I. Sadiq Gill - How To Increase Web Traffic To Websites And Traffic To Blogs

Guest Blog Post by Doug Champigny

When trying to increase web traffic to websites, most website owners and bloggers focus too much on increasing web traffic from search engines and don't spend enough time building web traffic using the myriad of other sources of free website and blog traffic.

Make no mistake, search engine optimization (SEO) is a very key element in successful traffic generation strategies, and proper SEO that leads to higher rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs) can have a major impact on the volume of targeted traffic to websites - but it's equally important to keep it in perspective. There are a great number of ways to drive targeted traffic to sites and blogs, and spending too much time on SEO tasks will prevent you from getting the most possible traffic to websites you're promoting.

Your website promotion activities should include a lot of different ways to drive free traffic to websites, especially those promotional efforts that have proven to be successful long-term traffic generating strategies.

Effective article marketing tops the list of long-term traffic generation techniques, since article submissions made 5 and 10 years ago still get exposure today, and many of those older articles have been consistently driving traffic to websites for years now. Time spent on article writing and submitting articles to a top article directory like EzineArticles will often rival, and can surpass, the effectiveness of spending the same amount of time on SEO activities when it comes to driving targeted traffic to websites.

Newer forms of e-marketing like social media marketing and social networking are also powerful ways to get more visitors to websites and blogs. Using the Twitter social network, the Facebook social network, etc... can be a major source of targeted traffic and targeted leads, with the bonus of being a great forum for branding yourself, your company and your website.

And when driving web traffic to blogs, your RSS feed opens up whole new avenues of website traffic generation. Blogging software creates and updates a feed that lists each new post you make, and that feed is referred to online as an RSS feed. While websites are limited to search engines and similar directories for promotional purposes, blogs can use those and a growing number of directories that only accept information from RSS feeds. As such, submitting your blogs' RSS feeds to as many of these directories as you can is one more online promotional activity that often outweighs SEO efforts in your efforts to increase website traffic.

And the list goes on and on - press releases, banner advertising, linking strategies like blog commenting, reciprocal linking and social media bookmarking, forum marketing, affiliate program marketing - each can have a profound effect on driving traffic to websites and increasing blog traffic. But each takes time, which is why your e-marketing plan can't be too heavily weighted in favor of the search engines and SEO activities.

As you can see, there are a number of ways to drive traffic to websites and increase blog traffic, and a balanced approach will always give you the most stable flow of traffic to websites and blogs you're promoting.

I. Sadiq Gill - Local SEO Industry: Current Status and Future Projections

By Ajay K. Prasad




What Is SEO?

This is a common question that most people especially those who are either new or not familiar with online marketing might be asking. SEO stands for search engine optimization. In layman's language, it the process of capturing traffic from the search engines such as Google listings. Through this read, I am going to give you facts about the SEO business, current market status of SEO as well as the future projections in this field.

The Major SEO Players

Like any other industry in the world, the online SEO business has its players. This includes SEO local tools providers such as small digital agencies, SEO free lancers and web-designers among others.

Returns for SEO Players

The major reason as to why people get into business is to profit and expand their economic status. In the field of SEO business, the rates of returns are promising. This is because a recent research on SEO returns for a period of 12 months shows that at least all the players had something to take home. However, the returns are varying depending on a players' hardwork and skills in the field. For example, according to this research, 34% of the interviewed SEOs said they received an amount less than $ 30,000 while another group of respondents, 17% said they received returns that were above $ 500,000.

From the above statistics, it is evident that the size of an organization played a role in the determination of the amount of returns received. It beats logic for one to expect a large organization to receive low amounts of returns and vice versa. In addition, the presence of part time SEOs as well as the entry of newbies into the market could have let to the low rates of turnover due to low operation capacity. However, it is hard to predict the course the SEO market is likely to take due to lack of clear shift in SEO earnings since the year 2011. However, the demand for local SEO services seems to be growing day in day out and this is attracting more players thereby tightening the competition among SEO service providers.

