Oxygen Marketing

Archive for the ‘Traffic Generation’ Category

One of the least known ways to generate website traffic is redirecting from expired domain names. It seems crude and even unprofessional, but more than a few website owners have tried it—and with reasonable success. With the right techniques, an expired domain can direct regular traffic to your website and give your business that much-needed kick-start.

Using expired domain traffic works on the principle that a defunct website’s readership can be used by another. The first step is finding an expired domain that is relevant to your website—this ensures that the traffic that gets redirected is made up of interested readers. The domain must also have had a good following when it was still active; the more popular a site used to be, the larger the readership you can tap into. Popular domains also tend to have inbound links from other sites they used to associate with; if these links are still around, you also get traffic from a number of other places.

Next, you buy the expired domain and set it up to redirect to your site, usually with a simple php code. This is where relevance comes in. You’re basically taking an existing customer base and trying to replace their old haunt—and to keep them, you need to be at least as good, ideally better, than the previous domain. If you have a blog on health insurance, redirecting from a defunct fashion website won’t be of much value. A related domain, however, will ensure that the traffic you get is well-targeted.

Another strategy is to put content on the domain itself. Many experts recommend using the redirect code as a “filler” while you’re working on a content buffer; when you’ve got enough material, you can set up the domain as your own site. The advantage to this is that a well-known site may already have a good Google PR and Alexa rank, inbound links, and other attribute that can take months or years for a new site to build up.

Others suggest using expired domain traffic for satellite websites, or sites that are part of a larger network geared towards boosting one main site. Since satellite pages are secondary, it usually doesn’t make sense to put too much effort into driving traffic to them. Using free traffic from expired domains is a great solution: it gives you targeted traffic at a fraction of the cost and time, so that you can focus on providing regular, useful content.

These days, one of the first things you learn in business is that website traffic is essential. Whether you’re running a multinational firm or a blog about knitting, visitors are what really keep your business afloat. So it’s a little surprising that few website owners and entrepreneurs find it worthwhile to invest in driving web traffic. If you want to get and keep loyal customers, knowing how to increase traffic to your website is an important first step.

One of the most popular ways is to set up a blog. For many people the blog is the business, and keeping it updated is nothing short of a full-time job. For others, blogging is a way to connect with customers and boost marketing efforts, essentially allowing readers to spread word around about the business. Whatever your purpose is, blogging can get you targeted traffic on a regular basis, especially if you’re able to provide useful content and address your readers’ questions.

Linking is another widely used traffic generation method, and for good reason. Having lots of sites link back to you means that there are more opportunities for people to find you online. Getting these links on relevant websites is even better, as the chances are high that you get highly interested visitors. Also, search engines take the number of relevant inbound links into account when ranking site popularity. This means that the more links you have, the higher up on the list your site appears.

Social networking is one of the newest but fastest-growing ways to increase site traffic. It’s a lot more work than it seems, but the payoff is well worth it. By setting up a Facebook page and Twitter account for your site, you can reach a lot more people, and reach existing readers in a more convenient way. It’s a lot easier for them to follow your blog or check your site for updates when they learn about it through sites they visit every day anyway. You can also expand your network through existing clients’ contacts.

On the Web, getting new visitors and holding on to old ones are equally valuable. You should invest as much time in one as you do in the other, no matter how big or small your business is. While it’s worth it to spend a few hours a day trying to drive traffic to your website, it’s important to follow up on them and make sure they’re not just one-time visitors. Remember, occasional traffic can bring you money, but it’s the loyal people who keep you in the game.

Getting site visits is a frustrating and often thankless task. Arguably the least glamorous part of web business, it involves getting people to visit your site and then trying to make them stay for more than ten seconds. And it’s a lot harder than it seems, even for owners of high-ranking websites. And in true entrepreneur fashion, we often play with the idea of just paying a bunch of people to get it done for us.

That’s the whole concept behind targeted traffic buying, an industry that promises to send thousands of visitors to your site for as little as $10. Ads such as “10,000 visitors for $10” have had bloggers and site owners wondering where to buy targeted traffic and how it works. Even with only 5% of visitors turning a $1 profit, that’s a return of $500 on your initial $10. Too good to be true, right? That’s because it is.

