8 Ways to Build Traffic to Your Website

Your Website must get traffic to have the opportunity to succeed. If your website is well designed to convert visitors into new customers and your business model is ready to go to execute new business and provide excellent support, then building traffic is the absolute key to your online success. Here are 8 straight forward ways to build traffic to your site.

PPC
Pay-Per-Click or Sponsored Search is most likely the fastest way to actually get traffic to your site. This involves the placement of ads that are displayed when a targeted keyword is searched. The Google PPC product is Google Adwords. The cost per click is based on a bidding model with the winning bids being displayed in accordance with the specified preferences of the advertiser i.e. days of the week, time of day, time spacing. Without having to do anything to your website, you can begin having your ads displayed immediately by successfully bidding on the keywords of your choice and displaying your ad with a direct link to the landing page of your choice on your website or a special landing page with further links to your website. You can also track to the penny your budget, your performance and your daily ROI or Return on Investment. So here you have an immediate proven marketing method that is can be managed and tracked daily directly through the Google Analytics.

PPC is expensive, however, over time. It is also not the preferred area for searchers. Searchers prefer organic results by a ratio of 2 to 1; in other words only about 1/3 of online searchers will go to a Sponsored Search result first. As a bidding model, and with Google dominating Search, the cost per click is destined to only get higher over time as competition builds; PPC therefore does not have typical cost of scale features over time. Google, at least publicly, does not give discounts although some internet marketing professionals are certain that discounts are available to those spending $1 Million per month or more on Sponsored Search. PPC can be done by inexperienced individuals; however, it should be managed by a PPC professional to optimize key metrics such as CTR (click-through rates) and Conversion Rates. Trends are changing all of the time so the stats need to be reviewed constantly to respond to the data with updated Ads and landing pages involving sophisticated A/B testing to determine what combination of factors yields the best results.

SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the neighbor of PPC with its listings being displayed on the same search pages alongside and just underneath the sponsored results. SEO results in organic listings, sometimes called natural listings. These are not ads; they are listings based on the relevance ranking of the search engines. As such, the most relevant results are shown on the first page and the most relevant result will be the first listed on the first page. These rankings are more dynamic as search technology becomes increasingly sophisticated. The most obvious benefit is that you do not pay for these listings so no matter how many times your listing is clicked you don’t pay for it. In addition 70% of searchers trust these rankings vs. the sponsored ads on the same page. This is an intuitive understanding among the general public that the organic listings are more relevant and valuable for the purpose of getting the best information. The feeling is the organic results didn’t pay to get there. This is a very powerful and important perception.

SEO however is not free. Getting to the first page is not free by any means. It must be earned with sophisticated internal structuring, sometime called onsite optimization so that the Google spiders clearly understand what the web pages are all about. A significant commitment to a steady and ongoing stream of unique and fresh content is required to win competitively. This requires SEO professional skills most easily achieved through hiring a proven performance-driven SEO Firm to implement content both on the website and to continually syndicate additional content online to generate valuable inbound links that serve to score the most points with the search engines towards ranking all of your web pages.

SEO is expensive and it is not an overnight process. A long term and patient perspective is required. The commitment must be for as long as you own your business as this involves intense competition to continually earn your rankings for your targeted keywords.

Social Bookmarking
Social Bookmarking provides a relatively new and increasingly important factor in building traffic to your web pages. As with SEO, it requires a complete commitment to fresh and interesting content. People need to like your site! If so, you have an amazing opportunity with Social Bookmarking.

There are several major social bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Digg, Furl, and Stumble Upon, etc. These sites provide its users the ability to store and share their bookmarks online so they have access to their favorite places from any online access platform. In addition, they can keyword or tag these pages for reference and indexing. In turn they can gain access to additional relevant information in terms of streams of content directly related to their tags or areas of interest. So if you content is GREAT, you can get GREAT results from these social bookmarking sites. If you are bookmarked and indexed by many users, the Google spiders will take considerable note and this will create backlinks scoring serious points for your site. The more people indexing your site will make your site more and more visible on the networks which creates more backlinks. So a snow ball effect is created where the bookmarks and the backlinks work in a virtuous cycle promoting your web pages, sometimes in spectacular fashion.

