subject: Drive Traffic to Your Site, What Works? [print this page] Drive Traffic to Your Site, What Works? Drive Traffic to Your Site, What Works?
I have found that it is often much easier to create a plan when you know the facts.
Before deciding upon your Internet Marketing Plan, logically, you should first do your market research. And part of this market research is investigating and analyzing your top competitors. You will want to ask questions about your competitors, such as; how large of a presence does your competition have on the Internet? How are they getting the majority of their traffic?
How are they utilizing strong and long-tail keywords in their content and titles? How many websites are linking to them? What types of websites are linking to them?
Are they doing banner marketing? Do they have any blogs, forums, Youtube channels, Facebook or Twitter presences? You might be surprised to know, most of the Internet traffic that the really big dogs get is not from the search engines, but by affiliate marketing, something that we'll touch upon here shortly.
Of course we must remember your "target audience" when deciding upon traffic avenues. These are the people that you are trying to convince to come to your website. If your website is selling makeup, then you will not want to be marketing to teen boys, unless of course you target the gothic sector. You must know your target market in detail. You should know where they like to frequent on the Internet. You should know what types of music that they like to listen to and the types of activities that they like to perform. Is your target market made up of mostly middle-class or upper-class citizens? What are their age ranges? What are their education levels? Keep in mind that the better that you know your potential customers, the better you will be able to find them, talk their language, and persuade them that they should visit your website to buy your products.
Google & SEO
Usually, the top on every new Internet Marketers list is; "Google" and ranking high in the "Search Engines". And this is understandable, as getting top rank in Google can indeed bring in large amounts of traffic to your website. But SEO (search engine optimization) can be a very time consuming process. It is no secret that Google takes their sweet time when deciding when they will spider your website. This process of getting detected by Google can be sped up with the right strategies, but to gain top rankings in a niche with a large amount of competition will take a fairly large amount of planning and work. There is no time to get detailed in the ways of optimizing your website for Google and all of the various ways of generating backlinks, in this article. But I can say that this subject can get quite intensive.
Banner Marketing
Some people mention banner blindness when it comes to banner marketing. Personally, I disagree with this theory. I believe people are just numb to all of the generic sales pitches that are thrown at them the entire time they are on the Internet. I believe the key to good banner marketing is to micro target your advertisements to a select group of viewers. Don't just toss your banners at anyone that will look at them. Divide your target market up into as many diverse groups as possible. Then design your banners to fit. So if you are targeting teenage girls, use images and designs that teenage girls enjoy. Don't use generic banners, you are doing nothing but taking up space and wasting money. Micro Targeting and designing accordingly for your target market is essential for a good ROI when it comes to "banner marketing".
Google Adwords
There is an alternative to putting your banners on other people's websites. You can use Google's Adwords to advertise your website to get it out to hundreds, if not thousands of targeted searchers, per day. You have all seen Google's Adwords advertisement; they are the advertisements that you see when you perform a search on Google's website. By joining Adwords, you can bid on advertisement placements through the Control Panel. This subject can get quite complicated when getting down to the details, but Google Adwords is one sure way to generate traffic in a hurry or when in a pinch.
Although I can tell you its hard work, and you really need the time and effort to make quality articles, I enjoy it, but thats just me, if your looking for other ways to generate traffic this is what worked for me
