Archive for the ‘website traffic’ Category

One of the major problems that people have with social networking is that they try to spread themselves too thin. They join a half-dozen networking sites and then cannot devote enough time to adequately network on any of them. The result is that they have a half-professional appearance all over the net.

Narrowing your focus to just a few sites and then building from there is the best way to approach social networking, especially if you want to make money. A strategic plan will help you build traffic in a measurable way without scattering your time and energy in many different directions.

At the core of your social networking plan is your “launch pad,” the site to which you will drive all of your online traffic. This can be a blog, a website, or a squeeze page. For the purposes of this plan, we’re going to make it a blog.

There are several reasons why using a blog for your launch pad is a good idea. Blogs have a higher level of interactivity with the audience. The content on a blog is constantly changing, so it always stays fresh and therefore ranks higher in search engine results. A blog will help you build a relationship with your niche and become a more trusted advisor.

You should use either Blogger or Wordpress to set up your blog. Do some keyword research in your niche and find a blog title that incorporates a popular keyword. This way you will get some automatic traffic from the title of the blog itself.

In fact, you should develop a short list of keywords that you will use to tag your content later on in the other social networking sites. When you focus your keyword choices around a short list, you will be able to rise in the rankings for those keywords pretty quickly.

When you start your blog, you will need to focus on creating interesting, compelling content. Map out five to ten blog posts and add them before you start promoting your blog through social networking sites.

For example, let’s say you are in the wedding niche. You have an affiliate relationship with a company that sells wedding favors. You decide that you want to develop a social networking plan to promote this particular company’s products.

Looking at some keyword results, there are many different types of wedding favors to choose from and many are the focus of lots of searches each day. You could use a URL that is general like www.weddingfavorinfo.com and then offer information on the many different types of wedding favors. On your blog, you can use banner ads or small graphic ads to link back to the affiliate site. You can also provide text links within your blog posts for visitors to click on as they read your suggestions.

Once you have your blog up and running, then it is time to create some Squidoo lenses (www.squidoo.com) and Hubpages (www.hubpages.com). To start, you should create three lenses and three Hubpages on similar keywords, all pointing back to your blog. With our wedding favor example, you could start with the three most popular types of favors and build pages around them (golf wedding favors, cheap wedding favors, unique wedding favors).

After you have built your lenses and pages, you can network within each site with people who are interested in what you have to offer. You can post comments on other people’s lenses or pages, and link to their sites. Look for people who have similar sites and network with them.

You can add your blog’s RSS feed to your lenses and pages. This way they will be constantly updated with the fresh content from your blog. In addition to the links back to your blog, you can also have links to the affiliate program within your lenses and pages.

Over a period of time, you can begin to add to the network of lenses and pages until you have criss-crossed all of your major keywords. Stumble Upon is a terrific tool for adding more power to your blog, lenses, and pages. When you sign up for Stumble Upon and download the toolbar, you will be able to check “I like it” as you visit your own sites and sites that are within your niche. Over time, you develop a list of your favorite sites which becomes a catalog of popular sites within your niche.

It is important, as you use Stumble Upon, that you not limit yourself to just

bookmarking your own sites. Your Stumble Upon profile will have much more impact and draw if it covers a wide breadth of sites within your niche. What makes Stumble Upon a great social networking tool (better than many social bookmarking tools out there), is that you can find users who have similar interests. On the main site, you can search the community for keywords and then make contact with people interested in your niche.

When you add someone as a friend on Stumble Upon, they will very likely look over your list of sites and bookmark them. Then your links will spread throughout the community, bring you traffic and make you more money.

These simple steps will create a broad network of backlinks and some

great Web 2.0 traffic. It will help you establish your site as an authority in

your niche market, and bring you targeted, interested traffic. The type of traffic that makes you money online!

If you found this information useful consider joining my free membership with over $500 worth of bonuses inside.

Facebook is a great social network. Although it originally started out as a hangout for college students, it’s evolved into much more than that. These days it’s also a great place for adults to network and share common interests.

