Drive Traffic to Your Website

Your website won't do you any good if no one finds you.

Most people I talk to think it's difficult to generate web traffic. Honestly, if you work at it a little bit each day, you can effectively build your organic, or natural traffic and start getting found by Google and the other search engines.

Optimize your site for SEO

Make sure your website and it's pages include keywords and phrases that are specific to your industry or niche. Your goal should be creating content that is a keyword density of at least 1.5%. Use your keywords in both the headers and the tags.

Get people to Opt-in

You want to not only create a strong web presence, but encourage your visitors to keep visiting. So you need to create an opt-in form on your website. But don't create an opt-in and begin trying to build your list, UNLESS you have something of value to offer.

Provide a FREE report, eBook, or other viral bonus as incentives for people to join your mailing list. Not only will you build your list more rapidly, you will be engaging with your prospects, and building trust with them.

Have you set up your Google Local yet?

Many small businesses overlook the importance of being found in LOCAL search results. An excellent way to get found online is to claim your business on Google Local. For instance, let's say that you're a bakery in Columbus, OH. Do a search for "bakery Columbus OH" and see if your business comes up in the results. When submitting a local search query to Google, local businesses appear at the top of the search results through Google Maps. See if your business is included. If it is, you can "claim it." This will allow you to input keywords and information related to your business, including a link to your website.

Affiliate Marketing is a way of promoting online business through affiliate programs and advertising that pay the affiliate (meaning YOU) a commission based on the amount of business your specialized or affiliate website delivers to the parent company.


Think of it like revenue sharing or commission based advertising. The term "affiliate marketing," however, is often associated with network marketing or multi-level marketing and therefore many companies prefer to use the term "performance marketing."


Affiliate marketing is the most cost effective sort of marketing there is, and is actually incredibly efficient. For this reason, many companies (especially those that started in the early days of e-commerce) owe a tremendous amount to affiliate marketing (amazon.com is a good example) and it has now become normal for companies to include affiliate marketing in their budgets.


There are three types of compensation methods that are associated with affiliated marketing. The first type is Cost per Click (CPC) or Cost per Mil (CPM.) Basically, the affiliate earns based on how many clicks the affiliate site generates, or by just having the advertisement published on the website. But because of click fraud and many other questionable tactics, CPC is no longer the general form used for affiliate marketing.


Generally, companies now either use CPA (Cost per Action) or CPS (Cost per Sale.) The first is based on how much the advertisement generates interest from the clicker to actually buy or register at the advertised site, the second is based strictly on sales. In other words, an affiliate is paid if the clicker actually purchases something on the advertised site.

One way to get the cash rolling in is to find a product you believe in or want to endorse. You can shop for products at sites like www.clickbank.com or www.e-junkie.com. Each product will have a set sale price, and should clearly illustrate their commission structure for affiliates.

As an affiliate you can use your own email list or website to promote the product. You'll receive some html code when you become an affiliate, and you simply paste that code into your own website or email list. Every time one of your customers or web visitors makes a purchase using your affiliate link, you earn money.

NOT all affiliate programs are created equal, so look around first. You will experience the most success if you sign up with affiliate programs that offer advertising and promotional materials to affiliates. Remember, if you are promoting someone else's product, and they truly want you to succeed...they will supply the tools and resources you need, because when you win, THEY win.

Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources, for example if they are finding you through search engines or links from other sites. Analyze the keywords they used to find you.

Make your customer's visit to your website memorable - offer them multiple ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, coupons etc.

Demonstrate your expertise by writing and submitting articles to directories.

When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer's experience fast and easy.

When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.

Don't look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool.

What is SEO?

SEO is the active practice of optimizing a web site by improving internal and external aspects in order to increase the traffic the site receives from search engines. Optimizing a web site for search engines can require looking at many unique elements.

Why does my website need SEO?

The majority of web traffic is driven by the major commercial search engines - Yahoo!, MSN, Google & AskJeeves (although AOL gets nearly 10% of searches, their engine is powered by Google's results). If your site cannot be found by search engines or your content cannot be put into their databases, you miss out on the incredible opportunities.

Search queries, the words that users type into the search box which contain terms and phrases best suited to your site carry extraordinary value. Experience has shown that search engine traffic can make (or break) a website's success. Targeted visitors to a website can provide publicity, revenue and exposure. Taking the time to properly apply SEO techniques will give you a positive return.

Can't the search engines find my site without SEO?

Search engines are always working towards improving their technology to crawl the web more deeply and return increasingly relevant results. There is however, a limit to how search engines can operate. Utilizing effective strategies can net you thousands of visitors, just as poorly executed SEO can literally bury or hide your site deep in results where there is limited to no visibility.

Create a website that offers valuable content, products or services.

Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words of your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.

Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.

Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.

Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.

Build your network

Another effective strategy for getting found online is building your social network. If you are currently blogging, and I hope that you are, make sure you submit your blog to the social networking sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit, and StumbleUpon.

Blog, Blog, Blog

If you're NOT blogging, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?

Rush over to WordPress or Blogger, set up your free account, and get going! Be sure to use meta tags and keywords to get yourself submitted to search engines properly.

Submit your web pages (every web page and not just the home page) to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if necessary. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.

Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.

Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.

What can 140 little characters do for you anyway? Well, if you want a simple and quick way to let the masses know what you're up to, what product you're promoting, or you want to drive traffic to your blog, you should check out TWITTER.

Twitter asks the question "What are you doing?" and users answer that question, and end up sharing a lot more: everything from their favorite gaming software, to tips on how to remove stains from the carpet, what new sofware is about to be released. Twitter can be used to direct folks to your URL for your website or your blog. Giving something away this week? Tell Twitter. Slashing deals? Tell Twitter. Need to increase readership to your blog - well, you get the idea.

Take Twitter for a whirl and measure the results for yourself.