10 Things You Can Do TODAY To Increase Traffic To Your Web Site
By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Are you doing everything you can to increase traffic to your web site? Well, check this list of no-cost/low-cost things you can do RIGHT NOW to find out. Then get started developing your web site traffic so you can sell more products/services -- today!
1) Develop a Traffic Attitude
Most people are approaching the web passively. They put up a web site. They wait. Nothing happens. They complain. Or even, ridiculously, pull off the web, like it's the web's fault that 60 million people didn't drop by before breakfast.
If you want traffic, you've got to work for traffic. That means developing the Traffic Attitude. This attitude consists of the following parts:
recognition that the web doesn't promote itself
determination to master web promotion
decision to find every conceivable means of building your traffic, and
use them all -- every single day!!!
2) Post -- Daily to the newsgroups
Did you post today? Yesterday? The day before? Probably not! There's a problem right
there. I'm a 365-day-poster. I post every day whether I feel like it or not (and, believe
me, on those cold New England mornings, I most assuredly do NOT feel like it!). Reason?
Because you can get unlimited postings they're free you get a steady stream of prospects
by working with these prospects properly you get a steady stream of qualified prospects
and, ultimately, sales. In other words, postings work. The key? Developing client-centered
benefits for your postings. Push BENEFITS, not features. Making sure that each heading in
your posting leads with that benefit.
Also making sure that the body of the posting further
develops your main, or subsidiary benefits, while providing all the means necessary for
your prospects to connect with you NOW. Postings work because they excite prospects
with the value/benefit that you have available... and provide these prospects with
everything they need to know to connect with you. On days when you don't post, you're
thwarting your own traffic. Not smart. One last note: stick to the "alt"
newsgroups to avoid getting flamed.
3) List Free Classifieds -- Daily
There are so many places on the Internet to get free classifieds, it's staggering. How to
find them? Easy. Go to AltaVista or Yahoo or HotBot orany of the other search engines and
enter "Free classifieds." Hundreds of places will come up.
Now start reviewing them looking for the right places for what you're selling. Then list.
Set yourself an objective, five a day is good. Use your scrap time. This mindless work; do
it when you're not at your mental peak.
Note: free classified ads at most Internet sites expire after a certain amount of time.
That's why you have to keep returning to renew your free ads. When we set up the CashQuest
search engine at Worldprofit, we decided to end this silly procedure. Your 50-word
classified at CashQuest is not only free... it's unlimited! No popping back every 30 days
to renew, or forgetting to come back and loosing it! That's why you should post with
CashQuest first. Just visit http://www.worldprofit.com. Click on CashQuest and your
UNLIMITED FREE ADVERTISING starts at once!
4) Take Advantage of Free Links
While you're looking for free classifieds, you're also going to find places that provide
free links. What's the difference?
Classifieds and space ads provide information enabling the prospect to connect with you.
Ordinarily you get to say more, but there's no point and click connection to your site. On
the other hand, with a link, all you've got to do is click on the link and the prospect is
immediately connected to your site.
When you add a link, you're usually allowed a few words (a dozen or less) to describe it.
Think about these words carefully. What you want to post is a BENEFIT, not just a
descriptive feature. In other words, what's the prospect going to get when she visits your
site? The better the benefit, the more visitors you'll get!
5) Take Advantage of Paid Links
Everybody likes the free stuff, but there's something you should know. Many of the free
sites get miniscule traffic, as you can see in an instant from their traffic counters (if
they even dare to post one). That's why you should also use paid links.
You want to be associated with high traffic malls and web sites that do extensive on- and
off-net advertising. If the company is aggressively advertising its web properties and
bringing in traffic, and if they reach the kinds of people you want to reach, why, then,
you need a link -- even if you have to pay for it.
When looking at such companies, ask hard questions about just how they develop their
traffic. At Worldprofit, for instance, our traffic-building advertising program is second
to none. We aggressively use full-page and other sized ads in dozens of publications our
quarterly 100,000 circulation Sales & Marketing Success Card Deck and many other card
decks our quarterly 155,000+ Sure-Fire Business Success Catalog four internationally
syndicated columns reaching well over 2 million people monthly, and a complicated nexus of
deals, understandings, and relationships with companies worldwide offering various
promotional vehicles. What's more we advise all our advertisers on how to build their
traffic...and you benefit from what they do, too! It's collectively beneficial.
