There are numerous ways to get traffic and below I have listed the top 5 that account for 95% of all my traffic. This is what has worked for me.
1. Start with great content
This seems to be the part that 90% of people miss. If you do not have great content then the following 4 things won’t work very well.
Having great content may seem insurmountable at first. But it’s not that hard if you start with a topic or niche that you are knowledgeable about.
All you need to do is post a valuable things to your blog. And then offer to answer peoples questions. Every time someone asks a question make sure you answer the question. By doing so you were building a relationship with them. These people will come back to your website and visit more pages.
There is one exception I should point out where you don’t have to how fantastic content. In this case mediocre content may do just fine. This is the case where you how a very specific niche and very little competition. In this case you can get consistent traffic from the search engines without too much work or fabulous content.
2. Traffic from Search Engines
If you want to get traffic from search engines then you need to play by the rules of the game.
Rule #1: keyword research
It’s important to begin with keyword research before selecting a domain for your website. Identify the keywords you want to rank for in the search engines and make sure they are in your domain.
Download a Free Copy of Nick’s Keyword Research Basics
Rule #2: search engine optimization
You want to make sure your keywords are in all the right places so that your website is optimized for the search engines. If you’re using a blogging platform like WordPress then this can be done for you with a good theme for your blog. Thesis is my favorite WordPress theme and takes care of search engine optimization for me. It’s the one I use for this blog.
If you want to go through all the steps of search engine optimization then check out: SEO – Everything you need to know
Rule #3: have good content
In the past search engines like Google relied on search engine optimization and a count of back links to determine where your site should rank.
But this is changing. Google has found other ways to determine how useful your site is to your visitors.
With the help of Google AdSense, Google Analytics, and Google Chrome they can track how many minutes the average person stays on your site. They can track how many pages a person visits before leaving and how likely that visitor is to come back.
The longer people stay and the more pages they visit the more Google thinks your site is useful. This will cause your site to rank higher.
If the average person leaves your site immediately after visiting one page then Google is going to notice this and rank your site lower.
3. Traffic from social media
If you have great content then this is a fantastic way to get traffic. I have received lot of traffic from stumble upon and twitter. The interesting thing is that out of all of my 100′s of blog posts, 5 of my blog posts have received 90% of the traffic. These happen to be my 5 most popular posts.
What I learned from this is that things that are very valuable will go viral and spread very quickly. My average blog post gets little or no traffic from social media.
To learn more about how to get traffic from social media check out:
- 10 Ways To Get More Traffic From Twitter
- Video: I got 1,300 visitors fom StumbleUpon in the last week
- Free Stumbles
4. Traffic from return visitors
Return visitors are important because they are the ones that trust you.
They are far more likely to trust a product recommendation and buy it.
They are the ones who leave comments and help you build your community.
They are the ones who will ask questions and tell you what their problems are. This is important because it helps you generate better content.
So you want to have as many return visitors as possible. This takes time but there are things you can do to expedite the process. Start with great content and then make it easy for people to stay up to date. This means having a link to your RSS feed above the fold and where visitors can see it. Have link to your twitter account also above the fold.
There are also some design things you can do to make people more likely to come back:
5. Traffic from your e-mail list
Getting traffic from your e-mail list is a great way to get instant free traffic that is targeted to your niche. People that have opted in to your e-mail list have a lot in common with return visitors. They trust you. They trust your product recommendation and they’re a lot more likely to come back to your site and visit your advertisements.
I outlined 12 Steps To Setup An Email Newsletter, Get Traffic, And Make Money
Not all traffic is created equal
There are numerous other ways to get traffic back I have not outlined in this post. I skipped these methods because most of them involve sending lots of untargeted traffic to your website.
What you really want is targeted traffic. 1 targeted visitor is more valuable than 100 untargeted visitors.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Search engine traffic is what I am targetting, because that is the closest thing to passive income! I just received my first to search visitors yesterday, so I am looking to see this drastically increase.
Congratulations and keep up the good work.
I agree with the concept of focusing on content. Then build the links.
For social traffic, I simply comment on blogs like this.
It seems to work well where the visitors are hungry for more related blog posts that could give them an edge in their marketing.
Thanks Andrew. Which blogs work best for you?
So far most of my sales seem to come from search engines. It seems like when my some of my pages for my keywords rank within the top 5 of google is when i get the best conversions. The problem is getting those pages to stick. Of course if your content is garbage then you can forget about any sales at all anyway. Thanks for all the great info you provide it's great for newbies like me.
I looked at your site and it looks pretty good. I suspect that you get a lot of targeted traffic from search engines. If people are searching for a specific make and model then it is quite likely that they are ready to buy.
If you are building a simple pre-sell page for an affiliate product, then isn't your content somewhat less important? Obviously it has to be good copy, but your goal is not to get the visitor to remain on your site and click on lots of pages, but to move through to the product site.
Similar for Adsense. I've read on forums that people got best Adsense results by posting short articles with not a lot of information, so the visitor would HAVE to click on the Adsense ad to learn something.
I am familiar with both of these strategies.
The problem lies in that you never develop return visitors. You are always fighting to get new visitors to your website. You have to play the search engine game and optimize for the latest rules and rumors about Google and other search engines.
You can make all the money in the short run but it's hard work.
I believe that you are far better off building great content and building a relationship of trust with your readers. With this trust you can promote different affiliate products and get 10 or 100 times the conversion rate than if you just threw up another affiliate presell page.