Many of my clients and list members ask the same questions when
it comes to generating website traffic. From the questions, I
can sometimes pick up a thread of misunderstanding about website
promotion. One of those threads surfaced last week and turned
into this article.
There are actually two broad types of website promotion: Active
and Passive.
Things that fall into the category of Passive are:
1) Search engine optimization
2) Writing and Growing Website Content (The pages on your site
whether they be articles, reports, your weblog, or a forum)
Many more website promotion tactics fall into the Active
Category:
1) Syndicating your content (like this article for example)
2) Paid advertising (Banner and test ads, pay-per-click
advertising, ezine advertising, etc.)
3) Linking strategies (Reciprocal and non reciprocal linking)
4) Being active in your "community" (Posting to forums that
your customers and associates frequent, for example.)
5) Doing teleseminars
6) Offline networking
7) Joint ventures with businesses who have the attention of
your target market.
8) Free classified advertising (Some people still see benefits
from this type of advertising to this day online.)
9) Offline media advertising (Radio, TV, Newspaper, Trade
Magazines and other publications, etc.)
10) Reports, software and other viral free tools that point back
to your paid services or products.
The two types of promotion are also referred to as "push/pull"
website promotion. Passive website promotion "pulls" traffic TO
your site while active promotion goes out on the web and "pushes"
traffic to your site.
Looking at the two lists above, where do you think, if you HAD
to choose between them, your time would be best spent?
Now I will never knock search engine marketing. That is a great
source of sometimes massive free traffic. Sometimes. Unless you
are in a niche that is very competitive. You see, if you are in
a competitive niche you will always be out-spent and out-worked
by companies with endless budgets and staff for the top positions.
Most mom and pop sites in competitive niches are not going to do
well in the search engines if they don't spend exorbitant sums
of time, training, and money on getting their sites perfected
just for search engines.
You should do what you can do with optimization. Do what you can
afford in time and money. Realize that search engine marketing
is an ongoing battle to get and keep good rankings. It is a long
term, ongoing traffic solution.
But also realize there is a lot of active promotion you can do
today to get people to your site who are interested in your
product/service whether your site is in the engines or not.
Most people still think you have to wait a long time to make
ANYTHING happen for your traffic stats to start improving.
That's not true. You could get a boost in traffic in as little
as a couple of hours using active website promotion strategies.
The simplest way would be to go to Google and start an adwords
campaign. Simply meaning, it is easy to start with an account
and create your first ad. But then more complicated in that you
need to actively watch your stats and improve conversion rates
to get the most return for the money you spend to get that
traffic.
It's a good strategy though, especially if you master the
science of PPC advertising. I have a bonus in my Power
Linking Course at http://power-linking-profits.com that was
created by Jonathan Mizel and Adwords guru Perry Marshall that
breaks down exactly what it takes to win the PPC game.
But there are other techniques listed in the active section
above that are free and easy to implement which can result in
traffic immediately.
Each one of the things in both lists above can be broken out
into much more detailed "plans" for your website marketing
campaign. It depends on your goals, your product or service, and
the amount of time you have to promote your site, which tactics
you use and how much time you allocate to each.
I'll give you a hint on one of the more powerful traffic and
branding tools. You are reading one right now. I would sell a
fraction of the number of my courses if people weren't able to
quickly and easily find several of my articles on hundreds of
sites in the search engines.
Writing articles and reports and syndicating them is a short
and long-term traffic and branding solution. I will caution you
on this though: Don't just write a slew of "words" and submit a
cruddy article all over the net. You will be branded alright.
Branded as a hack or a NON-expert in your field.
You have to care about the reader experience enough to give them
something of value in each article you write. This is the only
way you should proceed with becoming a writer and syndicating
your content. The more you give your readers, the more you get
from them in sales and word-of-mouth advertising.
After awhile, if you are good, people start seeking out your
articles on your site or elsewhere on the web. This is the
"sweet spot" of writing for the web. Writer's Mecca. Publisher's
Valhalla, if you will.
Hate to write? Hire a ghost writer. At http://webfoxmedia.com
you can get 10 keyword optimized 500+ word articles written for
you at a very good price. And you own the copyrights and can use
the articles as content for your site (passively) as well as
syndicate them globally (active promotion).
The best advice I can give you though is to become more active
in the things that work. Just get going and set aside a real
plan for your day-to-day promotion of your website. Don't get
into "quick-fixes" or let yourself fall for the latest traffic
scheme.
If you read about a traffic gimmick that leaves you wondering in
the least about its real efficacy in driving targeted traffic to
your site, just move on to the things above and don't waste your
time on such things.
If website promotion was truly easy and effortless, every site
on the net would have a tons of traffic and you wouldn't be
reading this article on how to get more of it!
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Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking and Power Linking
2: Evolution. Find out more about driving traffic to your site
at http://power-linking-profits.com and http://webmastertraffictools.com
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Active vs. Passive Website Traffic Generation