If you did this yourself, it would be prohibitively expensive. By comparison, paying just
$199.95 a year for a Worldprofit link enables you to benefit from all this at a fraction
of the cost. Be clear that any company asking you to pay for a link does as much for such
a low price!
6) Add Your URL To All Marketing Communications
It staggers me how many opportunities for web promotion pass every single day without
being utilized. Look at your
business cards
card deck cards
space ads
yellow pages ads
brochures
flyers
the envelopes you mail in, etc.
Have you got your URL on them... or are you literally throwing away promotional
opportunities every time you think you're "marketing"? If you want traffic, make
sure everything you use promotes your URL.
7) Don't Just Promote Your URL... Also Promote The Chief Benefit Of Visiting Your Web Site
The next time you have a chance, utter your URL to a prospect and see what happens. I
already know. You'll get a quizzical look, maybe worse. Why? Because URLs per se aren't
motivating. That's why if you're smart you'll not only put your URL on all your marketing
communications but will also insist on presenting the chief benefit of visiting your site,
too.
You see, on every single marketing communication you use -- I don't care whether it's a
tee-shirt or a four-color brochure -- you need to present the most important
client-centered benefit of your site... as well as the means of accessing it, the URL.
Thus, include chief benefits like this,
Lose 30 pounds in 30 days!
Make $100,000+ in commodities this year!
Reduce your travel costs everywhere you go!
Benefit from over 1/4 MILLION visitors a month!
Get the drift? Lead with benefits... follow with features (the URL address). Both are
essential to traffic building.
8) Develop A Response Template
Are you annoyed by unsolicited e-mail? I was, too, until I got smart about it. I figured
these people were just a new kind of prospect. Thus, I developed a series of response
templates in which I made the benefits of what I was selling very plain. Such a response
template should include
an offer
benefits of what you're selling
product/service descriptions
client-centered testimonials
complete purchase information, and, of course
complete information about your web site!
In other words, a response template is the best kind of client-centered marketing
communication.
9) Send The Response Template To Every Unsolicited E-Mail You Receive
When you wake up in the morning, go through all the unsolicited e-mail you get and instead
of just trashing it, send your response template. Just by clicking a button you'll be
getting YOUR information into the hands of new prospects. Sure some of it is going to
bounce back to you right away because you may be answering an auto-responder. Not to
worry.
Marketing is and always will be a numbers game.
If you've got something the prospect wants, something that's rich with benefits and offers
real value, then that prospect is going to respond... no matter how you heard about him
(or how he connected with you) in the first place. This method is more socially
responsible than sending the kind of response hate mail that so many people unaccountably
find acceptable. And, yes, you will increase your site traffic and make sales-- so long as
you promote the value of your site and the substance of your offerings in every response
template you create.
10) Don't Slack Off
It's easy to be lazy. Sloth is seductive. But when you stop building traffic, you start
cutting the value of your Web site. That's not my way... and it shouldn't be yours.
Building traffic on the Internet is an exciting, high energy game. With very valuable
pay-offs. Which get bigger every day.
A recent interview on "Adam Smith" on the Public Broadcasting Network with
senior Microsoft officials show-cased the Chief Technologist of Gates' galloping giant
predicting that within 5 years (at the most!) traffic on the Internet would be 100 TIMES
what it is today! Indeed, he went further, to say that the growth of the Internet was
being "undervalued" by industry experts.
What does this mean? A traffic, and by extension, a sales bonanza for you... if, and only
if, you'll do what's necessary to make sure that a growing percentage of this burgeoning
traffic gets to you and your web site.
In other words, get crackin'. And keep this report prominently displayed so you'll remind
yourself of all that you can do... and all the benefits that result when you do it!
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If you are interested in "How To" Information, I would suggest taking a look at Insider's Secrets Revealed below. It is an amazing collection. Take a minute and review the information. You will be glad you did.