As with SEO, this takes great content, time and patience. However with diligence and a longer term perspective Social Bookmarking can prove to be a major factor in driving traffic to your web site.

Optimum7 considers Social Bookmarking a sub-specialty of SEO and includes it in its Optimum7 SEO Service for its clients.

Social Media
You’ve all heard of or know MySpace, Face Book, and YouTube et al. These are 2 of the major social media sites on the web. Social Media can be a great source of generating valuable backlinks and notoriety for your business. Have a unique product? Something really cool to offer? Do you have unique videos that show unique applications, installations, and case studies? Do you have video or audio customer recommendations or advisories?

These are all great opportunities to post great content in a visually engaging way. Besides the obvious human benefit, The Google is not far away and is recognizing the links generated to your website. These links build your relevance quotient and is just a great way of diversifying the sources and volume of inbound links to your website.

Business Networking
Without needing to join several Chambers of Commerce, trade associations, et al, you can now join one of several great online networking sites such as LinkedIn. LinkedIn provides you a great opportunity to network and add to your marketing and sales strength. Just go to LinkedIn and sign up. Then do a great job really developing your profile. LinkedIn then helps you start networking by scanning your background with its database. In brief you will be amazed how many former colleagues, current colleagues, existing clients and old classmates and acquaintances will become accessible to your fingertips. Here you can build a wealth of recommendations, referrals and establish an impressive dossier of past performance. You can establish great credibility here with new prospective clients who are new to you … AND … yes backlinks for Google!

As with SEO, Social Bookmarking, etc, they are great sources of backlinks to establish greater and greater online visibility. It again takes time and is something you need to commit to so as to continually build this network of support and value.

Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate Marketing is the application of direct compensation tied to a specific measurable goal such as a sale, documented lead, completed form, coupon retrieval or other measured desirable result.

Compensation is only paid after the defined action occurs … Pay for Performance. No money is paid until the goal or transaction is completed. The agent or affiliate is then paid on merit … yes, a meritocracy. This is a major benefit as there is no money needed by the hiring marketer until they receive the desired result. Optimum7 offers Affiliate Marketing through its network of Affiliate Marketing companies to improve and extend the reach of our clients for leads and sales.

Affiliate Marketing requires time and patience as the necessary set-up and implementation needs to take hold to gain the critical mass of attention and promotion. However, once in place, you have a great network of online marketers who are keenly interested in driving traffic directly to the page of decision on your site. All referrals are tracked for management, reporting and of course compensation and order execution purposes.

Banner Ads
As with PPC, this is an immediate source of new traffic. Banner Ads provide a “top of page” advertisement linking directly to your site. It is immediate, measurable and trackable.

As with all “outreach” marketing, the ads are initiated by the advertiser and not be the customer so the by definition the conversion rate will be lower than SEO, for instance, which is always initiated by the buyer. This means that the cost per conversion will be higher, particularly over time. However, as part of a coordinated strategy, not as a tactic, Banner Ads can be a valuable source of traffic and an excellent avenue of increasing brand awareness.

Email Marketing
Most companies get a great deal of business from existing customers and clients. Email marketing in the form of nurturing, informative regularly published online newsletters is a great monthly source to spike your traffic and keep your name in front of your customers. Here you can provide new information about new products, services, opportunities and processes to keep your client in mind and up to date. It is a regular reminder to your client of who you are and what you do for them. All of these factors are part of the ABC’s of marketing. Published online with direct links to relevant content on your site does this 21st century way and builds traffic to your site.

Traffic could be all that stands between your company and great success. Rome wasn’t built in a day; however, you can build traffic volume that will be the envy of your competition by employing these straight forward online methods, tools and services to the benefit of your company and your newly found customers.