Ok guys, I wanted to dive into something that we are all after when it comes to designing websites, and that is making money by increasing traffic to your website.
These are 6 ways I get website traffic for a variety of sites I monetize personally.
1) Target your page 2-3 organic rankings
Page 2 – 3 is useless for traffic forget about it! Nobody looks through those pages, If you are on those pages you might as well be on page 74 and page 469. But did you know you can usually give your internal pages that are ranking on page two and three a quick boost just by playing with your internal linking?
Use Google Analytics, webmaster tools and semrush to identify the terms and pages that are on page two and three. Write them all down.. Organization is key here... after you find potential targets you need to find pages on your site that have some good juice to toss at those pages.
You can use open site explorer and look at the DA and PA.. imo they are crap metrics that can be easily rigged but when you are dealing with your own site they should give you a good idea of what pages are solid.. well as long as you aren’t spamming your own site! You can do this in 2 seconds by entering your main URL in OSE and then look at the top pages tab.
Once you have identified your strongest pages drop some links on those pages to your pages that are sitting on Google page 2 and 3.. this works good for long tail keywords that need just a little nudge. Smart internal linking is something 99% of people forget to do and it makes zero sense as there are a lot of missed opportunities here. Take small steps and don’t just drop a lot of internal links to a single page at once, make small changes and see how the SERPS react - it's all about that testing and optimizing guys.
2) Use PPC copy from top companies in your page descriptions
Page descriptions don’t mean anything for SEO! You could include your keyword in them but it isn’t going to help your rankings. A lot of people will say to include the keyword in the description anyway to help with the click through because the person is likely to click on the page if they see the same keyword they just searched for.
It makes sense but if you look at some descriptions they just look so awkward with the keyword slapped in there.. Nobody is going to be impressed and want to click on some site just because it includes a keyword.. I get all my description copy ideas from people that are spending crazy money testing ads... PPC advertisers!
I will do a Google search related to the topic of the page I am writing a description for and look at the top PPC ads. Keep in mind here these advertisers are spending heaps of money split testing copy and they aren’t just pulling random lines of copy out of their ass! They value their money too much to do that.. so I look at the best ads and get my description copy there. PPC ads on top are spending the most and have the best click through so it is a good source of copy that attracts people to make them want to click.
Try it... A lot of people have good rankings but their descriptions suck so bad nobody clicks on their page - Top ranks are worthless unless they entice people to click on them.
3) Make list posts that feature sites you want links and traffic from
This is easy to do for any niche... Make a list of the best websites that you want to try to get links on because of referral traffic and not SEO, I call this making suck-up posts.. This can be done in any niche.
Example: if you have a website that features funny pictures of dogs make a list of all the top sites you would kill to get a link from and that has visitors you would love to have check out your website.. Now create a blog post that has a very broad topic so you can include every site you are interested in - “15 Blogs All Dog Lovers Need to Read Daily” there ya go.. Simple as that!
Make sure you link out to each one (and don't no-follow them) – seriously, so many people are worried about losing link juice.. Guess what? No-following all your outbound links or even not linking out makes you look suspicious! The name of the SEO game is looking natural.. Do the biggest sites in the world link out? Yes.. Do they no-follow everything? No.
Create a good blog post, don’t hire a “native” to write a $5 article you will just be wasting your time.. spend $$ and get a great blog post that will impress everyone you include in it.
Once you publish it contact all of the websites you included in your list.. Email them.. Use the contact form on their site.. Tweet them.. Facebook them.. Don’t worry about bothering them! They won’t see it as you pestering them once they discover that you are doing it to let them know that you featured them. Think about it for a minute.. they are after links and exposure just like you are so by giving them a link they are going to feel like they have to return the favor. They will often write a blog post telling their readers that they were featured and named as a blog to read.. Stroke their ego and get a link and mention. It is a niche related link and can push traffic to your site also.
4) Sponsor an Infographic
This is one of the easiest ways to get a link on any site in your niche that you want. Infographics are the best and every website owner loves them! What they don’t like is the cost associated with getting them done.. in the offline world companies pay $2k+ for infographics. You can use this to work your way onto any site in your niche..
Reach out and offer to sponsor an infographic. Tell them you will handle everything from the concept to the design. You will need to put out some effort and spend about $150.. here is how you can do this:
Find a site you want a referral link form - Target the best of the best.. email them and tell them you are creating an infographic and would be happy to co-brand it. This means you will include your logo and website address along with theirs on it. You have to have this step figured out before you move on.. you need to get a verbal agreement and make sure they are on board before you move forward.
There isn’t a site that will pass up a branded infographic. Now a lot of people will create infographics and send them to any site they can find in hopes they publish them. The market is flooded with infographics and website owners don’t want to publish the same infographic that 100 other sites are! If you are offering to brand it in their name they know it is more exclusive and if other sites pick it up they might even get links out of it.
