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If you own a website, one important question that you should ask yourself is: Does your Website attract a steady flow of targeted website traffic, build an opt-in list, supply you leads and income from sales of products and services?
If it doesn’t, then you need to examine your Website content, design and structure.
In most cases, Websites are designed and built first. Then the business owners try to figure out how to attract visitors. This approach is backwards.
Before you have a single web page built or content written you should have clearly identified your strategy for attracting visitors and converting them to leads or clients. Using the web to market your product or services requires a web marketing plan.
The web has the potential to be a powerful communication tool, but your Website needs to be designed in order for you to achieve your marketing goals. These goals also have to be measurable.
A Website built and managed without a clear marketing plan is usually a waste of time and money. Many Website are nothing more than web billboards. These sites generally do not attract clients and provide little marketing benefit.
What should you measure?
The most obvious category that can be measured is the amount of website traffic that your Website is generating. The key value is the number of unique visitors that come to the Website. There are other values that are important, such as page views and average length of stay.
As you measure these values over time the goal would be to have a steady increase in all of these values.
Of course, if these visitors are not doing anything when they are on your Website they are of little value.
Do you have a call to action?
Your Website should be designed in such a way that your visitors are presented with a call to action. This call to action should be obvious to the visitor. Your call to action is another element that can be measured. How many visitors perform the call to action?
The call to action can take many forms. It may be opting in to a email newsletter list, or filling out a lead form. The ideal action is the purchase of a product or service.
When a site visitor performs the call to action, you have a conversion. The number of conversions divided by the number of Website visitors is the conversion rate.
One of the goals of the Website should be to increase the conversion rate.
Testing
Once you have your measurable elements, traffic and conversions, you can test various ways to make your Website work. You can test various techniques for increasing traffic. Options here include search engine optimization of your Website, pay per click advertising, press releases and article writing.
Then you will also want to increase your conversion rates. Split testing is used to determine how various elements within the web page affect the visitor. You can change the elements on the page such as the headline or color of text and graphics, to measure the affect on the visitor.
Website Goals
You now have the understanding that your business Website should be working for you with a marketing plan. You need a call to action. You need to measure website traffic and conversions, and then test to improve the results.
With these measurements in hand, you can now set goals for your Website. This will give you a sense of direction and it will allow you the weigh the methods that could be initiated to gain success in your online business.
11. 12.
Any website owner would want more website traffic. However, not all website traffic is created equal. Many people get so caught up with driving traffic to their website they forget to check whether it is working towards the actual goal of the website. It is very important to go back always and check on the website goals.
Different websites have different goals. One may be to build a brand, another may be to sell a product while yet another may be to build a list from leads. No matter what the goal, tracking should be done to see whether the traffic generated from various sources is actually helping to achieve that goal.
In some cases, it is easy to see the difference between various website traffic sources. For example, it is usually much cheaper to buy Pay Per Click (PPC) ads for a content network than for a search network. On a content network, ads appear on related web sites while on a search network they appear as the result of a user keying in specific search terms.
People who click on ads on the content network tend to be browsing the Internet for information. In most cases, they expect to get this information for free. On the other hand, those searching for key terms, especially product names, are more likely to be looking to buy. Because of this, conversion rates are typically much higher on the search network. This leads to more demand which, in turn, leads to higher prices for these ads.
Unfortunately, paying for advertising can eat into profits. In some cases campaigns that are generating a good volume of sales can be rendered unprofitable due to the costs of advertising. However, organic website traffic, which comes from unpaid listing on search engines, is free and targeted. The difficulty arises in generating sufficient volumes of traffic. To do this requires being on the front pages of the major search engines for popular terms. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of trying to rank highly for competitive keywords. Unfortunately, many SEO techniques take considerable time to put into place and to affect search engine rankings.
One technique to overcome this problem is to aim for ‘low-hanging fruit’. That is, keywords that have less competition. While these generate lower traffic, it is possible to build up considerable amounts of traffic by building up a portfolio of less popular keywords.
Other good forms of generating free targeted traffic include article marketing, email marketing and utilizing joint venture partnerships. The main thing is to avoid website traffic generation strategies that cost money, but don’t result in conversions. One could succeed on his/her online business without having to spend a lot of fortune.