The concept of the site is simple. You sign up for an account and then fill out a profile. You can make a list of your interests, add photos of yourself, and even include fun add-ons to your profile. Then you can look for other people you’d like to network with and add them to your list of friends.

Most people use these friends lists just to meet like-minded individuals and make friends, but marketers also use the site to get in touch with potential customers. It can be a great way to find traffic if you know what you’re doing.

Marketing on Facebook is a complex system that may take a while to master. You see, unlike most other social networks, Facebook has no problem with people using the site to network for business purposes and even do a little marketing. But they don’t like certain kinds of marketing, so you have to be very careful about the type of marketing you use.

You don’t want to get banned. You may spend a lot of time building lists of friends and developing relationships with them so you can market to them. If your account is banned, you’ll lose all of the friends you’ve built up and thus lose all of the work you’ve put into building the list in the first place!

Smart marketers know that time and money should never be wasted, so it pays to follow the rules. Why spend weeks building a large list of friends, only to destroy what you’ve built with a few big mistakes? It’s much better to play it straight and make money from your list of friends for the long term.

The basic premise of social marketing is to build a list of friends orfollowers, then network with them in order to build name recognition and get your links seen. In order for social marketing to be truly effective, you’re going to have to actually network with people. It’s not called a “friends list” for nothing!

You’ll need to actually talk to people, build relationships, and build trust. Basically, you want people to remember your name and trust you enough to buy whatever it is you are selling or recommending. This is true for any niche, not just marketing to other marketers.

Let’s say you’re building a list of friends in the golf niche. You’ll want to specifically seek out golfers to comprise the majority of your list, of course. Then you’ll need to actually talk to them about golf. Imagine for a moment that you’re not there to make money – you’re actually just a regular golf fan who wants to talk to other golfers about your passion.

This is the frame of mind you need to be in. You need to build a presence as if you’re just there to discuss your passion for the market you’re targeting, whatever that market may be. It helps if you’re really interested in the niche, because it will make it easier for you to interact and become trusted by the people you want to market to.

Pouring your heart into your interactions with people will get you friends who are loyal and trusting. They’ll feel the passion you have for the topic, and they’ll start to respect you as someone who really knows what they’re talking about.

This is key. If you want people to trust you and buy from you, they need to believe you’re really an authority on the topic. Most people are smart enough to know they should only take advice from someone who actually appears to have expert knowledge and experience on a particular topic

The point is, people buy from people they know, like, and trust, and they take advice from people they believe are knowledgeable about the topic. It makes little sense to do otherwise, because taking advice from someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about can potentially cause problems, and at the very least be frustrating.

One very good way to market on Facebook is to start groups. A group is filled with people who share a common interest. For example, if you’re in the golf niche you could start a group specifically for golfers.

You could even further focus the niche by building a group specifically for female golfers or professional golfers. The more tightly-focused the niche group is, the more effective it’s likely to be in selling products to that target audience.

Groups are great, because you can do almost anything you want with them. You can invite anyone on your friends list to join your group. They have no obligation to join, of course, but those who do are fair game for marketing.

As long as you don’t use the group to constantly spam members and you actually make the group a fun and educational activity, you’ll have a list of people who are proven to be interested in a topic and you’ll have permission to market to them. And, voila, you have the perfect seller/buyer scenario!

You’re also free to place links to your own websites and products on your Facebook profile page. Anyone who becomes your friend and looks at your profile can see those links, and they can follow them to visit your websites. Just don’t add affiliate links to your profile. Facebook doesn’t want people using their site to spam affiliate links.

One thing you should not do is spam your friends’ “walls.” A wall is the section on a profile where peoplecan leave comments. Some people will write on other people’s walls and drop links in. This is not only considered bad form, but it could get you banned.

If you want to make use of walls, you can just leave interesting comments regarding your niche, and people can become your friend if they like the post you made. This is a great place to show off your knowledge of your niche.

You can post interesting tidbits of information or answer people’s questions this way. To make money online through Facebook may seem a bit complex, but it’s actually very easy. The traffic potential is great, so it’s worth taking the time to learn how to do it the right way!

