Traffic 101

There are many ways in which you can begin generating traffic to your website or blog. Let’s begin by taking a look at some of the more popular techniques:

Niche Marketing Based Traffic

This is when you chisel down into the markets and determine a sub niche that you wish to target. For example, instead of weight loss (a mainstream niche), you should dig down into the niche and instead, focus on “teen weight loss”, or “weight loss after pregnancy”. The more focused your niche, the easier it often is to rank higher in the search engines as well as generate traffic to your website.

Another example of chiseling into a broad niche would be that of relationships. Rather than creating a campaign focused on relationships in general, you would select a specific type of relationship (marriage, divorce, online dating, getting your ex back, seduction, etc).

Niche Marketing is very important because it allows you to know what your ideal prospect is, and once you have that information, your marketing efforts will be laser targeted towards capturing as much of that traffic as you can.

PPC (Pay Per Click) Advertising

This is when you purchase advertising with companies like Google Adwords or Yahoos’ Overture, and pay for every click made by someone viewing your ads and visiting your website.

The concept is a very simple one. You simply bid on specific keywords that you are looking to rank for and your advertisement will appear on the Sponsor Listings sidebar on sites like www.Google.com whenever someone searches for your keywords or keyword phrases.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is accomplished when you create a marketing campaign around a topic that becomes “buzz worthy”.  This can be done with controversial tactics, taking an opposing view, or in creating something entertaining, comical or interesting to the large majority of your market.

While Viral Marketing is often one of the best forms of marketing due to the weight in which your campaign is carried by referrals and word of mouth, setting up effective viral campaigns is not always so easy, especially when you are forced to create a strategy that is likely to stand the test of time, as well as consistently motivating others to carry your message for you, (hence, ‘viral’).

Social Marketing

Marketing to social communities like www.FaceBook.com, www.Digg.com or www.Twitter.com is a free form of advertising that can be warmly received if introduced in a careful, sociable way.  Within social marketing campaigns, you must approach your market using a slightly different angle, ensuring that you are offering useful, free information mixed in with your promotional campaigns.  Failure to balance being the two can result in an immediate failure of your campaigns. Still, if done correctly, a website can instantly launch with wild success all from within small social groups.

Search Engine Optimization

The king of traffic, search engine optimization and marketing. Known as the prime source of traffic due to its organic nature, SEO is one of the most important aspects of Internet Marketing, starting with on-site SEO (elements you tweak on your website itself) and off-site SEO, which consist of back links and other forms of generating consistent traffic through higher ranking and added weight.