Last week I talked about four ways to make more money online. In this post I’ll discuss the first of those four — attract more web traffic.
Web traffic is the top of your sales funnel online. More site traffic leads to more prospects (list opt-ins). More prospects lead to more sales. So we can see that boosting web traffic will directly lead to a boost in income. Here are five tips to help you attract more traffic.
1. Content Marketing is Fundamental
If I was limited to only ONE traffic strategy for my business, it would be creating frequent, valuable content for my audience. This has long been the lifeblood of our business. In fact, until today we have never paid for a lead. For five years we have just produced free content, posted it to our site and syndicated it across the Internet.
No matter what Google does, no matter what is the tool of the hour (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.), producing content will ALWAYS attract traffic.
Before you get fancy with your web traffic strategy or pay to drive traffic to your site, make sure you have a solid content marketing strategy in place. This can be blog, audio and/or video. This is the core of what we teach in the Academy.
2. Track Everything
Watch your web statistics to see where traffic is coming from. We use Google Analytics. You need to know what is working and what is not.
An additional strategy is to set up “internal affiliates” in your affiliate tracking system so you know not only where traffic is coming from, but what traffic is producing sales.
For examples, we have an affiliate set up called IBM Podcast. When someone goes to FreeAudioGift.com (which we mention in every episode) they are tracked as coming through the affiliate link for IBM Podcast.
3. Do More of What’s Working
If blogging is working, try posting more often. Granted, there is a point of diminishing returns, but you don’t know until you try. When we went from two show episodes a month to three, we saw a boost in sales.
If you have a paid campaign (e.g. Google Adwords) that produces a net positive profit, then don’t limit your budget. Buy as much inventory as you can.
4. Syndicate Across New Channels
If your content is attracting new traffic, syndicate it across new channels. Get it in front of more people. Go where you audience is. Syndication strategies include:
- Publishing your audio or video show in iTunes
- Transcribing your episodes and posting them to your blog
- Re-writing your transcripts and posting them to article directories
- Posting your videos to popular video sharing sites
- Adding slides to your audio show and posting them to YouTube.
- Breaking your content into 140-character tips that you post to Twitter
And that just scratches the surface. This kind of syndication is what I teach in the Traffic Attraction Formula course.
5. Fast, Targeted Traffic
Here are three ways you can get more targeted web traffic starting today.
- Guest post on other blogs that are related to your topic
- Arrange with a joint-venture partner for them to promote your site in exchange for a commission on sales
- Pay for Google Adwords traffic (our recommended course for learning how to do that is here)
What other web traffic strategies have worked for you? What questions do you have about attracting traffic? Post your comments and questions below.
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This is exactly what I need to focus on right now. You’ve just written the outline I need to be following in this phase of my internet business. I have Tekkbuzz podcast on iTunes, but have not been adding regularly to it. The podcast is meant to drive traffic to my social media website and membership site. This reminds me I need to get consistent with that content. I’m have my blogging pretty consistent, but it’s time to step up this channel.
I’m printing your post and tacking it on my bulletin board to look at frequently.
Thanks again, guys!
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Jay (Jason Van Orden) Reply:
Nice! So glad to help.
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Hi
In the internet business I am not even a beginner by most standards and when click to read “good articles” i almost always end up at lousy writeups.
I thought this article would be like dozens others which just keep talking without making any practical sense. But your article reminded me of the famous ad-line ” like. no. other.”
fantastic thinking and work must have gone into this.
great, i really thank you for this outstanding and smart piece.
-Ajay
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Jay (Jason Van Orden) Reply:
That’s high praise. Thanks, Ajay.
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Thank you for an informative,and creative article. This outline addresses the issues I need to apply to my in-the-making site. Thanks again.
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Jay (Jason Van Orden) Reply:
Glad to help, Norma. Let us know how it goes with your new site.
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I am starting to learn how to track my stats and do test. Does anyone have any suggestions on the best way to do that? I use google analytics and bit.ly to tracking clicks but ever really put together a test and tracking project. Gaining on it, but some help would be great. Any suggestions?
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Jay (Jason Van Orden) Reply:
Take a look at the conversion installment of this series.
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Great post! I’m learning so much, just starting in the Academy but am very pleased with what I have seen already. Your posts encourage action rather then just learning a bunch of theory. Thank you.
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Sterling (Jeremy Frandsen) Reply:
Thank you and welcome!
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This is a real key step – I am about to get my site up (have hosting account, have loaded WP, am choosing theme) and so getting traffic will be the next big step. In order to make money, my site needs traffic and conversions, simple as that. Magnetic media will be a huge chunk of that. Thanks!
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Sterling (Jeremy Frandsen) Reply:
As always, you are very welcome!
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SeoDuck Reply:
Sorry but you’ve missed up a vital step “filling the website with a unique content”. If you don’t have proper content on your site, don’t expect any traffic. It may take up to several months before you start gettinh new visitors.
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Jay (Jason Van Orden) Reply:
Excellent points. Thanks for adding that.
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