Photo by extranoise
Pretty much everyone reading this wants more traffic. You dream of the day when hordes of people descend upon your website and you finally make a gazillion dollars.
But the sad fact is that this will never happen for most of us. Most of us will always be wishing for more traffic but will never really know how to get it.
You jump from search engine optimization to social media marketing to whatever tactic is hot today.
But none of that really works in the end because you are missing 1 key ingredient to traffic generation.
The missing ingredient
The missing ingredient in your traffic formula is this: Give people what they want.
Sounds too simple, right?
But it’s true. If you give people what they want, and I mean exactly what they want, they will line up at your door 7 days a week.
Example: Every year tons of people get skin cancer and what many of them want more than anything is to find a cure. Now imagine that you have a cure for skin cancer that is fast and painless. How long would it take for people to line up at your door and pay you vast sums of money? How long would it take for word to spread?
Getting traffic is all about giving people what they want. Find a need and fill it.
The need that you fill it doesn’t have to be life-threatening like cancer. It could be something like how to stop smoking, how to stop snoring, or how to get more traffic to a website.
Sometimes it’s a need is for entertainment and there are thousands of websites with jokes and funny videos to fill this need.
Other times people are looking for information or product they are thinking of buying. This need is filled by a site with a genuine product review. (Unfortunately most of the product reviews that I come across are little more than a sales letter.)
Consumer Reports made a whole business out of reviewing products.
What need are you filling?
If you want more traffic you need to ask yourself, “What need am I filling?”
What problems are you solving?
How are you helping people get what they want?
But I don’t know what people really want or need
This is the problem every marketer faces and it can be tricky.
Luckily we have the Internet which makes solving this problem fairly simple.
1. Do a little research and determine what topics people are searching for
Every day a gazillion people search Google for solutions to their problems. All of this data is collected and analyzed by Google and there is a way for you to access it too.
Watch Video: Keyword Research Part 1: Finding keywords with lots of searches
2. Use Amazon’s Best Sellers Lists
One of the simplest ways to find out what out exactly what people want is to look at products that are selling really right now. And Amazon makes this easy with their Best Sellers Lists.
In every category, from books to movies to electronics, Amazon will tell you what is selling like hotcakes right now. And because everything is done electronically they can update their list on a daily basis.
3. Visit forums and see what questions people have
Just about every niche has a forum online where people come the other to ask questions and get information. Forums are great places to gain an understanding of what people really want.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
"Use Amazon’s Best Sellers Lists"
This really works.
I have a site running for a niche (about 40 products) which are availabel on amazon. I offer pricing and availability information on my site and when the interested visitor clicks to amazon, they often buy not only the product i promoted, but also additional stuff.
It does work. It's crazy that all that information is out there for free. You just have to know where to look.
You make valid points but if you don't SEO and you can find someone who does you can get the traffic you want.