Companies offering targeted traffic work a variety of ways: by forcing visitors to your site through popup windows, squeeze pages, sometimes even false links. A few operate get-paid-to-surf schemes, paying people to spend a given number of seconds on a variety of websites. The most obvious flaw in this system is that the traffic is far from targeted—it’s hard to capture the interest, let alone the trust, of someone who was basically tricked onto a website. Another flaw is that search engines can flag a sudden surge of short-lived visits that seem to come out of nowhere, which means your ranking can plummet overnight.

What’s more, the terms of these services can be unsurprisingly skewed against the client’s favor. For example, on many targeted traffic contracts, there are disclaimers that say a visit will count even if the ad closes before it can load (often due to slow connections or lack of interest). Some even claim that the hit counters they provide may not be accurate. Then again, you can’t expect much from a ten-dollar service.

Experts are unsure whether buying targeted traffic is worth anyone’s money, but the general consensus, based on the evidence, is that it’s not. The best place to get targeted traffic is still from the tried-and-tested methods of networking and providing regular, useful content. It requires a greater investment in both time and money, but the returns are well worth it—and you don’t have to read through crafty fine print for your peace of mind.

Increasing web traffic is essential to making money off your blog. Whether it’s through pay-per-click ads, affiliate marketing, or some other business model, your income directly depends on how many people visit your website. If you’ve been in the business for a while, you may be familiar with some of the most common strategies, such as link building and forum posting. Each method has its merits, but often, the best approach is to use a variety of methods that complement each other. Learning how to get traffic to your blog is therefore an essential part of any Web business.

Link building is probably the simplest form of traffic generation. You want to put as many access points to your blog as possible. You can do this by participating in relevant forums or posting comments on other blogs, and simply adding a link to your site on your signature. This takes a lot more work than it seems—you have to read other posts, research your answers, and build a connection with members of the community, all in the name of establishing yourself as an expert in your field. A link building service can do that for you, but it’ll cost you more and you’ll have to shop around for the best services.

In the last two years, social networking has been essential to getting blog traffic. Bloggers who are active on Twitter, Facebook, and other social platforms get several times more followers than those who don’t do much besides blog. You can link to your latest blog posts on various status updates—there are apps that allow you to synchronize your posts or cross-post between platforms in seconds. Many users don’t even check their favorite blogs regularly anymore—they just get updates on their social media feeds every time someone posts an update. Having a social media presence makes it easier to keep followers.

Finally, the most important aspect of increasing blog traffic is staying ahead of the game. To be able to post meaningful content on a regular basis, you have to read up on your topic and be among the first to write about it when something comes up. There are dozens of bloggers in any given field, and the only way to stand out—and therefore get the readership—is to post what people like to read. It’s a full-time job for some of the world’s top bloggers. But it’s all part of the business—as long as you have something useful to say, someone out there will want to listen.

Knowing how to check website traffic is useful for two main reasons: getting to know your audience and learning about your competition. Traffic monitors now allow you to look beyond numbers and see other statistics, such as how long visitors tend to stay, where they come from, and which sections they read the most. They also offer a peek into competing websites and how they work compared to your own. Both provide valuable data that can steer your marketing and content in the right direction.

The most popular and widely recommended tool for checking website traffic is Google Ad Planner. Site statistics are provided both in country-specific and worldwide perspectives, and include total versus unique visitors, page views, monthly statistics, and average time spent on site. Its interface is also one of the most user-friendly in the market, making it especially useful for new site owners and those who like to focus on the business side of things.

Alexa is better known as a ranking system, a measure of a site or blog’s popularity. It provides useful metrics such as global traffic rank, country-specific traffic rank, page views per user, bounce rate, and search percentage. It also shows the top keywords that lead to the site, which can be useful in search engine optimization efforts. The comparison tool allows you to see how your site measures up with up to four others. The data is a little less accurate, but works well as a prediction and site-valuing tool.

For U.S.-specific users, Compete is also worth checking out. Its data is based on a list of 200,000 users in the U.S., which makes it a little limited but well-targeted for those who don’t really care about international traffic (such as community-based websites). QuantCast works in much the same way; like Alexa, its accuracy doesn’t quite match that of Google, but it serves as a supplementary resource for Compete or a similar service.

If your main goal for checking website traffic is ad revenue, BuySellAds may be worth a look. It’s primarily an ad network specializing in banner ads, but it offers very reliable traffic estimates. The catch is that you have to use the service (i.e. install the script) before you can get your hands on the data. Experts recommend it mostly for an overview of the most important metrics, including rankings on Compete and Alexa, social network shares and followers, and SEO statistics.