Social networking is powerful because it allows you to target specific groups of people at their level. Instead of creating a site and distancing yourself from the public, you’re interacting with them on a new level.

This level of interaction is more personal and therefore puts you and your message in a different perspective. People don’t want to be “sold to” – period. But they love to get advice, take recommendations, and follow the crowd.

Social networking allows you to interact with your target market on a friendly, more casual level. This lowers their resistance to your marketing message since it isn’t presented as a sales pitch. What you’re offering is perceived as friendly advice or a recommendation.

For example, imagine the difference in acceptance between a direct mail postcard advertising a new model cell phone and a friend telling about their new cell phone and why they like it better than their previous phone. You’ll trust and respond better to your friend’s information and testimonial because you have a relationship with them.

When you present yourself as a reliable and trustworthy dispenser of accurate and valuable information, not only will you receive more traffic toyour sites, but it will be targeted and receptive traffic. Your audience will be ready to interact with your site or buy, depending on the type of site you have. They are interested in your niche topic, and they’ve made a connection with you somehow by interacting with you on the social networking site.

The other big benefit of using social networking is that it allows you tap into small niche markets with very little effort. These platforms can help you brand yourself and distribute information that relates to your business.

The best part is that once you get your platforms established (like your blog, your favorites list, or your profile) other people will start doing promotion for you, boosting your popularity. The audiences on Web 2.0 sites are very eager to interact and share. If you just concentrate on making your content interesting and buzz-worthy, then you’ll have no problem getting attention.

There are lots and lots of social networking sites, so many that you’d make yourself crazy if you tried to develop a presence on them all. To review some of your options, visit www.go2web20.net. This site catalogs lots of different Web 2.0 sites and allows you to search them by their purpose and function.

Multivariate testing, as it pertains to Internet marketing, is a process of testing multiple parts of a live web page or website for the purpose of finding out which combination works best to achieve the goals set out for the site.

Multivariate testing is more complex than standard split-testing, also  known as A/B testing. In A/B testing, only two variations are tested, but multivariate testing includes many different variables.

Marketers generally use multivariate testing to find out which variation of a particular website performs best. This is most often used to maximize the response of a sales page or squeeze page, but some marketers also use this type of testing in other ways, such as for maximizing AdSense revenue through color changes, ad placement, and other factors.

Multivariate testing can be performed manually by changing one thing at a time and recording the results, but this is extremely complex and time-consuming. Most people prefer to use special software to perform this kind of testing.

The software will display differentversions of a page dynamically, and statistics are then recorded about visitor behavior. Testing can also be taken further to dynamically display the version that is performing best at a given time.

Some marketers use this type of system to rotate various versions, displaying the most effective version the majority of the time and displaying the alternate versions only for testing purposes. Since traffic sources, seasons, time of the day, and other factors have an effect on how people react, this can be useful for ensuring the best response at any given time.

Very good testing software can actually track visitors to ensure that they’re shown the same content when they return to the site. It could also be used to deliver different versions to people who didn’t take action on their first visit, with the purpose of delivering a different experience in order to have a
better chance of getting the visitor to take action.

Even PPC companies like Google AdWords are now offering their own style of split testing. AdWords will let you test multiple versions of your ads, and then they’ll display only the most productive of those ads.

A/B testing is generally easier to set up and manage than multivariate testing. You can use A/B testing to test the difference in conversion rates between two headlines, for example, simply by making two different versions of your sales page.

You would run one version until you received a certain amount of data, and then run the second one until you received a similar amount of data. Once you received enough data for the test to be considered statistically accurate, you would compare the results.

No software is needed for most A/ B split-testing, other than a statistics program to monitor the amount of traffic received to each version and a way to track the response rate of the traffic. As long as you can find out how much traffic you’ve received during the time each version was run and how many actions were taken, you will have a successful A/B test.

A/B testing is also very easy to interpret. Since there are only two possible outcomes, the results are usually very clear. Since A/B testing is so straightforward, it can be an easy way for you to test different options if you’re not very familiar with testing or don’t have the resources to devote to purchasing special software.