The Emerging Issues with the Current SEO Returns

With the above distribution of returns, several questions emerge. This includes the following:

• From the statistics, a large percentage of SEOs receive a low income something that suggests low pricing of SEO services.
• It is also possible that small and medium businesses do not understand the value of SEO services provided to them.
• The low SEO income earners, those who received less than $ 30,000 annual returns are also being doubted if they can provide quality services while earning that low.
• It is also unknown if most SEOs will still be in operation if their income remains static.

The Current SEOs Income Per Customer

Just like the annual SEO returns, SEO income per customer also varies. This is because there are those clients who would pay less than $100 a month while others will pay more than $5000 a month. This variation in income per client can be attributed to the type of services provided as well as the depth of services. The size of business a client is seeking SEO services for also play a role in determining the amount to be charged.
For example, small businesses are charged less simply because their requirements are much smaller as compared to large multi-location franchise businesses.

Research also shows that some SEO service providers operate on high volume basis. Such SEOs provide simple SEO services at very low monthly rates. As a result, such SEO service providers end up having a high customer churn with a large dedicated network of sales team.

Similarly, some SEO service providers provide services that are more comprehensive in a much more professional manner customized according to the client thereby leading to a low number of clients.

Due to the above statistics, it therefore becomes essential for any SEO service provider in the current market to operate in a manner that matches his/her setup.

Handling Capacity of the Modern SEOs

Currently, SEOs are handling more clients as compared to the previous years. Statistics show that about 40% of the SEOs in the market handle at least 11 clients while 23% SEOs handle at least 21 clients. Such large numbers of clients to handle lead to more audits to be done, lots of tasks, research, reports and even more calls from the clients to be attended to. The high numbers of clients also demand a high level of efficiency so that the clients can be assured of quality services.

Market Structure for Most SEOs

SEOs have been using several marketing techniques to promote their businesses. Offline marketing channels such as word of mouth has been cited by most SEOs as the most effective marketing technique. This can be attributed to the trust level, business reputation as well as relationships build during the offline campaigns.

Alongside offline marketing, SEOs also practice online marketing such as the use of LinkedIn and social media. However, most SEOs have cited LinkedIn as the best option as compared to the social networks because it is better placed for lead generation and networking.

Services Offered by SEOs

Majority of the SEO players offer onsite optimization with 91% of the SEOs practicing this. Google+ optimization has also a good number of SEOs practicing it as 86% claimed to be offering this service to their clients. For affiliate marketing, only a small percentage (11%) of SEOs are offering this service to their clients.

Other services offered by SEOs:

• Content creation/optimization
• Link building
• Citation building
• Social media marketing
• Website development
• PPC
• Mobile site development
• Video marketing and mobile marketing.

The most demanded service by SEO clients is onsite marketing, while the least demanded service is affiliate marketing. The other services are somehow averagely demanded. However, most small and medium businesses do not understand the opportunities that video and mobile marketing can unlock to them and therefore tend not to use these services. SEOs therefore need to educate their clients on these marketing channels so that they can go for them.

When asked about the online SEO services SEOs feel are effective, 82% of them said that the General search is the most effective for generating leads. Local search appears to be the second best after 62% of the respondents in an SEO survey voted in its favor. PPC is the 3rd with 53% while social media is the 4th with 26%. Daily deals appear to be an appealing to most SEOs because only 1% voted in favor of it.

Tedious SEO Tasks

55% of the current SEOs in the market find link building to be the most tedious and time-consuming work. Others, though 15% only believe that content writing is the most tedious and time consuming task among all the tasks they do. It therefore emerges that to the 55% who find link building tedious, this task is also boring to them.

Future Projections

This is an outline of what we expect in the near future as far as SEO business is of concern.

Expansion of SEO Businesses

Compared to the previous years, SEO businesses has been growing and expanding steadily. Most SEOs (about 93%) are not only optimistic about expanding their businesses, but are also expecting to grow their business. In what seems to be a determined move to grow their businesses, most SEOs (82%) are willing to recruit more staff members so as to realize their desired levels of growth.

The social media is also expected to grow and be more effective even than the local directories. This is because most SEOs believe that social media can perform better because of recommendations from friends.

Mobile usage is also expected to grow further and become relevant for local businesses.

Upsurge of Confidence in SEO Business

Unlike other businesses, the SEO business is showing a positive growth of confidence among the players.

