12 General Traffic Tips

This post is part of our 68 Traffic Tips day. To find the complete list when we’re done, see the original post. Be sure to subscribe to get a weekly round-up of our daily traffic tips.

1. The first thing you want to do when attempting to drive traffic to a site is assess whether or not methods other than advertising will work on the site. For example, you can’t do article marketing successfully with an affiliate link.
2. The next thing you want to do if a site is viable, is determine which of the available methods will go with your site, prioritizing from the most compatible to the least.
3. Every business that has a web site, and many that don’t, can benefit from organic search or social media, usually both. The complicated part is how. When in doubt, rely on a plan with those two things at its center.
4. Make sure that at some point before proceeding, you have a goal for the project. You can’t evaluate whether you’ve been successful if you don’t know whether traffic has gone up, if sales are rising, if more people are subscribing etc. Choose a traffic goal that’s directly related to your business objectives.
5. Determine the desired path through your site to a sale – what is the money funnel, and is it sound? Do people come to the site, subscribe, buy? Should they see your ad and then call? If so, are they doing it? If not, why not?
6. Never rely on one traffic method – what happens if it fails or is suddenly obsolete?
7. Don’t try to do ALL the traffic methods you come across either, not unless you have a staff to execute on your behalf. Instead of attempting to do every traffic method you’ve heard of, add one at a time of up to five methods. Drop the ones that don’t work and replace them with new techniques.
8. In selecting the five core techniques you want to use, it helps if they play off each other. In other words, if part of your mission is to build links, then article marketing or forum posting might help you get there faster. Approaching them with a mind to maximize those particular strengths will be more effective than doing so as an after thought.
9. Test each traffic technique by isolating as much as you can. Try blocking a page from being indexed by search engines, and testing the method on only that page.
10. At the same time, don’t get so attached to testing and test results that you can’t proceed without 100% proof positive that the specific technique works the way you wanted it to – sometimes that gets in the way. For example, a tracking link in a resource box of an article will get much less traffic than a regular link.
11. Get help if you need it. No one expects you to be brilliant at your business And at marketing it. Even if you are, you only have two hands. Get a virtual assistant. Hire a marketing team or a search expert.
12. When you hire someone, or choose someone’s advice to follow, do your homework. Google their name, their site and their company, and pay attention to both compliments and complaints. Check if they’re respected by their peers – are they guest speakers or authors outside their own web site? Who are they affiliated with?