

articles do have another benefit though - they give you an opportunity to add key words to text on your site which increase your visibility in search engines.

So a few articles that are relevant to the products you sell are IMO an effective way of boosting your exposure in search engines. And you can link key words in your article to specific products in your store as well, which again is a technique for search engines :cry:

If you add them as site documents, featured items, sale and most popular items are still visible to the reader too :o

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Brivtech

I've encountered something weird with Google: Search results are not the same when you type the same query in twice.

If I'm signed into my Google Webmaster Tools account, I see one of my sites appearing as #4 - As soon as I sign out, it disappears out of the listing. :cry:

How can this be?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've encountered something weird with Google: Search results are not the same when you type the same query in twice.

If I'm signed into my Google Webmaster Tools account, I see one of my sites appearing as #4 - As soon as I sign out, it disappears out of the listing. :cry:

How can this be?

You've just been Google f_ _ ked. Actually it's because the results come from any number of data centers and from a different data center each time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What I have done in the past is to create the article in Dreamweaver and upload it as an html to my root. Then I create a new box with text links to the articles and have them open in a pop up window.

Okay, thanks for the suggestion.

Seems like another alternative would be to have 1 Site Document page for a container, and then use an iframe on that to load in the article directory.

Maybe I'll suggest something over at the .ORG site.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Brivtech

You've just been Google f_ _ ked. Actually it's because the results come from any number of data centers and from a different data center each time.

My heart sank for a moment there! :cry:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...
  • 3 months later...
Guest daliboor

Post links.

But not spam them on this forum, as it's against forum advertising rules - Mod note.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Brivtech

Okay, please remember that this forum is not for spamming.

The article I clicked on almost blasted out my speakers with white noise, so I've deleted it. If you feel that particular points of the article are worthy of merit, then feel free to cite them.

This is a discussion on SEO, not an open spamming arena, and I've taken action against links, posts and signatures accordingly. Please please read the forum rules before posting, especially you new lot.

I won't hesitate to lock this topic if this continues.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...