Despite this being a dynamic and innovative industry, most SEOs are still willing to recruit more staff to help drive their businesses ahead. 84% of the sampled SEOs in the SEO research are also optimistic that the SEO business is going to be more profitable starting this year 2013.

Confidence is also running high that if the SEO players increase the understanding of SEO/social among the business owners they serve in future, they will not only increase the business owners' rate of investment, but also make them transfer their marketing budgets from other channels to the digital channels.

Ajay Prasad is the Founder and President of GMR Web Team, a leading Internet strategy, marketing and development firm. Ajay guides small and medium size businesses in designing their online strategy, marketing and development campaigns for maximum impact. Ajay focuses on a client's products and services and their target market's needs to achieve the best possible results.

Imran Sadiq Gill Keirin: The Comprehensive Guide to Getting Website Traffic in Today's World - A General Overview

 

By Yousef M Julaidan

I think it is important to have the big picture in mind before starting to devise a plan to generate traffic to any website. Why? Because not all websites are the same. One traffic generating method can only work with certain types of websites and another method can only work with other types of websites.

For example, the methods used to generate traffic to an e-commerce website might not be as effective in generating traffic to an information nonprofit website. Generating website traffic can be classified into two big groups based on the cost incurred. One is paid even though as cheap as few cents per visitor and the other one is free! As good as it might sound; generating free traffic is harder than and not as effective as paid traffic generation.

This is pretty natural because in general, the companies that specialize in the service of generating traffic to websites have breakthrough technologies and experienced teams of specialists with the only purpose of generating quality targeted traffic for their customers. I'm not trying to degrade free traffic as it is important to reduce costs, but in general paid traffic still supersedes free traffic in terms of quality and quantity. Paid traffic isn't affordable by all advertisers, but still it offers a lot of peace of mind and results. Here is a list of the most prominent paid traffic generation methods:

1. Pay per click (PPC):- Known by all yet most hated for sucking cents and dollars out of advertisers pockets without as much satisfying results. Google being the king of PPC has been making life harder and harder for PPC advertisers by imposing more and more criteria to determine which ads get higher positions in PPC ads. Believe it or not, if your website isn't optimized enough for Google, your ad will not get better positions even if your bid is higher than others! This proves the point that even though PPC is disappointing many advertisers, there is actually a logic that you have to figure out to get better results from your PPCs.

There are techniques to get better results from your PPC campaigns using low and pocket friendly bids, which is going to be a topic of another article that I'm going to write about.

2. Paid SEO services: - SEO is a short for Search Engine Optimization. In short it is about optimizing the
design and the coding of a website so it can get better free ranking in search engines. This is referred to as organic ranking. Even though the end result is free better ranking, still SEO companies charge tons of money to make a website search engine optimized. I will address SEO in more detail in future articles.

3. Paid targeted 100% opt-in e-mail blasts: - There are advertising companies that have huge lists of 100% opt-in subscribers. 100% opt-in means that every one of their subscribers has agreed to receive promotional e-mails from them on the topics of their choice and this is how it is targeted. This method has proven its effectiveness, but there are a lot of fake companies out there that claim 100% opt-in, but actually have much lower opt-in percentages or even not at all. This is important because you don't want to pay for a campaign that ends up in the junk or spam folder of the users e-mail. Be careful and deal with the reputable ones only.

4. Banners and image based advertising: - this form has lost its effectiveness over the years, but still is used by many advertisers. Find the ones that work like PPCs, which means you don't get charged for impressions...only clicks.

5. Guaranteed visitors schemes: - These are companies that promise you a number of targeted traffic for a fee. Usually they will tell you that they get the traffic from expired domains and traffic redirected from other sites. Trust me, for the most part, these are scams so beware. It could work well for those who have gambling or sex related websites because they can't use PPCs to promote their websites.

6. Video advertising: - A new and growing advertising trend that Google is pursuing heavily. Yes I know that you can post videos in YouTube for free, but I'm talking about a new wave of video advertising that is very similar to PPC. It will be more popular soon so watch for it. Now for the fun and most pleasing part....free traffic! Getting results from free traffic requires much more work and time compared to paid traffic. Even though these methods generate free traffic, I see a lot of courses and e-books sold for hundreds and even thousands of dollars to teach people these methods.