If you’re a home-based business owner with a simple website and a low budget, multivariate testing may be overkill for you. In this case, setting up a basic A/B test can save you a lot of time and resources.

You might need to test only a small element of a well-performing page, Buy button or the color of your headline. Or perhaps you want to add a new option to a page, but you’re unsure how your traffic will react. You could set up a simple A/B split test in order to find out how the change is received.

On the other hand, multivariate testing is very helpful when you’re creating a completely new website and you want to test various elements to find a version that will receive the bestconversion rate. It can also be helpful if you’ve received a number of conflicting suggestions from your customers that you’re interested in implementing, but you want to test the variations before  ommitting to a specific version.

The most famous type of multivariate testing is known as the Taguchi method. It was first used in the 1950s to test several types of product manufacturing systems, including automobile manufacturing.

These days, the Taguchi Method is being used to test page elements for web pages, and to find out which combination of those variables produces the page with the best results.

More companies are starting to use this method to test web page results. There’s one problem with this method, though. Because there can be so many unique variations, it can take a very large amount of traffic to come up with statistically valid results. If you created a multivariate test that was set
up to compare results with five different variables each with three values – that would make 243 possible combinations.

Since you’d probably need at least 100 conversions for the results to be considered statistically valid, you’d need almost 500,000 visitors if your conversion rate was 5%. Most websites don’t have that much traffic, making this type of testing very difficult to perform.

For this reason, many smaller companies choose to stick with simple A/B testing. A/B testing doesn’t offer the type of flexibility that comes with something like the Taguchi method, but it’s much easier to get statistically valid results with less traffic.

Although A/B testing is simple to set up, it can actually be quite timeconsuming if you have more than two variations to test. Multivariate testing is far better if you need to test several variables, because, although it’s a bit more difficult to set up, it’s far easier to monitor and track when you have software that records your statistics, swaps pages for you, and handles everything for you once it’s been set up.

Some marketers don’t see the need for any type of split-testing. They believe they know their market, and they understand exactly what they’re looking for. While that may be true, it usually isn’t.

Many of the smartest marketers in the world have been shocked to discover that something they believe in firmly actually wasn’t true at all once they performed a split-test! There’s a story about a marketing agency that decided to test three different versions of a particular ad.

The group was asked which ad they felt would perform the best of the three. About half of them voted for one version, and the other half voted for another. No one voted for the third choice. The marketers all cites their reasons for believing the ad they chose would perform well, and the reasons they gave all made sense.

But when the results came in, the entire team was shocked. The third ad was by far the best performer! This was the ad that none of them picked. This was a group of professional marketers with decades of experience, yet they failed to correctly anticipate the reaction of this market. After spending a lot of time researching the market as thoroughly as possible, they still didn’t have a firm grasp on what this particular market wanted.

Skype: An Interesting Case Study

Some of the largest websites in the world use split-testing and multivariate testing in order to improve visitor experience and increase conversions. Even companies like CNet and Skype have used split-testing.

Skype chose to outsource their split-testing to a company called Offermatica. They felt their in-house team or a retained agency couldn’t be objective enough to perform proper testing, so they hired it out to specialists.

Skype had three main objectives:

They wanted to increase the number of people who downloaded the software, increase the number of people who subscribed to their paid service, and measure various calls-to-action and branding methodologies.

Skype used a version of multivariate testing often called A/B/C split-testing. Rather than testing two variables at a time as with A/B splittesting, A/B/C split-testing uses three.Skype decided to test two variations of their homepage against their original version.

They used their original homepage as the control subject for the test. The second version reduced the branding level that was used on the page. The third version used fewer graphics andtext for a cleaner, more streamlined look.

The results were surprising! Although visitors claimed that they like the second version the most, the results actually showed that the response was best with version three, the minimalist version.

Skype also used split-testing to test other elements of their site. They wanted to test the navigation menus to find out the best wording for certain elements in the menus. The results of the testing showed that two minor changes to the wording in the navigation menus increase revenue by a staggering 18.75%!

