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One of the most important things an online entrepreneur needs to do is to
seek out various sources of traffic for their website. It is hard to rely on
one major source of traffic alone. If 80 percent, or even 50 percent, of
your traffic comes from a single source – e.g. search engine like Google, a
link partner, pay-per-click campaign – you may want to consider looking for
other sources of traffic. Just like traditional businesses that rely on a
single customer, losing that main source of visitors will mean a significant
setback for the business.
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If your site gets a lot of organic traffic from Google, for example, due
to great placement in various keywords, it is easy to be complacent. After
all, this is free traffic - you just create your content, and wait for
people to come. And they do. If you are using pay-per-click advertising and
your site is placed at the top of your paid keywords, then you will get a
lot of traffic (and hopefully sales). Or the Drudge Report or Washington
Post may have picked up your site resulting in an avalanche of visitors.
Or you may have a link partner that is a rich source of visitors for your
website.
But what if your traffic source dries up? What if the search engine
changes its algorithm and you find your site losing 80% of your traffic
overnight? What if a new advertiser is willing to pony up to bump you off
the top spot in the PPC engines? Or you no longer have the resources to keep
up your top spot because Adwords changed its bidding policy? What if you are
yesterday's news and no one comes to your site anymore? What if your link
partner decides to remove their link to you?
Losing traffic is an online marketer's worst nightmare. With traffic
gone, you will find your revenues dwindle. Sales come far and few in between.
Affiliate income loses steam. Advertising income come in trickles.You will find
yourself scrambling where to get visitors to your website. As they
disappear, so does your income. And that will hurt a lot.
So what can you do to make sure that you don't lose all your traffic?
1. Have a marketing plan.
It need not be a double-spaced thesis like
document. Just grab a notebook, and start writing various avenues you can
and should tap to reach your audience -- and the exact steps you need to
take to do it. Add some timelines for better planning.
For example, if you want to use press release to spread the word about
your business, your plan should include the press release service/s you want
to tap, the budget you are willing to spend, and (very important) measures
to tell you that your release is a dud or success. Did you get x more
backlinks? Did you get any calls or emails from reporters? How many sites
picked up and run your release?
2. Go whitehat all the way.
Other online marketers and search engine
experts continue to game the search engine system. Sometimes they succeed,
and get a lot of traffic from their tricks. But often, search engines catch
up to them and thwart their game. These "cheaters" are then sent to the very
end of the search engine results, never to be seen again. It is important
that you keep on the straight and narrow path of search engine guidelines.
And if you are hiring someone to help you optimize your site for search
engines, or get more traffic, be sure to know what exactly they are doing -
and whether what they are doing are actually ok or will push your site to
oblivion. With Google, for example, they will not accept the "I am ignorant
as it is the person I hired who goofed" excuse for reinclusion back to their
results. You and you alone are responsible for your website so you need to
be on top of what the guys you hired are actually doing.
Be forewarned, though. Being a whitehat site does not mean that the
search engines will not drop you. They can, and they will. And it will hurt
a lot, especially since you know (or think) that you strictly followed
search engines’ Webmaster guidelines. A blackhat webmaster may say, “Oh,
Google caught up with my keyword stuffing and numerous doorway pages,” but
you the whitehat webmaster will be at a loss as to why your pages no longer
appear in the search engines. That “why” part is the hardest to answer and
will keep you awake at night. You know you’ve been good, so why did Google
stop sending traffic your way? Were your pages hijacked and now penalized
for duplicate content? Did you link to bad neighborhood? Did you link solely
for the purpose of getting reciprocal links and inflating your page rank,
even though the sites you link are totally unrelated to your site’s main
focus?
3. Know all your options.
It is important to be informed of all possible
marketing options for your business. Many home-based online entrepreneurs
have blinders on their eyes with regards to Internet marketing that they
think that only PPC advertising is the way to go, or optimizing their
websites for search engines. They either do not know what marketing options
are out there for them, or they are not willing to look for ways to spread
the word about their business. Some also do not spend money on marketing,
thinking that all they need to do is to build a great site and people will
come. Still others simply do not like to be bothered with all the work
marketing entails.
Can you write articles and let other websites use it for free in exchange
of a live link back to your site? Do you have news stories that you can
syndicate via RSS? Do you have products or services that the media may be
interested in? Do you know of a website related or complementary to your
topic that may be willing to create a link to your site? You need to
constantly educate yourselves about your marketing options. Hang out in
webmaster forums. Visit marketing websites and read articles. Buy a book on
marketing. And observe, and be willing to grab all the opportunities to
increase your traffic base.
Getting traffic -- and keeping it -- is extremely important to an online
business. Every online marketer should explore all possible avenues to get
traffic and minimize dependence on a single source.
About the Author
Nach Maravilla is the Publisher and CEO of PowerHomeBiz.com. For more
information on starting a business, get the ebook
"Checklist for Starting a
Business."
December 2005
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