Marketing Ideas - Targeted Traffic Sources

What are other Good sources of traffic besides PPC, SERPS, DMOZ etc.?

[AW_Learner]

Besides for Search Engine traffic which is the main source of most traffic, what other sources are good for getting quality traffic leads to your site? Besides for an affiliate program which is an obvious one.

So basically besides SE, can anyone tell me what from there experience they consider good traffic and what they consider junk traffic sources?

How good is buying ads on related ezines and newsletters and related websites? Do you buy text links as a flat fee or listings etc?

Is it worth it to find a lot of multiple streams of traffic leads? Or to focus only on the Search Engine traffic?

Because besides for the PPC being great right now for targeted leads there is also a limit on how many people it reaches for me based on how many times the targeted keywords are even searched. So I'd like to expand the sources of targeted traffic.

Thanks.

[davewray]

I think the best bet is to try and gain referrals from as many on-target sources as you can! That way if one source dries up you won't be left with nothing.

I like buying text advertising on on-topic sites. I think it works and converts a whole lot better than advertising in ezines. However, some newsletters have a very loyal subscriber base that could be gold to you. With newsletters it's a lot of testing and testing to find the best ones and then stick with them!

PPC's are still a good bet. The deal here is that the more on-topic words/phrases you can come up with, the better. It keeps you from having to bid too high and you still maintain good traffic to your site that converts.

So, for me in order of importance would be:

1. Text advertising on on-topic sites (if you can, pay on a monthly basis to test first).
2. PPC advertising on Google/Overture
3. Newsletters/Ezines (go for the top ads).

These are of course the paid options. The best free options are:

1. Partnerships with on-topic sites
2. Niche directory traffic
3. SE traffic
4. Other directory traffic
5. Many other smaller options...

Dave.

[AW_Learner]

Thanks Dave. How do you find those on-topic sites to get advertising on? Do you just search for them and then email them to make an offer? Or do a lot of them advertise there advertising service and fees? Is it usually expensive?

By partnerships I guess you mean link exchanges. That could be good, esp. if you only do link exchanges with on-target sites that helps both the relevancy of the links you show your visitors as well as the value of the link popularity PR for Google.

Although I'm sure the other sites would want to see your traffic stats before willing to do that if they have good traffic already themselves.
Then of course I don't think direct competitiors would want to do it.

So far I have been following the link popularity of all my direct competitor sites and seeing who exactly is linking to them so I can get those same sites to link to me as well. It's a start. I am submitting to DMOZ but takes a while to get approved.

The hard thing about PPC is that the most relavent terms are also a bit general and extremely competitive. Nothing that specific. The terms that I though might be good and have no real competition have been getting a very low CTR. I only got 3 click throughs on all the keywords yesterday. I'd get more traffic from Ebay to my site in one day then that.

Thanks for the help.

[davewray]

How do you find these on-topic sites to advertise on? Hit the SE's first and type in your most desirable keywords. I try and target the sites on the first page (even if I'm on the first page with them). Most will have advertising options posted on their site, but for the ones that don't, just contact them, be polite and explain that you'd like to advertise on their site and was wondering if they'd be open to that.

Is it expensive? Can be. Before you advertise with any site, see if you can get any kind of traffic stats so you know what kind of numbers of visitors they get. Try and determine unique visitor numbers too as repeat visitor may become blind to your ad. If you do your research you can find many sites to advertise on that will be a steal. Do they offer direct links to your site? Even better because they'll be passing on-topic PR to your site as well.

When I say "partnerships" I don't necessarily mean link exchanges perse, at least not by the dirty definition people give it in here. Partnerships can be exchanging content by way of articles where your link is included in the bio. Partnerships could be by way of recommendations, or even testimonials. You could sponsor some pages on their site and vice versa.

Not all partners care about how much traffic your site can send them. Just build a great site and they'll link to you because you offer such good content which would be of use to their visitors. Over time your traffic will go up and prospective partners will realise that and will wait for that.

Don't discount partnering up with competitors, especially strong/big ones. I find it much more effective to join them instead of fighting them. We all get a piece of the pie that way, and if done right, you get a big piece of the pie.

Checking your partners backlinks is one of the best weapons you have. It's quite likely those who link to your competitors will at least be willing to link to you. It may take some convincing, but persistence is key. This is the grunt work, but can pay big dividends.

Keep working on your PPC skills. It is as much an art as a science. What I mean is it's not just finding on-topic keywords to bid on, but your ad copy must be good to get the click as well. It takes tons of experimenting, but it is sure nice when it all comes together and you get the hang of it.

Dave.

[AW_Learner]

Thanks davewray... I'll try those things. There are very few sites I can find that offer the same service niche as mine. There doesn't seem to be much competition in this area. Even though I know one of the other ones gets Tons of business and publicity. They must have a great PR Agent that gets them on all these T.V. shows and articles written up on them. So I guess I'll go after sites that I think the same type of target market would go to, even if they are not directly related content wise.

[skibum]

The hard thing about PPC is that the most relavent terms are also a bit general and extremely competitive. Nothing that specific.

In any virtually any industry there are plenty of PPC terms that can be purchased at resonable (dare I say cheap?) rates. It sometimes takes a lot of research to find them but also remember that Google is not the only game in town.

The other thing to remember about PPC is that unless the person doing the in-house PPC or outside organization offering the PPC service is paid based on sales, they have virtually every incentive not to put a lot of work into it. Extended broad match caters nicely to this.

In order to justify agency fees and make them a relatively small percentage of the click fees, the agency is incentivized to spend more than needed. If the person is doing it in-house they probably a million other things to do and don't get as specific as they should.

If the PPC company is incentivized based on sales, they are going to drift toward brand names and may be hesitant to reach out to lower volume higher conversion keywords because the return/volume isn't as great.

Obviously these are sweeping generatizations but the point is, with enough research and testing there is plenty of room to rock in PPC advertising in almost any market.

[AW_Learner]

I know your talking about general PPC advice for anyone. But for myself I am doing all the PPC myself inhouse. No outsourcing of that.

The problem with the very targeted low volume keywords for this particular product is that there are not that many different words used to describe it. So it is limited descriptive wise. There are some products that have tons of different names that all mean the same thing. But this doesn't. So the few words and phrases of those words that describe this the most accurately have only about 100 searches per month.
Unless I had hundreds of different words and phrase combinations to describe that each got at least 100 searches a month it doesn't add up to a lot of impressions in the SE's. So I use also slightly more general terms that describe it and relate to it but also relate to and describe other things that are not it. Those more general ones are the only ones I'm getting any impressions and clicks on so far. About 25 clicks a day. Nothing. And that's for general...