This type of case study is an excellent indicator of how split-testing and multivariate testing can be used to increase response rates and conversion rates. This is also a very good illustration of the fact that sometimes even the viewers don’t know what they prefer.

They might think they like a certain version better because the colors or layout looks more appealing, but in reality they might respond better to other version. This is why the most successful webmasters are testing, testing, testing – it gets results!

Advertising is the name of the game in any business. Unless you get people to visit your website, you might as well have a lemonade stand on a deserted island. But what’s worse is advertising that doesn’t get someone’s attention – in particular, AdWords pay per click ads.

Learning how to write effective AdWords ads is essential when you plan to use paid advertising. So just what are the elements of success? Experts will agree that first and foremost, you must include your main keyword in the title, a strong emotional call-to-action, and at least one benefit.

Then when all is said and done – test, test, and test some more. Let’s take a closer look at these three concepts:

Since we’re talking about both human eyes and Googlebots, we need to serve up ads that are locked on to the keyword and relevant to the search. You only get 25 characters, so make sure your keyword is right on top (it becomes bold when someone types it in because Google highlights it due to its relevance).

So, if someone is thinking, “I need to make money” they type, “make money” into Google and get to see this AdWords ad:

Make Money Tonight (action keyword)
Get $100 By the End of the Day (proof)
In Your PayPal Account Now! (instant result)
www.makemoneynow.com

This follows the action keyword + Proof + instant result pattern, which is a common template.

Another useful template is to follow the desire keyword + only with this + do it now:

Want to stop smoking?
New technique guarantees success
Available now at introductory discount
www.stoppingsmoking.com

Knowing what an emotional or motivating benefit is means getting into your potential customer’s head. They’re seeking answers to a problem and you need to give them the answer they’re looking for.

A word of caution, though: you shouldn’t try to use trickery or exaggeration in your ads. Google will pull your ads fast if you break the rules. Be concise in your wording, use relevant words to your keyword, and be truthful.

Any Adwords experts will tell you that there is no “exact formula.” Each ad stands on its own merit. What works for one niche may not even extract an interest in another. Always, always run two ads at the same time. This is a time-honored advertising method called split testing.

You run two ads that are the same in every way except one word. Then you run the ads for 100 clicks to see which one pulls the best. Now you know which one works, so you take that one and change one word and split test it again. You keep at it until you get one that gets the result you want. But even then – never stop testing. People change. Needs change. So your ads need to change, too.

A good way to get an idea about how to word your ad is to study other ads – especially ads in your niche. What words are being used? What order are the words are in? How relevant are they? What makes you want to click through? Start a swipe file to inspire your own ad campaign.

Just remember that each and every character counts. You can cull words like a, if, it, and other less influential words. This is classified advertising and people are accustomed to clipped and concise phraseology. Just don’t make it too cryptic.

The top Social Bookmarking sites continue on a slight but clear downward trend. (Alexa Traffic History Graph for Digg, stumbleupon, del.icio.us ) [inline] [/inline]
Going against the trend: Mixx.com [inline] [/inline]

We Internet marketers sometimes run through blog and forum posts so fast that we miss some important money-making tidbits that might be useful to us – now or in the future. We miss little secrets that others may reveal because we don’t have time to pay close attention or we have something else on our minds. Scanning is the way we handle most of our emails too – at times, missing the point. Slowing down and paying attention can expose some valuable information, such as competitions that may produce some quick cash. One competition on Twitter awarded a promo space on a home page, with one winner every hour. Free promotion of your site or product – if you had only seen it. All you had to do was answer a question (send a tweet) and a winning name was drawn from the correct answers every hour. When people are interested enough to tweet about it, others will certainly tweet about it until you go viral. But the trick is to make it interesting – a contest or other money-making idea - something that will pique their interest. Recently on a forum, one person posted that they used Twitter for test competitions and the results were even better than expected. You can ask readers to retweet and increase your exposure even more. If people are interested in your product or site, they’ll check it out based on the recommendation. Another tip for getting some great exposure and have fun in the process is to simply enter into discussions with others on Twitter, even if you’re not being followed by that person. His or her followers will see your name and perhaps enter into the discussion – but at the very least, they’ll see your name – possibly putting you on their follow list. Ask something or say something that has bearing on what’s being discussed. If it’s helpful or valuable, you may get a response. Want to get your tweets re-tweeted? Use WordPress to install the plug in My TweetBacks WordPress Plugin, and your tweets will automatically be re-tweeted. The value in that is that you can get literally thousands of people tweeting every hour in hopes to win the prize – lots of free exposure. A word of wisdom here – be sure that your Twitter profile name is eye-catching. For example, use a Twitter profile like, “WinCASH” and set up fun and scintillating answers to the questions. Use answers to questions about headline topics that everyone is sure to have seen. The better the prize – the more people will respond. It’s a no cost viral exposure method. I'd love to hear your Twitter tips, please share in the comments!

