Website Traffic 101 (Part 1)

We get a lot of messages from Today, we want to talk about traffic. This is the first part of a series of articles about how to get more traffic to your website. We will explore different ways to get your website seen, rank higher in the search engines and convert more.

In upcoming parts we will talk about different strategies in detail, but today let’s explore all the options for you to get a better understanding about what traffic is and what is it made of.

Traffic 101

When you first launch an affiliate website it may take you weeks, months even to develop a base of regular visitors. We know that it’s frustrating.

Focus.

Until you get more traffic, focus on providing the best quality services and content you can offer. Because when you think about it, what good is traffic for, if visitors don’t stay on your website, convert and come back?

Having said that, traffic is something you have to think about a lot constantly – how many visitors do you get daily? What percentage of traffic is unique (first time visitors)? Where do people come from and do they stay on your website.

But let’s say you have just launched your website and don’t have any data to analyze. Where do you start?
Before we move on, have in mind that quality always goes over quantity. Not every traffic source is equal and focusing on the wrong things might boost your traffic but not conversion rate.

Ways to get traffic to your website:

• SEO

Whether you like it or not, search engines is a force to be reckoned with. However, today we will not get into an in-depth discussion on how to make your website SEO-friendly for a simple reason, Google only cares about trustful websites that have been running for a while.

So, for a new website like yours you should not expect anything from search engines traffic-wise at the moment.

However, there are two things to note:

First, open a Google Analytics account. They will gather data about the behavior of your (future) visitors. You simply sign up an account and add a tracker code to your website.

Second, do some research on keywords. You can use Google AdWords to see how many searches per month certain keywords get, whether the competition for these keywords are high or low, etc.

We will talk about targeting keywords and analyzing data from Google Analytics in upcoming articles.

• Guest blogging

You simply write a piece about your industry and offer it to other websites to publish. Next to the article there will be your name, a short description of what you do and your website name.

Guest blogging is a good way to start building your reputation online and let people know that you have a website. And it doesn’t have to be written content. Like we mentioned last time, you can make videos, podcasts, whatever you want.

• Comments

This is not among people’s favorite ways to get traffic but everyone has to start somewhere. There is a lot of manual work involved – you have to find blogs with relevant content and at least some traffic, find relative posts and comment.

But it may be worth trying. Just may sure that when you comment on other people’s blogs with links, to your site, you provide helpful insights and not just spam.

• Become a member of a forum

Some forums can be very useful in making a name for yourself and getting website traffic. Some allow you to add your website link in Profile signature, there is one way to use it.

Also, you can make threads about a relevant topic, you have written about, add a part of the article to the forum and link to the whole article on your website.

• Online ads

Advertising is also a good way to get traffic. Obviously, you need a budget for that but see it for what it is - an investment to help you build your affiliate business grow and provide you with anything you wanted.

Depending on your needs and budget, you can advertise using Google Adwords, advertise on social networks like Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. Marketplaces like BuySellAds also allow you to post banners on other related websites and get traffic to your affiliate website pretty cheaply.

Once you start getting regular visitors, you can be sure that most of the hard part is over. It’s not that you won’t have to work to increase your site’s popularity anymore but you will see that analyzing data, getting feedback from your visitors through personal messages and comments, working on improving is much easier than starting and making guesses in a vacuum.

It might be a slow start so don’t get discouraged. Try out different strategies, see what’s best for you and get better at it. In the near future we will talk more in-detail about different ways so if you liked this article, follow us on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.

If you have any questions, contact us!