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All website owners know that you must have website traffic to generate sales. However, not just any traffic will do. The best is targeted traffic. Having the right techniques will help you succeed on your online business.
Targeted traffic involves enticing visitors to your site who are actually interested in the content of your website. If people are interested in buying tropical fish they will find websites about buying tropical fish interesting.
There are a number of methods for obtaining targeted traffic.
Forums - If you are an active participant in a forum you can obtain targeted traffic through the link to your website that you are usually allowed to add to the signature. If you spam you are likely to get banned. However, if you add value by joining in debates and answering questions you may even come to be known as an expert. If others like your style, the quality of your posts or even the promotional text in your signature you can generate targeted traffic that doesn’t cost you anything.
Reciprocal Linking - For most product websites there are usually many other related websites which aren’t direct competitors. You can contact the owners of these websites to ask for a reciprocal link. While a number of them will simply ignore your request, you will start to build up some useful links over time. Again, this can provide a source of targeted website traffic.
E-zines - E-zines are ideal because the readership is targeted. Nevertheless, not all e-zine advertisements result in a good conversion rate so it is best to start slowly with a new e-zine to see it is worth the investment. If you do get good conversions then you can ramp up the amount of advertising with that particular e-zine.
Newsletters - As well as using other web owners e-zines, you should consider starting your own newsletter. In this way, you can build up your own list of targeted people and when the size of the list grows you can start selling your own advertising as well.
E-books - People like to receive things for free. You can give away e-books which contain useful information and are valued (and read). The trick is to include links back to your site. If the information is really useful, the books tend to be passed on from one person to another creating a viral effect.
Joint ventures - Successful internet marketers are always on the look-out for new opportunities. If you have a good product which converts well, don’t be shy in contacting them to offer a joint venture. You only need a few well-connected partners to see a large expansion in your traffic.
PPC - Pay per click will cost you money, but it is the quickest way to get targeted website traffic. If you write your ads well and select your keywords carefully making sure to include negative keywords, such as ‘free’, you can end up with a positive return on investment. Of course, if you choose poorly you can burn through a lot of cash quickly.
By applying a number of these techniques you can increase your level of targeted traffic which, in turn, can increase the profitability of your website. Having the right targeted traffic will bring about success on online business.
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A website owner aims to have more website traffic. One helpful tip is using traffic exchange. A traffic exchange is a membership website where the members can promote their own web pages by earning or buying “credits”. Credits can be earned by viewing other members’ web pages - otherwise known as “surfing for credits”.
To surf for credits all you need to do is to log in to the traffic exchange and hit the “Start Surfing” button. You will then be shown a member’s web page and a countdown timer. How long you will have to view the page varies from traffic exchange to traffic exchange and also depends on your membership status, but typically the timer takes 10 seconds to run down. When it hits zero you will have earned a credit and will be able to view a new web page. To do that you usually have to complete a simple “icon matching” task with a click of your mouse.
The more you surf, the more credits you will earn. And with some traffic exchanges you will also stand the chance of winning bonus credits and even cash prizes.
As your credits accumulate you can allocate them to your web pages, which will then be shown to other members of the traffic exchange.
Most traffic exchanges operate a “surf ratio” policy. This simply means that you need to surf more than one page in order to generate enough credit to have your page viewed in the system. Some traffic exchanges offer a 2:1 ratio, 3:1 or a 3:2 ratio, with a 1:1 ratio reserved for members who upgrade.
Another option for traffic exchange members is simply to buy credits. Traffic exchanges often hit you with “One Time Offers” where you can get a lot of credits at discounted rates if you buy straightaway.
As well as page viewing credits, traffic exchanges also offer “banner ad” and “text ad” impressions. Banners and text ads are shown above or below pages that you view when you surf for credits. You can get these impressions at a much cheaper rate than standard page-viewing credits. On the other hand, click-through rates are typically quite low.
Typically, a website traffic exchange is free to join and has several “upgrade” options where you must pay a small monthly fee to secure the benefits.
So what are the benefits of upgrading?