So much for the free part! Luckily, you will be able to get an overview of these free traffic methods for free today. I'm not going to explain each in detail, but will be the topics of some of my future articles:-

1. Article marketing: - You write good articles, post them in article directories with links pointing to your website. People read the article, like what they read and visit your website. I will address it more in future articles.

2. Website directories: - these are directories that organize websites in categories which makes it easier for people to find what they are looking for. Even though all will let you submit your link for free, a lot of them offer a "premium" listing for a fee which is worth paying if they have high search engine ranking.

3. Video sites like YouTube, Yahoo and MSN videos: - don't underestimate its power! Find at least 10 more video sites and submit your videos to them. But how can you advertise your website with video? Get a screen capture video maker. There are free ones online and sold. My advice is to buy one for the quality of videos as free ones produce low quality videos. Make a small presentation about your website on your own screen, capture it on video and upload it to video sites...that's it! It will be helpful if you use a basic video editing software like windows movie maker to add your URL on the bottom of the video.

4. Forums and blogs: - This works in two ways. Either you own a blog or forum and generate your own community using quality content and funnel this traffic to your website. The other is to post comments with links pointing to your website in high ranking blogs and forums.

5. RSS feeds: - you can set up an RSS feed linking to the topics and issues in your website and syndicate it. More on this on future articles.

6. Groups and newsletters: - Can be found in all major search engines and internet service providers like Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN. Establish relations and spread the word about your websites. Avoid spamming and misbehaving!

7. Online free classifieds: - There are so many. The only problem is that your ads in these classifieds need re-updating every 1 or 2 days which is very time consuming.

8. Social bookmarking: - These are sites where people leave sort of brief descriptions about their websites, blogs, forums etc. and a link to visit.

9. Social media/interaction websites or what is called web 2.0:- My Space, Face book, twitter and Squidoo are all examples of this new internet trend. Basically they are all about an online gathering point where people express themselves and share knowledge, experiences, hobbies, passions, pictures, videos, music and much more. Why not use it to get traffic to your website?

10. Going viral: - Don't ever think that this is not important because this is number 10. It can be the most powerful traffic generating tool if you know how to use it. An example would be giving away a free report with lots of information and your website links inside. Give it to as many people as you can and in turn they give it away. This can continue forever and never stop. That's why they call it viral and is very powerful! If you ask me which methods are the best and should be used to get traffic, I would say all of them. The only problem is that we have limited resources and I mean time and money. I suggest using a mix of free and paid traffic. The mix to be determined according to what type of website is promoted and traffic objectives.

Watch out for more detailed articles on the subject.

Yousef is an expert writer in business and money making topics and issues. His insights combined with his clear and informative style of writing has attracted a lot of attention lately. To subscribe to his free and valuable newsletter send a blank email to=> ibm-newsletter@aweber.com

Also check out Yousef's website [http://www.internet-business-and-money.com]

Imran Sadiq Gill: How to Buy Quality Website Traffic

 

By Lisa Longport

No online business can be successful without adequate traffic to the website. Those who purchase traffic for their website should ensure that actual sales take place. Unless there is profitable selling no one can run the online business successfully. If there is no business in spite of tens of thousands of visitors, the traffic is of no use to the online businessman. Many online marketers waste their time and money for buying unproductive website traffic.

The main drawback of this type of purchased traffic is that they are untargeted. In order to achieve a satisfactory conversion rate the business website should be subjected to demographically targeted traffic.

When there are only 2 or 3 transactions out of thousands of visitors to the website it is not a worthy investment. When the traffic is generated from a demographically targeted source a conversion rate of not less than 5% is feasible. Those who buy traffic for their website must ensure to track the visits so that they will come to know whether the traffic supplier has provided the committed number of traffic. The online businessman should insist for a money back guarantee from the traffic provider so that there will be no loss in case he failed to provide the committed number of traffic.

How to get traffic to the website?

