Business
Valuation Made Quick, Easy and Inexpensive!
By Jack Humphrey
Posted Nov. 3, 2004
Many of my clients
and list members ask the same questions when it
comes to generating website traffic. From the
questions, I can sometimes pick up a thread of
misunderstanding about website promotion. One
of those threads surfaced last week and turned
into this article.
There are actually two broad
types of website promotion: Active and Passive.
Things that fall into the
category of Passive are:
1) Search engine optimization
2) Writing and Growing Website Content (The pages
on your site whether they be articles, reports,
your weblog, or a forum)
Many more website promotion
tactics fall into the Active Category:
1) Syndicating your content
(like this article for example)
2) Paid advertising (Banner and test ads, pay-per-click
advertising, ezine advertising, etc.)
3) Linking strategies (Reciprocal and non reciprocal
linking)
4) Being active in your "community"
(Posting to forums that your customers and associates
frequent, for example.)
5) Doing teleseminars
6) Offline networking
7) Joint ventures with businesses who have the
attention of your target market.
8) Free classified advertising (Some people still
see benefits from this type of advertising to
this day online.)
9) Offline media advertising (Radio, TV, Newspaper,
Trade Magazines and other publications, etc.)
10) Reports, software and other viral free tools
that point back to your paid services or products.
The two types of promotion
are also referred to as "push/pull"
website promotion. Passive website promotion "pulls"
traffic TO your site while active promotion goes
out on the web and "pushes" traffic
to your site.
Looking at the two lists
above, where do you think, if you HAD to choose
between them, your time would be best spent?
Now I will never knock search
engine marketing. That is a great source of sometimes
massive free traffic. Sometimes. Unless you are
in a niche that is very competitive. You see,
if you are in a competitive niche you will always
be out-spent and out-worked by companies with
endless budgets and staff for the top positions.
Most mom and pop sites in
competitive niches are not going to do well in
the search engines if they don't spend exorbitant
sums of time, training, and money on getting their
sites perfected just for search engines.
You should do what you can
do with optimization. Do what you can afford in
time and money. Realize that search engine marketing
is an ongoing battle to get and keep good rankings.
It is a long term, ongoing traffic solution.
But also realize there is
a lot of active promotion you can do today to
get people to your site who are interested in
your product/service whether your site is in the
engines or not.
Most people still think
you have to wait a long time to make ANYTHING
happen for your traffic stats to start improving.
That's not true. You could get a boost in traffic
in as little as a couple of hours using active
website promotion strategies.
The simplest way would be
to go to Google and start an adwords campaign.
Simple meaning it is easy to start with an account
and create your first ad. But then more complicated
in that you need to actively watch your stats
and improve conversion rates to get the most return
for the money you spend to get that traffic.
It's a good strategy though,
especially if you master the science of PPC advertising.
I have a bonus in my Power Linking Course at http://power-linking-profits.com
that was created by Jonathan Mizel and Adwords
guru Perry Marshall that breaks down exactly what
it takes to win the PPC game.
But there are other techniques
listed in the active section above that are free
and easy to implement which can result in traffic
immediately.
Each one of the things in
both lists above can be broken out into much more
detailed "plans" for your website marketing
campaign. It depends on your goals, your product
or service, and the amount of time you have to
promote your site, which tactics you use and how
much time you allocate to each.
I'll give you a hint on
one of the more powerful traffic and branding
tools. You are reading one right now. I would
sell a fraction of the number of my courses if
people weren't able to quickly and easily find
several of my articles on hundreds of sites in
the search engines.
Writing articles and reports
and syndicating them is a short and long-term
traffic and branding solution. I will caution
you on this though: Don't just write a slew of
"words" and submit a cruddy article
all over the net. You will be branded alright.
Branded as a hack or a NON-expert in your field.
You have to care about the
reader experience enough to give them something
of value in each article you write. This is the
only way you should proceed with becoming a writer
and syndicating your content. The more you give
your readers, the more you get from them in sales
and word-of-mouth advertising.
After awhile, if you are
good, people start seeking out your articles on
your site or elsewhere on the web. This is the
"sweet spot" of writing for the web.
Writer's Mecca. Publisher's Valhalla, if you will.
Hate to write? Hire a ghost
writer. At http://webfoxmedia.com you can get
10 keyword optimized 500+ word articles written
for you at a very good price. And you own the
copyrights and can use the articles as content
for your site (passively) as well as syndicate
them globally (active promotion).
The best advice I can give
you though is to become more active in the things
that work. Just get going and set aside a real
plan for your day-to-day promotion of your website.
Don't get into "quick-fixes" or let
yourself fall for the latest traffic scheme.
If you read about a traffic
gimmick that leaves you wondering in the least
about its real efficacy in driving targeted traffic
to your site, just move on to the things above
and don't waste your time on such things.
If website promotion was
truly easy and effortless, every site on the net
would have a tons of traffic and you wouldn't
be reading this article on how to get more of
it!
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