Get Traffic Without Paying For it

DID you know you can increase website traffic without marketing?

I know, I know…It sounds too good to be true. But, it is.

Marketing is one of the most important aspects when it comes to business, and should be a primary focus from the very start. However, if you only focus on the usual traffic generation tips and tricks, then you’re going to be missing out on a lot of audience reach and potential customers.

Check out these simple strategies for increasing your website’s traffic without having to do a single bit of marketing:

Types of Website Traffic

Before we can focus on ways to jumpstart your traffic, we should first cover the various types of traffic. It’s a pretty well-known fact that having a high volume of traffic coming to your site is one of the signs of success in the online portion of your business. It means there is content that has drawn people to your site, and more visitors means more potential sales.

There are four types of website traffic you need to be aware of before you can implement strategies to increase your website traffic:

• Organic traffic
• Referral traffic
• Direct Traffic
• Social Traffic

Of these four types, the organic traffic is definitely the most important. This type of traffic comes from search engines, and brings in more valuable, targeted users. After that, referral traffic is high up on the list, but that really depends on what type of website is sending you referrals. If they’re coming from popular websites, you’re more likely to get quality traffic. Low-quality sites will bring in less than stellar traffic and, as such, won’t benefit you all that much. Direct traffic comes from a user visiting your website’s URL directly from a browser – They either bookmarked you or typed it in directly. Finally, social traffic comes from (you guessed it) social media networks.

Increasing Website Traffic

When it comes to implementing the following strategies, it’s best to keep your actions repetitive. Keep doing these things as often as possible, and you will really start to notice a significant (and steady) increase in your website traffic. It won’t happen overnight, or even within a single month, but it will happen. It will pay off, and you won’t have to spend a single cent on buying traffic or advertising your business.

Things to Do

Network, Network, Network!

This one really can’t be stressed enough, which is why it gets listed at the top. Social network traffic is extremely important for business and is pretty easy to get when compared to the other types – especially organic traffic.

Get active on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and even Snapchat. Don’t spam your followers, but make sure your clickable links are prominently displayed. Share their content, comment on their posts, and start a discussion. The more you network, the more connections you will get. Once you build a community or become part of one, you will see a steady increase in website traffic. Leave valuable comments on other blog posts and social media posts, and others will click on your link to check what you’re all about.

This is why you need to make sure your website’s pages are shareable, too. If they aren’t designed to be shared, you may want to consider adding some social plugins to your site in order to make it easier for readers to share your posts across social networking platforms.

Collect Those Emails

From the very first day, you start your website – especially if it contains a blog – make sure you are building your email list. Don’t force visitors to subscribe, but offer a valuable incentive for them to do so. This lets them subscribe willingly while getting direct benefits out of it. If they subscribe willingly, you will be able to send them posts directly to their email without them unsubscribing and considering your emails to be spam.

If you want to get more blog readers, one of the best things to do is to link your email list to the RSS feeds on your blog. This ensures your readers are notified as soon as you publish a new post. Your readers will stay in the loop, see your newest content, and keep your business fresh in their minds. They will be more likely to think of you when they need the type of product or service your brand offers.

Expert Tip: Use this cutting edge tool to collect emails!

Optimise Your Content

Pages and posts that are search engine optimised (SEO) are going to rank higher in search engines and, as such, will help you increase website traffic without marketing. If you have, say, 60 posts that are ranking even fairly high within search engine results and they each get 10,000 clicks, that means 600,000 clicks per month and millions of page views for your website.

How exactly do you do this? SEO can be pretty complicated and involved, but there are some basic practices you can implement right away to boost website traffic:

Conduct keyword research

1. Summarise your product or services
2. Highlight the keywords and phrases within that description
3. Take that list of words and create as many combinations as possible
4. Find more ideas via Google Keyword Planner
5. Test out all of those ideas with the Keyword Planner by using the “See how they perform” option.
6. Pick the options with the highest volume and lowest cost per clicks. These are your “Target Keywords”
7. Implement these into the content on your page, or hire an experienced freelance writer who is able to do it naturally

Optimise the entire site

• Use a unique meta description for each page, making sure to incorporate one or more relevant target keywords. Keep this under 155 words.
• Put a target keyword into the URL of each page/tab
• Optimise the images by using ALT tags with related keywords.

Use quality content

• The content of your site should have enough value to keep your readers engaged. This means your site should have at least 300 to 400 words of unique content on each page.
• Start a blog for your business, and publish a post as often as you can. A couple times per month is good, though more would be ideal.
• Promote your content across various social media platforms.

Use Power Words in Headlines

Using power words is one of the best ways to compel a user to click on your post and read the content of that page. A headline like, “Best marketing automation software you should buy” is likely to get more hits or clicks than one like, “Marketing automation software you should buy.”

It’s recommended that at least 70% to 75% of your time should be spent on the title of your web page, blog post, or article. You want to ensure it uses power words and is catchy enough to snag the reader’s attention.

Build Your Backlinks

Backlinks are basically hyperlinks that connect a single webpage to a full website. Not only are they incredibly important for search engine optimisation, but they also make it easier to increase website traffic without marketing. Backlinks will bring referral traffic to your website and/or business’ blog. This will boost your search engine ranking and domain authority, which will result in you getting more organic traffic.

Utilize YouTube

According to Fortune Lords, roughly 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube each minute, with nearly 5 billion videos being viewed each day. In fact, roughly 900 million hours of video are watched on YouTube each month.