Once you have a site on the hook find a good topic to create an infographic on., the easiest way to do this is to find a very popular blog post to take the date from. I will put in popular blogs related to the niche I am targeting into open site explorer and click on the top pages tab to see what posts have the most links pointing to them., blog posts with a lot of links tend to mean it's a hot topic and the people looking for info in the niche liked it! I will look for list type posts that I can hand over to a designer and have turned into an infographic.. I don’t have time to research content for hours and I want this as hands free as possible. I will find a good popular blog post that I can see being turned into an infographic and well received.
There are plenty of designers here on BHW that will do an infographic for $100 - $150 and then you have freelancer and odesk to source additional talent. I tend to stick to BHW designers because freelancer and odesk is mostly full of crap. Look at recent reviews on BHW and test a couple guys. The great thing about just handing over a list style blog post is the hard part (the content) is already done.
Once the design is done (make sure it is branded to look good – take it a step further and have the designer create it using the colors of the site you are doing it for) reach out and get it into the website owners hand.. I have never had to ask for a link and you don’t want to sound overly desperate saying something stupid like “don’t forget to link to me man” – it should just happen and don’t look for a spammy anchor text.. you can get naked url and brand links this way but if you think you are going to get a “infographic provided by buy garcinia cambogia online” you might as well not do this. The link is good because it will be niche related but if you create a good infographic the referral traffic will be your gold.
5) Sign up for every single newsletter in your niche
Getting links on top sites in your niche isn’t hard if you just approach it differently than the other sheeple.. everyone else is sending out copy and paste messages that all say the same crap. They offer a 500 word unique article and ask for a link.. forget that noise. No serious website owner is going to respond or welcome that offer and if a site does it isn’t one you want a link from anyway.
Most websites have a newsletter or some list you can subscribe to.. sign up for every single one you can find! You are going to get a alot of emails so set up a separate email address but make sure you keep it on your domain.. so if you use info@yoursite as your mail email set something like hello@yoursite for this.. DO NOT use something like spam@ or newsletter@ - any smart website owner will sniff this out and know what you are up to.
Every time you get a new newsletter read through it in 3 seconds and reply to it and compliment some point.. “That was great – I totally agree about (whatever) because (your point)” – and also start to tweet out blog posts from the site., they will start to see that you are replying to their newsletters (nobody does this) and sharing their stuff on social media.. this is building a relationship.
After you do this for a few weeks include a pitch in one of your replies to their newsletter.. “I was actually just writing a blog post about (the topic you are replying about) and wanted to know if you would like to publish it on your website?”
This is such a casual guest post request.. It isn’t annoying or spammy like 99% of the other ones.. It will stand out and they will identify you as the person that has been communicating with them and promoting their content!
Approach this like you would a girl you want to marry and not just sleep with.. You have to wine and dine and put in some effort. You aren’t going right to the bedroom. If a girl drops her pants right away she is dirty!.. just like a blog is dirty if they let anyone guest post! But the effort is worth it when you land that post and get a niche link that will kick back referral traffic and give you a SEO boost.
6) Publish one blog post daily that targets a low search volume long tail keyword
Everyone is on the long tail keyword bandwagon these days but most will skip over a keyword that has a low search volume of 20 searches.. they think it isn’t worth going after but I will tell you it is! The key is to target one every single day.. most people skip them over so the competition is low.. you can often rank with just good on site optimization.
I make sure the long tail is used in the title, in the first part of the content and a couple more times in the content. IMG ALT tag and H2 tag to round it off.. since you are going this daily make sure to interlink correctly.
Being consistent comes into play after some time.. But imagine if you targeted a kw daily that “only” has a monthly search volume of 20.. After 1 year you would be targeting about 260 keywords if you did it Mon - Fri every week.. 20 x 260 = 5,200 VERY TARGETED searches a month.. If your on site optimization is up to scratch done properly you will be ranking on top for all of these.
This type of traffic will do better than more general keywords because these very low volume long tails are extremely targetted! When you think of the big picture this is such an easy thing to take action on.. If you can’t afford to outsource the article daily just write it first thing in the morning.. get up 15 min early to get it done.. Just do it! This is such an easy way to increase your traffic but not with just any traffic.. this is very targeted. Once you start to make money increase to 3-5 of these low search volume long tails. Most people just see the big search volume and don’t want to put the effort into the low volume stuff.. I’ll clean house with that stuff all day long.
Remember all of these can be scaled up with some employees then you can really get cooking.. but as always don't half ass those employees!
Hope some of you find this useful.. I want to hear your feedback on this guys and would love to see others post one of your tips for increasing traffic, let’s turn this thread into a pot of gold to help each other! Ciao for now..
