ONERank Internet Marketing Blog » Internet Marketing

How to Increase Website Traffic

Thomas Paquet — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:46:43 +0000

Increasing Website Traffic Takes Thinking

We often receive phone calls and e-mail from potential clients wondering how much traffic can we send to their website in a week?

While the answer is a definitive – “it depends” – we often worry about the focus of such an inquiry…

Website traffic is a quirky beast… With so many automated tools for generating illegitimate traffic, the market is ripe for people who are simply looking to “increase website traffic” by hiring a company online. I’ve been pitched by many a snake-oil salesman on working with our firm and partnering on website traffic programs, “For as little as $50, we can generate 1,000 visitors a day for your client’s website.” The old adage holds firm: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is…

While there are thousands of different ways to increase web visitors, that which we encourage FORCE our clients to focus on is not just increasing traffic to their website – rather increasing *interested* or *relevant* traffic to their website. And there is a very simple reason why.

Your purpose in online marketing is no longer to show off how many visitors your website stats can show for a monthly basis. Your purpose is to show how your sales grew 15%, month after month, for 12 months straight. By pushing useless, uninterested visitors to your website, you only gain their attention for 4-5 seconds before they move on to another website. This is only an effective tool when it comes to brand building. If there is no interest in your website or business subject matter, why would they stay or take an action?

However simple the following example may be, look for ways you may currently market in the same wasted manners:

A baby product review website wanted to find a way for us to send them at least 1,500 visitors per day, a feat their current “marketing guy” was accomplishing by working with an offshore company. Their budget was roughly $0.04/visitor ($60/day) that they paid to a firm out of Pakistan. So, for $1,800/mo, they were guaranteed to receive 1,500 visitors each and every day for 1 month straight. And guess what, they received about 1,500 visitors each and every day (according to their website statistics). But what did this do to their bottom line in regard to new user sign-ups? Nothing. What about referrals to affiliate links? Nothing. What about direct sales to product listings? Nothing.

What they failed to do was look at the behavior and referral source of these visitors. Within the first 20 minute phone call we had with their CEO, CMO and current “marketing guy”, we identified an astounding 98.7% bounce rate. Meaning that 98.7% of the visitors landing on their website had no further interest in finding anything else out (information, products, services, etc) related to their website. This means that 1,480/1,500 people (each and every day) just moved on through their website without even really looking at it. 20 people clicked on something in addition to the main page, which meant they were paying about $90/visitor (cost per lead) to take part in their website.

We target a different approach to growing website traffic both organically and strategically. Using various PPC (pay per click) networks, we can hone in on the most effective keywords & client demographic – those that are *interested* and those that want to *buy* or participate in a community forum. Once we’ve identified the best of the best, we build our marketing campaign around the identified focal points.

We were able to take the existing website, without making any significant changes to design, navigation, etc, and boost conversion rates by 10% within the first 2 weeks. We sought targeted and relevant traffic, for those interested in the services and products, causing the first real boost in marketing and acquisition that they had seen in over 6 months.

Here’s some basics for increasing website traffic:

Keep fresh and relevant content in your site. Blog, Twitter, Facebook, Social Media, articles, How-To, and anything else that keeps you updating your website with relevant and interesting content
Make it known. Use a service such as Ping.fm to get the news out about your blog or content posting
Make it social and easily linked. Use a tool like Sociable or Digg, Sphinn, Delicious, etc.
Submit your website to Search Engine Sitemap services (Google Sitemap, Bing Sitemap, etc)
Ask for links back to your site (make it easy for people to link to you – provide HTML code, anchor text, link URLs)
Submit to directories (Yahoo, Google, Ask.com, Dmoz, etc)
Ensure proper HTML tags are present and relevant on each and every page

The program works when people put aside the “quick fix” mentality and understand that online marketing is a science, as well as an art. By carefully crafting a well thought out and thorough marketing plan, increasing website traffic will directly correlate with an increase in revenue (if that is your focus). Whatever the bottom line goal, don’t forget to look into the details before you jump into contract. Price isn’t always the determining factor to isolate dollar-for-dollar value.

For all your internet marketing, SEO friendly web design & web conversion optimization needs, call ONERank Internet Marketing & SEO: +1 (877) 771-7265 or visit us on the web at: http://www.onerank.com

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Tips for Creating A Quality Business Website

Do Not Lose Sight! Narrow Minds = Narrow Focus

Thomas Paquet — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:53:24 +0000

Don’t get stuck thinking the biggest market share in search engine searches will equal the biggest market share for marketing for your specific search term or product/service.

If you look at the narrow focus, you see Google represents 70% market share of all internet searches. What this means is that 70% of the aggregated searches in the USA are fed through Google. This doesn’t mean that 70% of YOUR TARGET CLIENT searches are fed through Google. Perhaps the focus of your product/service doesn’t even exist on Google. Stay with me, it all comes together soon.

You may be surprised to find out that most people that buy Yellow Handled Scissors (your #1 product) despise Google. It is a known fact that Yellow Handled Scissor lovers want to use Yahoo because they both start with the letter “Y”. There is 1 guy out of every 100 that tries to search on Google for Yellow Handled Scissors – but he has no money to spend, he just likes to look at the pretty pictures and fancy words.

Amazingly enough, you would be missing out on 100% of the sales of Yellow Handled Scissors if you only marketed on Google AdWords PPC. Yahoo represents 99% of Yellow Handled Scissor searches. So where should you spend your money? Google or Yahoo?

Yahoo – of course. You should want to convert 10% of Yellow Handled Scissor searches into a sale, rather than 0% of Yellow Handled Scissor searches – right?

But you ask, I want to get 100% of all Yellow Handled Scissor searches to visit my site. But here is where it makes the most sense (as if it already hasn’t)… Google advertising cost of $100/mo to try to get those stragglers, who aren’t using Yahoo, is a complete waste of money. They will never buy, and Yellow Handled Scissor searchers only buy from Yahoo. So rather than throw $1,200/year into the abyss, take $600, go buy some new clothes and take the other $600 and spend it on Yahoo advertising to get more sales.

By limiting your overall view of the market – your market – you lose focus of why we advertise in the first place. Our goal isn’t to only get more people to see us, it is to get more people who will want to buy from us, to see us. The “buy” is the complete call to action that makes it all worthwhile.

Focus on the specific target client, learn what they want and need, give it to them and you will continue to gain market share. Don’t lose sight of the target! Try to get 100% of your target audience into a room and pitch them your product/service. It will always be less hassle, higher conversion, and less overall cost per acquisition for each sale.

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Tips for Creating A Quality Business Website

Thomas Paquet — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:42:00 +0000

Providing a quality SEO project to clients requires pieces of the big puzzle. We focus our efforts on driving traffic that is high quality, targeted and relevant to the subject matter of the website. Without quality, quantity simply cannot provide any consistent ROI for your advertising dollars.

To make a widely read and profitable website it is desirable to have the following elements:

A great domain name
A reliable host
A unique brand backed up by public relations
A strong unique website design
An easily usable website
Compelling copywriting
An advertising budget which improves market awareness and product feedback

You can be successful while lacking any of the above. However, the more of them you practice the more likely you are to be successful.

As always, we are here to help guide you. If you have a simple question that has you unsure if you should or shouldn’t follow someone’s advice, give us a call. We will give you an honest answer every time.

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