Three Types of Website Traffic: Bringing People to Your Website

by James Fowler
www.mywebsource1.com

Where does website traffic come from? You’ve had your website built and you are ready to attract customers, but how do you get them to come to you? If no one shows up to your web site, there is no way to sell your products or services. Just because you have a web site doesn’t mean people will come to it. There are three ways to get traffic to your web site, outlined below:

1. Pay For Your Traffic.
This is commonly referred to as “Pay-per-Click” (PPC) advertising. Basically, this means that you do not pay for the advertising unless your ad works! You only pay a fee, that you determine ahead of time, for the advertisement if someone clicks on your ad.


There are three major companies that do PPC advertising:
Google Adwords
Yahoo Network Sponsored Search (formally called Overture)
MSN AdCenter

There are dozens of other, smaller PPC advertising companies, as well, but these three will give you the most “bang for your buck”. It will depend on where your customers and clients shop that will help you decide where to place your purchases.

Once you decide on a PPC company to use, you create an account, decide upon keywords, and create your advertisements. You decide how much you wish to spend per day, where you want the ads to appear - geographically, and what time of day the ads can appear.

PPC advertising will most definitely get you results. It works. However, be forewarned, because without constant monitoring of PPC, you could end up spending money you do not wish to. For this reason, you may want to get a professional to watch your ad campaigns. This group of professionals – known as search engine marketers - can set up your accounts, pick the best keywords, and monitor the results. For this usage, a typical fee of 10%-15% of your advertising budget is the normal charge. Thus, for every $100 you spend on PPC ads, plan on spending an additional $10-$15 to your Search Engine Marketer.


2. Trade For Traffic
Depending upon your niche, this way of bringing people to your web site can be very effective. There are two ideal ways to go about doing this: Link Exchanges and Joint Ventures with Naturally, Existing Economic Relationships (N.E.E.R.s). This type of garnering web traffic is also a part of something called Organic Search Engine Marketing (SEO).

In a Link Exchange, you write an email to a website asking for them to put a link back to your own website. Typically, you will want to have the other website’s link already on your website and show that owner that, in good faith, you have already placed their link. Another way of doing this is to have website owners place your link on their website because you do business with them, write on their web boards, or comment on their blogs.

Note: Trade for Traffic is not easy. It takes work. Also, this type of web marketing is not targeted. The information is usually in a place that can have some benefit to people needing your wares and services, but there is no guarantee. The benefit of it is that it has a longer lasting effects on how people will find you and come to your web site.

The second option, Joint Ventures, is essentially where you would contact another marketer or company who had products that complements yours. You would try to convince these people to write about your products or company. They could place this in articles, newsletters, on their blogs, or in a video. This also takes work, but the aspect of getting other people to advertise for you has a stronger impact on the consumer than by interrupting their day with your ads.

The key things to remember about trading for traffic is that it is give and take. What people do for you today, you will have to return at a later date. It is a community effect and you have to hold up your end of the bargin.


3. Create Your Own Traffic.
Creating your own traffic is, by far, the best and easiest way to bring in people to your web site. The first way is to encourage customers to become repeat customers. Once a month, you MUST bring yourself to top of your customers mind and remind them that you exist. You can do this though an email, a newsletter, a fax, or whatever means you have at your disposal. Reminding customers to come back will ensure new sales. Change your web site often and give them an added reason to return.

Another important item: Have your web site address on everything you have in print at your business. Business cards, invoices, ads, envelopes, etc… are all ways for people to get in touch with you on your web site.

Bringing in new customers to your website can be more difficult. There are dozens of ways to do this, however. Create a video on your camcorder. Make sure you put your web site address on the video and have a page that hosts all of your (upcoming) videos. Most video sites will allow you to do this, today. Video is becoming one of the top-most searched areas on the internet. In a word, it is HUGE.

Grab people’s attention by writing articles and blogging. If you are perceived as an expert in your field, people will start turning to you for advice and resources.

Advertise on free web sites on the internet, like Craig’s List (www.craigslist.com). This is easy to do and will get your name noticed.

Create something free to give away, like an eBook, or a funny picture on your web site. Giving away something for free grabs people’s attentions.

So you can see, there are literally hundreds of ways to bring more traffic to your web site. You can go by three routes. Spend money and buy the ads to bring people to your web site. Spend time and get other people to bring people to your web site. Or spend resources and entice the people to come to your web site on your own.

Doing one of these three methods, if done with diligence, will bring people to your web site and increase your sales.