How Do You Get Traffic?

My biggest problem right now is getting traffic to my website.

My main strategy is to build lots of quality content that will attract links and also free search engine traffic. However, this is a long-term strategy with very little immediate benefits.

Also, in order to get links from other sites, I need to find a way to get people to my site in the first place.

I have been posting in forums and on other related sites, but find this generates few clicks into my site. Some of the people who follow the links stay on m y site for a while and go to many pages (with a few joining my site) but it seems like a lot of work to attract only a few clicks and new members.

I used to buy a lot of traffic through pay per click marketing programs such as AdWords and Yahoo, but this is becoming more difficult. Even though I'm bidding on terms that are very relevant to my website, AdWords quality scores says I'm not relevant enough and have to pay a minimum of a dollar to bid on my terms. This sucks. I think I should probably play the Google game and figure out how to improve my quality score, but I think the main thing my quality score needs is more links into my website and a higher pagerank. That is kinda like saying I need some eggs in order to buy chickens.

I've also tried offline promotions with limited success. An ad in a related magazine didn't seem to bring in any traffic, and I'm not used to advertising in ways that are almost impossible to track and judge.

So what should I do to get more traffic as I build the content and quality of my site?

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Permalink Reply by Tom McCann on September 7, 2008 at 9:14pm
I'm going through the same thing. This whole online business thing was a lot easier when PPC traffic was easier and cheaper to buy.
Permalink Reply by James Scott on September 22, 2008 at 11:06am
So true. Google seems to be favoring the bigger sites in their algos which I guess makes sense because the large number of affiliate sites just trying to buy traffic to get people to click on their ads weren't relevant at all for the searchers and that probably was leading on people to click less on the ads.

However, not all small businesses and new sites are doing this, but they are being punished along with the affiliate sites.
Permalink Reply by Tom McCann on September 23, 2008 at 2:54pm
I read somewhere that people who do PPC marketing for other companies find it much easier to run campaigns for companies with websites that have been online for numerous years.
Permalink Reply by James Scott on October 23, 2008 at 11:15am
How long a site has been online seems very likely to play a role in the Google algo.

Plus, we know PageRank makes a difference and it is hard for new sites to have a lot of sites linking to them so new sites generally have lower PageRanks.
Permalink Reply by Tom McCann on December 5, 2008 at 12:37pm
OK, so the basic traffic generating strategies are:

1. Write lots of quality content. This generates search engine traffic and gives repeat visitors something to read. Lots of quality content could also lead to links from other sites.

2. PPC - Buying traffic from search engine PPC programs can lead to a very accountable form of lead generation, but buying PPC traffic is getting harder to do.

3. Post on other sites, blogs, communities. This can generate traffic, but the traffic is sometimes poor (depending on the site you are posting on) and few people click the link in the comment section. Lots of work for a little traffic.

4. Offline marketing - Very poor performance from my experience. Good to place web site on all marketing materials, but putting your ad in magazine ads or television ads is only for big companies who are doing long-term branding campaigns.

5. Buy links on other sites. This can work if you target certain sites in your target market, but will not work if you pay a company to put your link on "thousands" of sites for only $19.99. If I tried this, I would watch my stats reports very closely to make sure I was getting traffic from the sites I am paying to display my ads.

6. What am I missing?

In the end, no matter where we get traffic from, we want the visitor to find a good site with quality content. This means that creating quality content optimized for the search engines should be our first priority. I know this is hard to do when we think that nobody is reading what we are writing, but we need to keep in mind that future visitors will read this content.
Permalink Reply by James Scott on December 19, 2008 at 2:15pm
Well, I've decided that I have good sites and really need to start getting more people to visit these sites. I have been writing lots of content and trying to get my links out there, but this is going so slow that it is driving me crazy.

I've decided that I need to jump back into the PPC game.

I remember now why I stopped doing it last year. Google makes it pretty difficult to buy traffic from them.

I have a site about a very specific thing, I bid on very specific keywords related to that market, and yet Google says my landing page is not relevant. What??? How could my landing page not be relevant if my entire site is about the exact keyword I am targeting. Very frustrating.

Since Google is being difficult in allowing me to buy traffic, I guess I will try to buy traffic from other search engines. I'll try to let people here know how it goes.
Permalink Reply by Tom McCann on December 20, 2008 at 9:36am
Are you going to focus on the other big networks (MSN & Yahoo) or are you going to try some of the smaller PPC search engines?
Permalink Reply by James Scott on December 22, 2008 at 11:50am
Right now I am doing some testing on Yahoo.

I am considering testing a PPC search engine called SearchFeed and another one called Search7.

Has anyone used these second tier PPC engines? Any luck?
Permalink Reply by Tom McCann on December 26, 2008 at 11:39am
I was watching one of the videos from the Affiliate Summit site and one of the PPC gurus said that SearchFeed is basically the best traffic from MIVA. So I would test traffic from SearchFeed before trying to test traffic from MIVA.

Another thing I found interesting from that presentation was that the traffic from second tier PPC engines seems to start out solid and then drops off in quality after a couple of weeks.

The presenter said that the search companies seem to think that if you are still buying traffic after a couple of weeks, then you might want more traffic and so they start sending you traffic from other sources that might be of a lower quality. Be aware of this in case things start out well and then drop off after a couple of weeks.
Permalink Reply by James Scott on December 30, 2008 at 11:34am
Thanks. SearchFeed was on my list of engines I want to try so that was helpful information.

I'm getting some traffic from yahoo, but it is a little expensive. I have it going into a sales page and the traffic is clicking on the offer, but no sales yet. It is a high end (low conversion) type of product.

Some of the traffic is leaving the sales page and exploring the other areas of the site. This is what I wanted. I need to make a few sales in order to pay for the traffic, but I'm also getting some traffic that is checking out the rest of my site.

Tough to decide if I should be sending the traffic to my homepage (people check out site and some join, but no sales conversions right away so losing money while this happens) or send the traffic to a sales page (most people leave my site when they click on the offer, but few are going through the site and becomming members).

I'll keep testing and let you know how it goes.

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