It could be all or any of these benefits:
1. You get several hundred credits added to your account each month.
2. Your “surf ratio” improves.
3. The countdown time decreases.
4. You get new members randomly added to your “downline”.
5. You earn more in credits or commission whenever you recruit a new member for the traffic exchange.
Yes, traffic exchanges are also online affiliate businesses and when you join one you are allocated an affiliate number. If you check your member’s area you will see that there is a section devoted to promoting the traffic exchange. You can go there and get banners for your website or blog, and other promotional material such as email letters and so on.
Since you will be given free credits whenever you recruit someone to the traffic exchange, it makes sense to devote some space on your website or blog to promoting the traffic exchange.
You will also be encouraged to promote the traffic exchange on other traffic exchanges.
A lot of people join several traffic exchanges to gain extra exposure for their web pages, and also cross-promote their traffic exchanges in order to generate a lot of credits in the form of commission when people join traffic exchanges through their links.
When you use a traffic exchange to promote your website, here are a few common pitfalls that you will want to avoid:
1. Don’t promote pages that take a long time to download.
2. Don’t try to promote your main product with a long sales page. Keep your pages clean and simple with a basic message and either a sign up form for more info, or a “click here” button that will open up your main promotional page in a new browser window.
3. If you use a video promotion, don’t take more than ten seconds getting to your main message.
4. Make sure you do not run out of bandwidth - it is amazing how many times you see a “bandwidth limit expired” message instead of a member’s page when surfing traffic exchanges.
5. Do NOT promote XYZ traffic exchange on XYZ traffic exchange!! This sounds unbelievable, but a number of clueless people try to get traffic exchange members to join the traffic exchange that they are surfing on and are therefore already members of! Duh!
Website traffic exchanges offer website owners a cheap and cheerful method of promoting their website pages and can be very effective if you know how to work them. Being able to learn and applying these techniques will greatly improve a person’s online business.
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One helpful tip to promote a website is using Traffic Exchange Programs. Website Traffic Exchange programs are services that online users with a common objective use, in an effort to gain more exposure for their business.
There are different types of traffic exchange programs. There are some that will let you surf the Internet as you normally would, with the only exception being that you set your browser’s start page to their default advertising page. Once your homepage’s browser loads you earn a certain number of advertising credits. You get additional credits for clicking on links of other members in the program’s network. You can then use these credits for exposing your links to the network, with a chance of potential visitors and sales.
Some other traffic exchange services will make your surfing experience a bit more complex, since you would have to wait for a timer to expire in order to be awarded credits, and while that timer counts down you are forced to view another person’s website from the network.
Some of these measures were taken by the traffic exchange programs in an effort to minimize or eliminate cheating, since some users came up with ways to cheat the system by using software programs that auto surf and earn them credits.
Typically, participants to these traffic exchanges will surf the Internet with a slight modification of how they normally would, in an effort to collect credits.
One can conclude that the less distracting from the normal surfing experience, the more the webmaster would be willing to use that traffic exchange program. Also, the less forced an ad/website on a user, the more targeted he/she will be for that product or service. For example, someone who is reads a headline in a traffic exchange and clicks on it to view the website is more targeted than someone who views it because he/she is forced to wait for a timer to expire.
Now that you have an overview of what website traffic exchange programs are, and how they work, we can go over their main benefits:
1. Free
Almost all traffic exchange services are free, although you can upgrade your membership to get additional benefits in some. This means that someone with a low or no budget can start advertising their website fast and for no cost.
2. Targeted Traffic (for Internet Marketing)
If your product is Internet marketing related then the traffic you would receive to your website will be somewhat targeted because it will be people like you, who are looking for more ways to increase their online income.
3. You can build a list.
You can have a page designed to give out a freebie or a 5 part e-course in exchange for an email address. You can then follow up with these leads and sell them more stuff in the future.
4. You can recruit affiliates
If you have your own product and affiliate program, you can recruit affiliates to sell your products for a commission. The more people selling your products, the more passive income you will make.
In conclusion, website traffic exchanges offer a great free way of promoting your business. They should be included in your advertising arsenal but make sure that you leverage your time effectively, and you don’t surf for hours for those advertising credits. Try to find a traffic exchange program that will not hinder your normal surfing behavior, while advertising your business, and you will be one of the few people who maximize their time and effort with this free marketing tool. Finding the right tools will definitely help a website owner gain more traffic and achieve success in the online business.
