Over the last week, we’ve been talking about Traffic, and just the other day I asked about your frustrations about getting that traffic, and learning how to get that traffic.
Dan Goodwin says he doesn’t know who to trust.
Alex Newell says
“It’s not just that there is a mountain of information it is not knowing which parts,of it are important and what to do first.”
Phil Churleington says
“We have a dozen or more people emailing us with different solutions. They may be GREAT solutions…but…What’s the FIRST THING? And then, what’s NEXT? There’s no one (trustworthy) to help us.”
And Margaret says
“I agree with the others – I have read so much info that I feel like my brain is on overload.”
Most of the comments seem to echo these, and include several very distressing stories about people spending $30k or more on an education that they don’t feel they’ve received yet (based on their results).
The truth of the matter is that there is NO magic wand. Anyone who promises you a flood of traffic tomorrow for your credit card payment today is a huckster.
The people who tell you that you CAN get traffic, but it takes some work and persistence and that you need to treat it like a real job (part time or full time is your decision) are more likely to care about your success.
And by no small coincidence, they also care what you think about them, the reputation they are building, and the value of their word, and their name.
They’re not here today and gone tomorrow.
And hopefully what they’ll tell you is this:
THE BASICS OF ONLINE TRAFFIC
There are two parts to getting organic traffic online.
1) Set up your page so that any search engine, following its own rules and doing the automatic things it does, can easily figure out what your page is all about. This part of Search Engine Optimization is called “Internal” or “On Page” SEO, and is critically important to take care of BEFORE you do anything else.
2) Get links pointing to your site that give both people and search engines a reason to come to your site. This is called “External SEO” or “Link Building”, and it’s important because Search Engines basically treat every incoming link as a vote about a site’s relevance or importance for a particular topic or keyword.
Now there are lots of ways to get inbound links to your sites, but none of the (legitimate) ones are “click this button and you’ll get 1,000 links”. They all take time. That doesn’t mean they’re hard, because most aren’t. They just take time.
And not all links are created equal. You need all kinds of links pointing to your site to give it real value, and get real traffic. Oh, and one thing you should know: If you’ve got links pointing to your sites FROM YOUR SITES, they don’t count quite so much. What you need are links from other sites. How do you get those? Like this:
Published Articles
You can write your own articles and get them posted almost immediately all over the web. You just need to write them and submit them. The magic here is that other people in your niche will download your articles — the rules say they have to include the link back to your site — and put them on their own sites (like their blogs or forums or in their newsletters). Bingo — you’ve got links back to your sites.
Blogs
Blogs are automatically SEO-friendly (though not perfectly). Still, they are a fantastic way to create keyword-rich content. Plus, blogs are built to naturally attract and automatically handle and take advantage of incoming links. Blogs also allow you to drive traffic back to yourself from Web2 and social media sites like Digg.com, Technorati.com, Squidoo.com and maybe most importantly — from other people’s blogs.
Web2
Social media sites like the ones I just mentioned (and stumbleupon, and twitter, and facebook and on and on…) have one unique thing in common…they let you create a page or entry on THEIR highly ranked site. And on that page you can put links back to YOUR sites. You are in control there, but it’s on someone else’s site. You can’t spam the things — they’ll shut you down for that — but if you build your Web2 presence properly, you can attract and drive a ton of traffic.
Affiliates
Affiliate traffic may be the second-closest thing to immediate traffic that you can get. But you’ve got to be set up to receive that traffic so your affiliate gets credit for the traffic they send you. And you’ve got to learn how to talk to potential affiliates to get them to work with you. If you’re having trouble getting someone to put your link on their site, an affiliate commission might help persuade them. And YES, you can have affiliates whether you sell information products or physical products.
Adwords
So what is the quickest way to get traffic to your site? Adwords. It’s also potentially the one that can drain your bank account the quickest. That’s because every click to your site will cost you a few cents to a few dollars. But, if your site can convert those visitors to buyers, the math is easy: Pay a dollar, earn two dollars.
Craigslist
Maybe not a category all its own, but since Craigslist is the 12th most visited site on the entire English-language internet, it deserves a mention. You can post to Craigslist for Free, and have your ad running 15 minutes from now. CL is focused on local services and products, though, and it works in a relatively strange way. But…the power of Craigslist to drive traffic to your site is hard to beat — especially for the price.
Now, there are other traffic methods (banner ads, link exchanges, etc) but these are the most common and popular categories. And frankly, just a little bit of attention to each of these traffic methods every day or two will flood you with traffic…eventually.
Good?
Well, maybe not. At least not if you are like Robynne who said
“I’ve been in that unable-to-prioritize-or-know-what-I-SHOULD DO FIRST overwhelm for about 3 years, (seriously)”
So the last thing I want to do is overwhelm you, which is why I want to point out the wisdom in what Gary C said. Gary is going to take…
“…one idea and start applying it with focused action. Once I have that one working and producing traffic, then I can move to the next one. Eventually I will have multiple streams of traffic.”
Gary is a smart guy. Gary is prepared to actually do the work, rather than chasing pipe dreams. Gary is going to follow a system and an action plan. He’s going to get up every day and do what it takes to inch closer to his goal.
So my question for YOU is this…
If you were given a map to more traffic — starting from internal SEO and ending with multiple streams of traffic — things you’d need to touch every day or two — would you follow that map?
Would you be consistent? Could you be persistent?
I hope your answer is YES, because here’s the bottom line.
If you’re not willing to do the work, you may as well quit now. Right now. Success will never come in any other form. You’ve got to do the work — a little at a time — every day.
You can’t count on luck. Or magic pills. Or a fairy godmother.
Nope. She’s not flying in to cast a “rich” spell on you today.
On the other hand…
YOU have the power already. It’s yours to use, if you choose.
So what is it for you? Let me know. Quit or Succeed? Are you willing to do the work? Or are you waiting for the magic pill.
Give me your reply below.
To Your Success,
–Mark Widawer
P.S. There were a bunch of posts on my blog the last few days complaining about how there are so many hucksters looking to sell you something for a few thousand dollars, and promising instant results (did you see the comment about the ad promising “$500 in 2 hours?”).
That’s how that one guy spent $30k already.
Why do you think that happens?
It’s because people like to buy magic pills. Everybody wants one.
And even though they don’t exist, almost everybody buys one at some point in their lives (some people more often than others.)
So I’m not asking you if you want a magic pill here. I’m asking you if you had the chance to do the work to have what you really want — and you say you want traffic — would you follow it?
Let me know.
–M