Traffic Mavericks

Which traffic type would you prefer? Pay-per-click or SEO? Personally, I prefer paid traffic even more then free traffic. I’m not the type that loves shooting in the dark. If I want to target one keyword, I’m going to make sure the keyword is really worth it. Not only that keyword must bring decent amount of traffic everyday, but it also must convert.

By using PPC traffic, I can archive this goal quickly and track the result quickly. Once I had the solid data about the conversion, I start posting content to Docstoc, Ezine Articles or Hubpages to get organic traffic as well.

However, these are some drawbacks when using pay-per-click traffic:

1. Low click thru rate which resulted less traffic than organic listings. Google will place PPC ads on the right side of search result. So, if you have both PPC ads and website listed for the same keyword, you’ll notice that your ads will less likely going to get traffic.
2. The cost-per-click could vary depending on what keywords you are bidding. The trick is to bid on keywords that no one else found. Otherwise, expect to get as high as $2, even higher for each click.
3. Google Quality Score somehow affect your ranking and maximum bid. You might be thinking, as long as your website is relevant, you are save from being slapped by Google, right? Wrong. You website relevancy comes second. The first thing Google would consider is you ads click-thru-rate (CTR). If your CTR is low for two weeks, your quality score will drop drastically from 8/10 to 1/10. That was happening to me before.
4. Sometimes, the result is not as good as expected. What I means is this, I thought one keyword is good enough, already long, it is product name keyword so I expect the conversion is high. But guess what, the conversion is zero. When that happens, my money also get burned.
5. If that keyword is generated using Google Keyword Tool, probably there already tonnes of competitors bidding for that term. Everyone has access to this tool, average Joe can use this, a company can utilize this tool, so it’s no surprise that most keywords that you generate using this tool is saturated already.

One big problem for new webmasters is, they frustrated when their new websites fail to appear on Google’s first page despite trying the best. When checked, all things ar ejust fine. The content, title tag and even backlinks.

Ever experience this? Well, actually it is not your mistake. For several reasons, Google doesn’t give priority to your website. Based on Google’s past data, 80% of new websites are spam websites. Real webmasters will work on his sites for months. So, by introducing policy like inbound links, unique content and Google Sandbox, they can wipe out these spam and returns the best, relevant result for searchers.

So, how to get decent free traffic online without building lots of backlinks and wait for months? The answer is: you must depend on other websites. The good thing is, there are dozens of websites on the internet where you can post content like articles, documents or videos for free. All these websites have good reputation in Google’s eye. Therefore, once your content is posted, it will be ranked high and you can direct the traffic to your website. These are examples of such content-sharing sites:

Social bookmarks like Digg and Jumptags: The beauty of social bookmarks, is you can dominate millions of search results by just posting a single link. The best social bookmarking site is Digg. If you create a website, it will be impossible to get good ranking. However, if you posted your link to your website to Digg, add relevant title and description, your bookmark will appear on Google’s first page.

So, should someone looks for relevant information on Google, he will reach your document, discover your link and reach your website. In short:

Traffic from Google > Your bookmark at Digg or Jumptags > Your website > Sale.

However, there are a few things to keep in mind:

1. Be careful not to post more than one bookmark per day. Or else, you will be banned.
2. In most cases, posting to these bookmarks won’t improve your website’s search engine ranking. You can get traffic directly only from these bookmarks, but any link to your website from Jumptags or Digg won’t be counted as inbound link.

Document sharing websites like Scribd or Docstoc : I love this one. For one thing, both websites have PR 7 to 8 on Google, so once you post a pdf document on Docstoc, link to your document will be available immediately on Google’s first page. Inside the pdf files, you can insert links to your website or affiliate link. Another reason why prefer using Docstoc, is the rules isn’t as strict as Squidoo or Ezine Articles. Just create a two-pages pdf document, post and your document will be approved immediately. No hassle to wait for editor’s review.

Author stream: This is another document-sharing website, except Author Stream is about sharing Microsoft Powerpoint document. If you don’t have Powerpoint installed, you can create the same document by using Google Docs and Spreadsheet. This service is free. Again, no need to wait for approval. Any links inside your slide is clickable, which means at the end of show, you can ask the audience to visit your website by clicking the link.

By now, you should realize the power of search engine traffic. Although you can get lots of traffic without using search engines, you’ll notice that the result is not the same. Not only traffic from other sources like forum marketing, offline promotion and social media takes time, but the conversion is poor and less likely will turn into cash.

