Successful Affiliate Marketer

If you want to drive traffic to your website then you have a couple different options for doing so. There are long term ways of driving website traffic, and shorter term methods of doing so. In this article we’re going to talk about both methods of traffic generation and the pro’s and con’s of each one.

SEO Of Your Own Site (Long Term Method)

The longer term method of driving traffic to your website is by either getting your main website pages to rank higher in the search engines, or by getting articles on your site to rank higher in the search engines.

You most likely found this article by searching for ways to drive more traffic to your website. This article is designed to rank high for those types of search terms and is a perfect example of this method in practice.

What you can do is you can either add articles to your site that are keyword optimized and try to rank them individually, or you can try to rank your domain home page for a somewhat competitive keyword that brings in good traffic.

To rank these pages, you will want to include the keyword that you want to rank for somewhere on the page a few times. This is important for ranking for the search phrases that you want to rank for.

No matter which option you choose, your rankings will mostly depend on how well you backlink the pages that you want to rank high (more information on backlinking can be found in the backlinking category). You can have the best on-page optimization in the world but it means nothing if you don’t know how to properly backlink.

SEO Of Articles On An Authority Site (Shorter Term Method)

This method will bring quicker results for you. To use this method you will be writing keyword optimized articles as you would in the long term option, but you would put them on an authority site instead of your own. Some authority sites that you can choose between are:

EzineArticles
Squidoo
Hubpages
ArticlesBase

The success that you have with this method is purely dependent on proper backlinking as is the long term option. Ranking any type of webpage in the search engines is mostly dependent on proper backlinking, as long as you have the keywords in the page.

If you’re like most website owners, then you know that traffic is one of the most important things you can bring in. Even better yet is targeted traffic. So many website owners will ask themselves, “How can i get more targeted traffic to my website?” There are many different ways to boost your traffic, but lets look at some of the best free ways to do so.

Long-Term Approach

The more long-term but best results approach is to get pages of your website to rank for specific keywords in the search engines. You most likely found this article by doing a search in a search engine for how to get traffic. This is a perfect example of how I’m bringing in traffic to this website and how you can too.

The drawback to this method is that it takes a good bit of time to do. It’s not easy getting articles on your own website to rank for keywords that are going to bring you in good traffic, but if it was easy then everyone would be doing it. If you can keep consistently adding keyword optimized content to your website and backlink that content, then you will begin to see your website traffic rise.

Short Term Approach

The short term approach is to get bursts of traffic from EzineArticles and other popular article directories. When you submit an article to EzineArticles.com you will usually get a burst of traffic to your site from the article that was recently published. Adding an article or two per day to a few good article directories is a good way to keep a constant supply of traffic coming to your website.

Another good approach that you can use to apply the short term and long term methods is to submit keyword optimized articles to EzineArticles for bursts of traffic but then backlink your articles for high placement in the search engines after they are published.

You can take some of the ideas above and change them a little bit to develop your own personal strategy. It’s important to develop a plan of action that is catered to what you do best. Either way, I hope the methods above will help you get on track to get more traffic to your website.

If you’re looking for an affiliate marketing guide, then I’m going to assume that you already know the basics of affiliate marketing and you’re looking for a guide to show you how to make more money with your marketing efforts. If this is not the case and you are relatively new, then I highly suggest that you take a look at our private section. Don’t worry because it’s completely free, and the information inside can help you to become a more successful marketer.

So You Want More Money?

Obviously if you’re here because you want to make more money with affiliate marketing, so let’s cut to the chase and get started.

In this affiliate marketing guide, I am mostly going to lay down some basics for how to drive traffic to you site. This is because if you’ve been working online for any amount of time then you know that traffic = sales. You can also increase your sales by increasing conversions and doing some other things, but when it all comes down to it, traffic is key.