In spite of an amazing website and well written blogs, one cannot earn anything out of the website unless the potential buyers visit the website and buy the products. Just like the shop in the market place the online shop also cannot generate any income unless somebody visits the site and makes a purchase. The four different methods that are normally adopted by online businessmen to generate traffic to the website are -

• Search Engine Optimization
• Using social media websites
• Placing ads on other websites
• Buying guaranteed website traffic

Out of the above four methods, the first two methods are rather free, provided the online businessman undertakes himself the task of SEO. However, these two methods require a very long time to gain momentum. The third method of placing ads on other websites is certainly not a free method. But, the advantage is that once the ads start to get clicked, there will be regular flow of traffic to the website and consequently real business will commence. The fourth method of buying guaranteed visitors to the website is the most effective method to generate profit from the online business. In this method the basic requirement is that the online businessman should find out a reputed and reliable seller of website traffic who will ensure that the website gets sufficient number of potential visitors so as to run the business profitably. The owner of the website has to pay for the traffic and hence it is not a free method. But, the result will come much faster when compared to SEO and social networks. The website will receive the exact number of visits for which the site owner has paid.

Analyze the pros and cons

Now there are various methods to buy website traffic. One can buy instant search traffic that will be either search-safe or non search-safe. The various PPC advertising networks offer targeted traffic with respect to country, category and age. Another method is buying the traffic either from media blasts or from banner ads on 3rd party website. Buying website traffic is a common practice nowadays since it is a fast method to achieve high volumes of business. Those who plan to buy website traffic must make it a point to consider various aspects prior to investing money in traffic purchase.

Research and investigate

It is all the more important for those who want to buy website traffic for their internet business to conduct various researches and investigations.

1. Know about the supplier

As part of the homework for buying website traffic one has to research the companies that are offering website traffic. One can go through the reviews about the company and refer to various forums. Searches in terms of "complaints", "scams", etc. can provide useful information. The website owner must have his own judgment also about the reliability of the company from which he wants to buy the website traffic.

2. Know about the deal in detail

Before entering into an agreement with the supplier the website owner must study the various aspects of the deal. The agreement must be clear about the cost, quantity, lead time, refund and other related aspects.

3. Ensure to have analytics

Even if the traffic provider does not provide suitable analytic tools to track the traffic received by the website, the website owner should track the visits with the help of third party tracking software like Google Analytics. The software will track and report the visits, the referral source and the visitor's demographics.

4. Specify the guaranteed traffic, minimum and maximum

The traffic provider should specify in the agreement whether or not he is going to provide guaranteed traffic. They must also make it clear whether the targeted traffic will be based on specific demographics. The agreement must be transparent with regard to minimum and maximum restrictions, type of the traffic and how the traffic will be generated by the traffic provider.

5. Beware of the fact that conversion is not guaranteed

The online businessman must be well aware of the fact that though the traffic provider guarantees to provide traffic to the visit there is no guarantee for sales and conversion. It is very important that one should deal with a reliable and reputed firm for buying website traffic so that there will not be any bogus visitors or fraudulent clicks.

6. Find out how the traffic is directed

The website owner who wants to buy traffic from a traffic provider should ensure that there is no mystery regarding how the traffic is directed into his website. While purchasing website traffic the online businessman must strictly avoid the traffic providers who make use of the service of paid individuals who pretend as customers and click on the website, automated traffic services, domains that are expired and also domain redirects.

7. Say "no" to untargeted traffic

In all probability, the untargeted visitor is unlikely to be interested in the products offered by the website so that he is not going to be a customer. The traffic provider should assure to provide traffic according to the requirements and demographics of the online businessman who wants to buy the traffic for his website. Only the targeted visitor will be a potential customer for the website.

8. Traffic provider must reveal the ad format he uses

The website owner should know in clear terms whether he pays for a fixed ad space, pop-up ad space, text/image ad space, animated ad space or any other type of ad space. It must be an affordable ad space with competitive pay-per-click or pay-per-view.

9. Do not buy traffic in haste

The website owner must be sure about the suitability of buying traffic for his business. Because of the particular line of business, the website may be unable to get targeted visitors. In such cases, the businessman should abstain from wasting his time and money for buying website traffic.

Lisa Longport is a contributing writer for: http://www.purchase-traffic.com, a website traffic provider.