As a website owner and online marketer, your #1 goal should be to drive traffic to your site and ultimately convert that traffic into leads and generate revenue for your online business.
There are thousands of different ways to drive traffic to your site and the more traffic you get the better right?
This depends on the source of the traffic and whether it’s relevant and super targeted to the overall theme of your website.
For example, if you had a website on dog training, then obviously you would want to target audiences that were interested in training their dog right?
This is what I call finding your targeted audience and this is the only kind of traffic that you want to drive to your website.
Unfortunately, there are a few sources of traffic out there that are the complete opposite of this and can actually hurt your website and cause you to lose rankings in Google.
I’ll be primarily focusing on a particular source of traffic that you’ll want to avoid and sharing the place that has helped me distinguish the good from the bad.
Today I want to discuss the good kinds of traffic that you should be driving to your site as well as the kind that you’ll want to avoid which could pose a threat to your website and have a negative impact on your rankings.
Let’s get started, shall we?
The Kind Of Traffic That You Want To Drive To Your Site (The Good)
In order for your website to be successful and profitable, it’s vital that your traffic is highly relevant and that your audience is engaging with your content.
Whether this is leaving you a comment, subscribing to your email list, or purchasing something via your affiliate links and increasing your overall revenue.
If your website visitors aren’t doing this, then what’s the point of them even being on your site?
The 3 Most Effective Ways To Drive Targeted Traffic To Your Site
- SEO- This is one of the most popular ways to drive targeted traffic to your site and probably one of the most effective. The reason why I love this particular method is due to the fact that you can target specific keywords within your content.
By doing this, you’ll get ranked in the search engines and anyone who types these keywords in Google will find your site (If you’re listed in the top 10 search results)
This method comes with quite the learning curve, and it can take quite some time to master this technique. If you’re patient and willing to put in the time, this definitely can pay off for you.
Also, did I mention that this is free traffic and happens to be my #1 source for driving targeted leads to my site?
For more info on how this works and a way to get started learning how to do this Click Here To Get Started For Free
- Social Media- Nowadays everyone seems to be using social media sites like Facebook & Twitter to communicate with each other and find out what’s going on in the world today.
Did you know that this also happens to be another one of the best ways to drive targeted traffic to your site?
Social media is one of the best marketing tools out there that you should be utilizing to build and grow your online presence and get people to engage with you.
Probably one of the most effective ways to use social media is to create a business page and create a following. By doing this you’ll be attracting an audience of like-minded people who show an interest in the niche that you’re involved in.
Every time you post on social media, your posts will show up in their feed. It’s extremely important for your social media posts to be engaging, highly informative, and ultimately, build a relationship with your followers in order for them to be effective.
- Paid Traffic- I particularly like this kind of traffic the best because it’s guaranteed traffic and you can get super targeted results when done correctly.
I don’t have a whole lot of experience using paid traffic, but with the few campaigns that I’ve run to test out the market, they turned out to be highly successful.
This method is only recommended for experienced marketers who have a good idea of how SEO works before jumping into this because it can get quite expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Probably 1 of the things that I love about paid traffic vs free traffic, (SEO) is the fact that you can pretty much pay for your rankings and be listed at the top of Google for any keyword you want.
How sweet is that?
Also, if you know how to convert your website visitors into paying customers using SEO methods then you could think of this like double dipping. This will, of course, require a strategy and you’ll need to stay within your budget.
The Kind Of Traffic You Want To Stay Away From (The Bad)
Not all traffic is healthy for your website and some of it can actually do more harm than good. Traffic exchanges or Paid To Click (PTC Sites) happen to be one of the most popular sources of traffic that would fall under this category.
This is where you click on ads to earn traffic credits so that you can get views on your website. Typically the person clicking on your website is told how long to stay on there before moving on to the next ad.
Once you earn enough traffic credits your website will be put in a pool with others. The people who are trying to earn traffic credits will click on your ad and stay on your site for 30 seconds before moving on to the next one.
It’s highly likely that the person visiting your site has absolutely no interest in what you have to offer and the sole reason they’re there is because they’re trying to earn traffic credits to get views on their own website.
See where I’m going with this? This traffic is absolutely worthless to you and this can actually negatively impact your ratings and cause you to lose traffic.
Let me explain!!
Google keeps track of all kinds of data on your website.
They can track metrics like:
- Where a visitor is coming from
- How long they stay on your site
- Whether they are a new or returning visitor
- How they interact with your website
- What pages they visit and how long they stay on each page
- Whether they leave a comment on your site
All of these things play a huge role in SEO and getting high ranking in Google. If someone lands on your site and leaves after 30 seconds what do you think that say about the content on your site?
If the search engines see that people are landing on your website and leaving within 30 seconds without interacting with any other pages on your site, then eventually you’ll lose your rankings.
You’ll also notice a significant drop in your organic traffic as a result of this.
About the only way that this type of traffic may be beneficial to you would be if you were driving traffic to a squeeze page or an opt-in page. Other than that, I would avoid this at all costs.
This is also what I refer to as click monkey traffic because they’ll be doing more clicking than they will be engaging in your site or taking action of any kind.
Conclusion
There are many internet marketing gurus that will tell you that you can get a rush of traffic to your site for only pennies a day. This may be true but in the long run, you’ll end up paying a whole lot more than that. In my experience as an online marketer, I’ve fallen victim to these types of sites and my traffic ending up suffering as a result of it.
When building out your website in your respective niche it’s important to seek out high quality traffic that will help your online business grow.
The place that has taught me how to drive laser targeted traffic to my website and write highly engaging content is Wealthy Affiliate.
It doesn’t matter if you’re looking to sharpen up your SEO skills or learn the latest techniques about how to market your website on Facebook, you can learn all of this and so much more at WA.
Their Free Starter Membership makes it even easier for you to get started and comes with 2 free websites and 10 starter lessons.
There is also the option to upgrade which will give you access to the more advanced training lessons and show you how to market your website like the pros and get an unlimited steady stream of targeted visitors to your site.
I really hope this post has helped you decipher the good from the bad when it comes to driving traffic to your site. If there was anything that I was unclear on, or if you have any additional questions for me, I would love to answer them for you in the comments below.
~Scott~