Lots of traffic. According to statistics by Alexa, search engine websites are the most trafficked sites on the internet. Even other popular search engine and social networking sites like MySpace, Alexa, Ask, AOL are officially Google search partner.  These sites also get lots of visits everyday. By getting your site rank high in Google, you’ll stand a chance to get lots of traffic from all these sites.

Cheap and even free traffic. Can you get similar result to search engine by using press release or offline promotion? Yes, you can. But that will cost lots of money. Offline advertising on newspaper or TV  isn’t that cheap. However, the case is totally different online. If you provide quality content, total cost is zero.

Targeted and highly relevant traffic. The enter the keyword then found your website. Which means those visitors already interested in your product or service. This is not offline business, where you customers walk on the street, find your shop and buy. There are billions of websites on the net and people depends heavily on search engines to show the way.

Are you using Adwords? These are list of common mistakes that you should avoid.

1. Bidding on one-word keywords or short term keywords. For example like “weigh loss”, money, laptop PC. The best keywords are buyer keywords, which contains product name inside it. Visitors who entered such keywords would probably be ready to make a purchase, with a credit card in hands already.
2. Depending on Google Keyword Tool alone for your research. Sounds familiar isn’t it? While Google provides the best, free keyword tool for webmasters, this tool alone isn’t enough to determine profitability. Log on to eBay, Amazon or Clickbank marketplace for keyword ideas. Then, generate long phrase using Google Free Keyword Tool.
3. Targeting all countries and territories. In most countries, online buying rate is low, almost zero. Whenever someone click on your ads from these countries, probably they would seek for information about something and not to buy.
4. Turning on the content network. Content network is less targeted. If you send traffic to review page, there’s 99% chance your visitors won’t buy. On the other hand, if you send to squeeze page, or email capture page, they will less likely going to signup.
5. Display ads for iPhone. Can you buy something from iPhone? Of course you can. But do you know anyone did that? People might browse the web via iPhone for all these: Twitter, Facebook, Gmail. But not to buy on these sites: Amazon, eBay, Clickbank, Apple, Adobe, Microsoft.
6. Not collecting visitors emails. One person will think lots of time before buying. It’s your job as affiliate or business owner to remind them about how good your offer is, and how it can help your visitors solved their problems. If you don’t collect emails, they wil leave and forget. Otherwise, the buying rate will increase up to 10%.
7. Not providing relevant landing page. Especially for affiliates, they tend to send traffic directly to affiliate link. This won’t be a problem for Yahoo search marketing, but a not for Google Adwords. Google hates affiliate links these days.

At Traffic Mavericks University, the main traffic strategies is search engine traffic. There are two to get Google traffic. You can provide relevant content on certain websites and to get free traffic or you can also pay to Google or Yahoo for their advertising programs. These are the pros and cons of free search engine traffic.


Advantages of free traffic:

1. Zero startup cost with extreme profit. Not only you don’t need to pay Google or Yahoo, but sometimes you don’t even need to have your own domain name.
2. Get the most attention and credibility. Most searchers tend to click on organic listings compared to paid listings.
3. Once you get high ranking, it would be hard for competitors to dominate. Since Google considers lots of factors, like unique content, relevancy, domain age and backlinks, your competitors also need to fulfill all these factors to dominate your link.
4. Google domination. Want to dominate Google search and get 90% traffic for that keyword? Well, create as many contents and post to your blogs, Squidoo lens, articles and Scribd. The result is tremendous since all your website will appear in first page, from one to ten.
5. All traffic cost is zero, regardless what market you are in. Very useful when you are trying to target a market with high demand and competition.

The weakness:

1. No guarantee that you will be ranked. If you are targeting competitive keywords, it would be difficult, perhaps impossible. There are lots of “mysteries” about how Google gives good ranking to one website. Even experienced marketers don’t fully understand Google’s algorithm.
2. Free marketing is about creating quality content. It would be fine if you can type and write well. But that would be a problem if you can’t master English properly or can’t write well in that topic.
3. You could be wasting time posting articles and targeting keywords that nobody search for it.
4. Takes lots of effort, if not time to dominate and appear on Google’s first page.

The conclusion
Free traffic is suitable to make money online only if you are certain that one keyword is worth targeting. For example, product name keywords and long-tail keyword terms with less competition but high search volume. Use Google keyword tool to check this.

1. Free marketing is a great source of traffic. However, avoid targeting keywords that gets zero search volume per month since you need to work for that keyword.
2. Forget about getting high ranking on one or two-word keywords like web hosting, weight loss, make money.
3. For start, get free search engine traffic by leveraging article websites or Youtube. For example, post Youtube video, publish Squidoo lens, upload a pdf file at Scribd. This one is proven to be better and faster way to get free Google traffic and save time learning complicated SEO terms.