Thrudigital

Every webmaster faces the problem of increasing their site’s traffic. Moreover, this traffic needs to be targeted in order to assure that the traffic will generate conversions (whether you’re aiming for sales, clicks on ads, or whatever.) Basically you can choose one or more methods to improve your rankings, and thus your traffic. The first and the easiest is to buy traffic: it’s possible to get 10,000 guaranteed visits for about $8 or $10. But, think… if it’s so easy to get 10,000 views, why not buy 1,000,000? The problem with this kind of traffic is that your web site is shown to people who are not at all interested in your site, and these people may often be paid for having a browser window open. In these cases, the browser is open, and websites load for between 30 and 60 seconds each. So, your unique “visitors” are paid simply for having a browser open. All in all, you will gain nothing from this in the end, and your money was wasted. For example, try to open www.surfjunky.com. It promises money for surfing, but no-one has ever been paid (Google the phrase ’surfjunky scam’ for proof of this.)

The second way to increase targeted web site traffic
Pay-per-click (PPC) or pay-per-impression (CPM) advertising programs work well, though you may be concerned about click fraud or the reliability of the company you are dealing with. Some advertising networks allow you to show ads as a pop-up window, or proxy web sites. All this costs money, but there is one simple way to get targeted visitors to your web site for free. Let’s talk about it:

The easiest and the guaranteed way to increase traffic on your web site
It is SEO. However, I am not going to share the usual theories about what SEO is, or how to do it. Instead, I am going to show you a method that cannot fail. There are slightly different techniques, depending on certain conditions, but the general process remains the same. So, if your web site already receives some organic traffic, you should check your analytics and find search terms that lead to your site. Otherwise, skip this section and move to the next paragraph. So, returning to the original point, these phrases can be from Google, Yahoo! or MSN, or from a cross-section of search-engines. You simply need to find phrases that contain question terms: which, who, what, why, when, etc. Now, answer some of these questions and publish the answers on your site. Since all questions have already been asked, it is very likely they will be asked again. After new pages (I strongly recommend that you only publish one Q&A per page) are indexed by search engines, your chances of further visitors are much higher. However, this may not bring an increase in sales. So what is the ultimate point of this strategy? If new visitors come to your site and find it useful, they are likely to link to it. Your web site will garner more and more links as the number of answered questions increases. The more incoming links your web site has, the better positions in search engines it receives. Higher positions mean increased targeted traffic. It will be targeted because you’re targeting each page to a specific kind of visitor. Informative pages are for those who want information, product pages are for those who want to buy things. At the moment you just don’t have enough top 10 positions. With question-and-answer pages, you can! If you’re wondering how many visits a web site can receive via “question-like” phrases, then skip the following paragraph (it’s for those with low organic traffic) and check the snapshots. Bear in mind that if you answer only 5-10 questions, your web site will not receive a large traffic boost. Try to think in terms of thousands of questions, and everything will make sense.

Now imagine that your web site receives little or no organic traffic. In order to increase it, you need to analyse what people want the most. They’re often looking for answers, because the internet is full of free information. If I had to start a web site from scratch, I’d use the question-and-answer format. It’s impossible to predict all potential questions asked, but you consider what is likely, and you cause Google’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. So how easy is it in reality? Look at the snapshot below, and you can see the potential of this technique. Then, re-read the paragraph above, which will help you understand how it all works.

And now some more snapshots, from the statistics for aqua-fish.net. Snapshots show traffic between September/16/2008 and October/16/2008.

Of course, some phrases may be sections of longer phrases. For instance, “who” is a part of “wholesale”. It’s up to you to select the phrases, but this SEO technique can bring real results very fast, because people often neglect to focus on long phrases. However, rankings for short phrases usually come after those for longer phrases.

Answering questions is a tedious and ultimately endless process, and your time could be wasted for several weeks, but building a website’s traffic through satisfying visitors is the best way to achieve your goal. Of course, there are many ways to increasing your traffic, which I will focus on in later articles.