Have you ever heard the phrase “Jack of all trades. Master of none.”? To be successful in anything you need to specialize in something. One of the biggest mistakes that people make in this business is that they try to get there feet wet in every little thing, but they never master just one thing. If this is you then you need to stop jumping from method to method and just stick to one thing… one plan.

I’m going to outlines some of the best ways to get traffic to your webpages, and I would highly suggest that you pick one and master it. There are those who are making about $100 or so per day doing many different things online, and then there are those who are making $1000 plus per day specializing in one certain thing.

Driving Traffic To Your Webpage

Article Marketing

Article marketing is one of the most common ways of driving traffic to a webpage. It involves writing articles and posting them on article directories. When posting an article to an article directory, you are allowed to put your own links in the article, which lead to your own webpages. The article is put on the article directories high traffic site, in which your link gets a lot of exposure, and the article directory usually has adsense ads on the sides of your article, which makes them money to provide you this service.

Also with most high end article directories like Ezinearticles, your article will get picked up by Google and put into there search engines usually in a high position for a few days. This gives your article a lot of search engine traffic, and can lead to a lot of people visiting your webpage through your link.

Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay per click marketing, or ppc marketing, involves putting ads on the sides of search engines for certain keywords. If you go into Google and type in a search phrase, 99% of the time you will see ads on the right side of the screen. Marketers are paying for these ads each time someone clicks on one of them. This price can range anywhere from $0.01 to over $10.00. This is a great way to drive instant targeted traffic to a webpage, but the real trick here is making sure you are making more money than you are spending.

Starting Your Own Niche/Blog Site

There are many advantages to starting your own website. One of the main advantages is that it has the potential to do great things for you long term. It’s your own site so you get to make 100% of the profits that it brings in, and articles on your own site tend to have better “sticking power” than ones in put on article directories. If you put an article on an article directory it may have high search engine rankings for the first few days, but then it will take a drastic drop without proper backlinking.

If you’re going to be in this business for a good length of time then I would recommend starting your own niche site on something you’re passionate about. Take the time to build it up a little day by day, and you can also link articles from article directories to it to drive initial traffic to it before the start starts to pick up decent traffic of its own.

Just The Beginning…

This affiliate marketing guide was just the beginning of the various ways to drive traffic to your offers. The one thing I think you should take out of this article is that you should really decide on something to specialize in and stick with it. It really is better to master one technique of driving traffic rather than to have general knowledge of all of them.

Don’t just read through this list, apply some of them to your current marketing techniques!

1. Write Articles! - There’s a reason so many people use articles to drive traffic… because it works!
 
2. Start A Blog - The traffic from a blog may not start right away, but once it starts coming it’s hard to slow it down.
 
3. Social Bookmark - Many people social bookmark for backlinks, but if done properly it can be a great way to get traffic spikes.
 
4. Post In Forums – Have a link back to your site in your signature.
 
5. Create A Video – Submit it YouTube with a link in the description to your site.
 
6. Blog Commenting – Comment on blogs with a link back to your site, just be sure to leave an informative comment.
 
7. Write A Press Release - How many of you have heard of this?  Probably a lot… but how many of you are actually doing it?
 
8. Craigslist - Advertise your site in the appropriate category at Craigslist.
 
9. E-mails – Include your website url in all of your E-mails that you send out.
 
10. Hold A Contest On Your Site - Have a really good contest that will cause a lot of excitement and get people talking about your site.
 
11. Write Quality Content – Quality content gets picked up by more webmasters and gets talked about by more people than crap content.
 
12. Answer Questions On Yahoo – Provide a link back to your site offering more information on the topic.
 
13. Twitter - Set up a twitter account and start tweeting and following people.
 
14. Create A Squidoo Lens – Create a squidoo lens with links back to your site…create a Hubpages Hub while you’re at it.
 
15. Pay-Per-Click - Costs money, but can be extremely effective if you know what you’re doing.

These are some great ways to increase traffic to your website. They are only effective if you try them!