|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
 |
With increasing competition for visitors in organic (free) search engine listings, there's other options available for increasing traffic immediately to your web site aside from direct buys of links and banners from other sites . In this article we'll look at a few of the more popular options. Expired domain traffic redirectsThis option allows you to buy traffic redirects from defunct sites, or from domain names allowed to lapse in registration for sites that previously had traffic which are snapped up by redirection companies. In some cases, the domain names will be fairly generic terms - words that web surfers may type into their browser address bar in the hope that they will find something of relevance. They may also be "typos"; for example, buytrafic instead of buytraffic, or names belonging to sites that still have search engine rankings or traffic being directed by links from other sites. While each name may only get a few dozen or hundred visitors a day, traffic redirect companies buy thousands of such domain names, allowing them to redirect millions of visits to their customers each month. Buying traffic redirects - tipsUnless the domain names that traffic is redirected from are specific to your line of business, the visitors sent will probably be low quality (visitors not interested in your product) and serve only to drain your wallet. Buying this sort of traffic may appear to be successful as your site will gain thousands of visitors, but unless the product you are offering has broad appeal, the traffic simply won't convert into sales. When selecting a company to buy this sort of traffic from, it's important to choose a services that offers truly targeted traffic - a selection of categories from which you can select a sector relevant to your own products and services. It's also important to be able to choose the countries you'll receive traffic from. For instance, if you have a product that you only sell within the USA, then traffic from China will be of little use to you. Some companies offer even better targeting through "dayparting". Dayparting is where you can choose what time of the day that traffic is sent to your site. The great thing about web site traffic redirect services is that you can have traffic sent to your site pretty much immediately, thousands of visitors, at very economical prices - and if your site is well laid out and compelling, you can generate substantial revenue from this source; whether as a merchant or affiliate. It's also important to use a reputable service. All sorts of trickery can be used to inflate traffic numbers and in the past, the way that some services have worked have negatively impacted on search rankings. A more recent development is where companies who offered 100% expired domain traffic in the past are now offering a mix - expired domains and popunders; but they don't make this really clear on their sites and old customer reviews tend to make it look like they are still offering 100% expired domain redirects. Traffic redirects and affiliate programsIf you're looking to market another merchant's products via traffic redirects; i.e. through an affiliate program, it's very important to check the terms and conditions of the program before buying the traffic as some programs specifically ban this sort of traffic source given the quality of the visitors and load it can place on their servers - particularly if a stack of their affiliates are doing it. If an affiliate program specifically prohibits this kind of traffic generation, what you can do is to direct the traffic you buy to a landing page promoting the offer on your own site; and the visitors can click through from there to the merchant's site. Also bear in mind as regardless of how good the traffic redirect service is, the quality of the traffic won't be as good as traffic generated through product reviews etc. - so you're better off using a traffic redirect service only with high converting or high commission programs. Site exit trafficIn this strategy, you pay to redirect traffic to you when a visitor leaves a site in their network. This usually occurs with a pop-up window which displays a page on your site. Is it effective? I guess the best way to answer this is with another question. How do you feel when you leave a site and 20 pop-up windows litter your screen? That's exactly what many of these services do. While utilizing this strategy may increase page views according to your server logs, I don't think that you'll make many friends or encourage sales because of the annoyance factor - unless the exits are occurring on very relevant sites and only one window is being generated by the referring site. Pay per click search enginesStill one of the best ways of buying web site traffic is utilizing pay-per-click options offered by many major search engines. It can be very expensive; so you will need to do your math first in order to justify it. Most of these search engines require you to bid on key words or phrases that users type in.
In most cases, the highest bid gets the highest ranking on the search results and the advertiser pays the amount bid every time someone clicks on their link. In this option, you will want to be listed in the first page of results in order to be noticed.
If you do intend to utilize a pay-per-click option for buying traffic, you'll first need to work out your current visitors/sales ratio. If on average one out of one hundred visitors to your site makes a purchase then bidding 5 cents for a position on a paid search engine placement will cost you an estimated $5.00 per sale. If your profit margin is $10 per sale, then it's viable. If it's $4, then it's very risky. These figures are only a "guesstimate", but you get the idea. Which PPC engine should I try?There are hundreds of Pay Per Click search engines out there
and if you're new to PPC, I suggest trying a company that offers free
credits to help you get started. It will allow you to do a bit of
experimentation without burning through too much cash. Check out my beginners
guide to Pay Per Click which also includes listings of companies that
provide free
PPC credits. PPC - A beginners guide Michael Bloch Click here to view article index
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||