Social Media Marketing (SMM) plays an important role in Internet marketing by the creation and distribution of your content (and/or products and services) by one of many forms of viral marketing. You can do this by creating content that is interesting, compelling and exciting for readers. This content can end up bookmarked, or getting hits on Digg or any of the other social news sites. This adds up to exposure for you. Perhaps the most well known method of garnering the attention of customers is by sharing your content via social news and networking sites. The way to do this is to encourage people to share your content by recommending you to Digg, StumbleUpon and other sites that specialize in getting content into the hands of many and offering those readers the opportunity to either give your content a big visibility boost or to bury your content in the ranks. A fairly new addition to the social network outlets toolkit is Social Media for Firefox. It has been coined by 97thfloor.com as “the ultimate time saver to building powerful social media accounts.” And because of what it does, that might be a true assertion. The key to getting your content noticed and moved up in position on Digg and similar sites is to find out what’s getting attention. This usually means being on top of what stories are becoming popular, and jumping on that track with some really killer content. If you see that Digg is having a run on stories about water shortages, you can jump over to StumbleUpon and submit some content regarding that topic. If you get in quickly, you you’ll be one who gets your account listed on the popular page, which will get you added attention, fans, and friends. Social Media on Firefox is actually quite easy to use. Say you’re browsing your favorite social news sites – Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit or StumbleUpon. If you have Social Media for Firefox, you will see icons next to each story. They contain submission information, including full details of each story. You can use this information to find out where lots of stories in that niche have been submitted, and where few or no stories have been submitted. Once you begin to see how content migrates from site to site, you can see where you need to get yours in first. This gives you a great advantage! Social Media for Firefox allows you to set the application to either Manual or Automatic. Manual can be used to see if a specific story has been submitted to social news sites, and if so, which ones. This works well when you are checking a single URL, and lets you see where the story hasn’t been submitted so you can get your foot in the door there. Automatic will check every URL you go to without having to use the manual option each time. It works well for browsing entire social sites. Using Social Media for Firefox can be an excellent way to get a leg up in a competitive place. If you know where the competition is scarce, you’ll be able to hit that area hard, get yourself noticed easily and make more money.

Here are a couple of tips on getting more people to click to your website by finding your tweets (or posts) and profile on Twitter: First, make sure your profile is maximized to attract traffic. Create a 1084 x 740 image to fill your background on Twitter. If you use a normal sized picture, it will only show up as a small thumbnail. But go one step further. Open up your image in Paint and add some text to your background in the upper left corner where it won’t be obscured by Twitter’s formatting. Type in your domain’s URL. This way, whenever anyone visits your profile, they’ll see your domain location right next to your username where they’ll have the option of following you. You also want to create a live profile URL link. When you log into Twitter, go to your Settings link in the top right corner of the profile page. There’s a place that says, “More info URL.” Add your link to your blog, website, or affiliate offers and others will see the hyperlink when they visit your profile or past tweets. Did you know Google is indexing these tweets in their system? If you make a post that reads, “Visited a cool website about making money online at www.mcvictor.com ,” it will eventually show up in Google SERPs. If you’ve created your profile with an image and text link, they’ll see your link and you’ll get more traffic!