If you upload quality videos to YouTube and then link back to your website, you are likely to receive tons of referral traffic to your website. If a video happens to go viral, then you are likely to receive millions of traffic! There is also the added benefit that, assuming none of the Terms of Service is being violated, your videos will remain online indefinitely. That means that source of referral traffic will never go away.

Remember to Use Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are a bit longer (hence the name) than specific target keywords, but they drive specific traffic to your blog and have far less competition. One of the best ways to find these is to check the related Google searches below the results. For example, a search for “find long tail keywords” brings up the following results:

Targeting these long tail keywords within your content can boost your organic traffic by more than 50%.

Focus on Building Your Brand

Increasing website traffic without marketing can be pretty difficult, but one of the most powerful things you can do is to focus on building your brand. Place an emphasis on providing quality, value-driven content to your readers and monetize your blog when possible.

A website that has a strong brand that stands out from the masses will have returning visitors and dedicated readers who place their trust in your authority. This helps you to stand out within your business niche and will bring in continuous support for your business without you having to spend oodles of money on marketing efforts that may or may not pay off in the end.

Things to Avoid

The following actions are pretty common mistakes. This list of “Don’ts” will adversely affect the value of your website and brand’s authority, and will decrease your website traffic.

Spamming Your Followers

This seems pretty common sense but is a huge mistake a lot of people make. Spamming of forums, social networks, and other websites should be avoided. It won’t drive traffic to your website for more than a short period of time, and will just annoy the other users, followers,  and website owners. It’s best to stick with the “80-20 rule of social media networking.”

Publishing Poor Content

You’ve undoubtedly seen this before: A website owner or blogger wants to get has many click-through rates as possible, so they post something once or twice per day. The content is of fairly good quality at first, but then just goes downhill from there.

Posting often may get you some great click-through rates, but it will tarnish your brand’s image to have poor content on your site or blog. Maintaining a solid reputation and brand authority within your nice will bring in the targeted traffic you want.

Buying Traffic

While there is some benefit to buying traffic now and then, it generally brings in non-targeted visitors who are probably not very relevant to your brand. There is also the added drawback of the traffic mainly coming from websites that are considered to be of low quality, which would affect your website ranking. If you want to keep a high-quality website, it’s best to avoid buying website traffic.

Final Thoughts

The above tips help show you what to do, and what to avoid when it comes to finding ways to increase website traffic without marketing. After a few months of regular implementation of these techniques, you will likely start to see your traffic climb.

If you put all of that effort into your content, but don’t see the result you’re looking for, you may want to review your content and hire an experienced freelance writer or web designer.

Looking for another great way to drum up some traffic? Check out PushConnectNotify and leverage the power of push notifications to really increase your traffic flow! It is super easy-to-use and a great way to optimise your site while securing leads.

What are your tried and true techniques for jumpstarting your website traffic without having to break the bank? Let us know in the comments below! 

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Using Urgency to Drive Conversions

HAVE you felt the need to bid on an eBay item because of the red countdown timer that was staring back at you? Ever checked out a flash sale to see what deals you could snag during a limited time offer?

If so, you understand how urgency works–especially in a conversion-oriented context. Urgency is a powerful motivator for getting people to take action, whether that’s to make a purchase, sign up for an event, etc. It’s all about the here and now.

In this post, we’ll look at a few easy ways you can harness the power of urgency to boost sales and grow your customer base.

Countdown Timers

A countdown timer helps you create a sense of urgency by reminding shoppers how much time is left before an offer, discount, or special pricing expires.

It works because it activates Fear Of Missing Out, or FOMO. FOMO plays into a larger psychological experience, called Loss Aversion Theory. Researcher Daniel Kahneman found that people hate missing out on positive rewards (like a good deal or a special offer) almost 2x more than they love actually getting the deal. Essentially, that means missing out hurts twice as much as getting the deal feels good.

Countdown timers are proven to activate FOMO–and to drive conversions. We tested Urgent Timer on a page with and without it, and found that including the countdown timer more than doubled conversions. Now that’s pretty impressive.

The main takeaway here: Countdown timers create urgency and drive conversions because of FOMO and Loss Aversion. Basically, no one likes to miss out on a good deal.

Limited Time Offers

Offers that are limited to a shortened time frame (think flash sale or early bird discount) help leverage the power of urgency by reminding customers that they’re working within a limited context. Open-ended offers just don’t have the same anxiety-producing, must act now pull that these types of offers do.

Why? Because limited offers feel more scarce–and scarce items are seen as more valuable. It’s the same reason we value diamonds and Black Friday sales. There’s not an endless supply of either, and so we are more motivated to attain them when possible.

Limited time offers also help those customers who are taking their time making a decision speed up that process. Researchers proved limited time offers really work: When 14 shoppers were told that they were working with a limited time sale, they became more competitive and motivated to buy.

The main takeaway here: Open ended sales are okay, but making them limited in time frame creates a greater sense of urgency to act.

Low Stock Notices

Another way to communicate urgency and drive conversions is also through scarcity, but from a limited quantity perspective. Low stock notices inform customers they need to act now to get an item that’s about to sell out–which puts them in a frenzy to take action. Remember what we said about FOMO?

Lulus.com, a clothing retailer, uses this to inform shoppers of which items are about to sell out. They even have a whole page on their site called “Going Fast” for these items that are just about out of stock.

The main takeaway here: Urgency can work beyond a time perspective. Think about promoting limited stock to convince your shoppers or customers to take immediate action.

Urgency is Essential

With countdown timers, limited time sales, and low stock notices, you can start using urgency to drive conversions right away. Just remember to use it sparingly–you don’t want to overdo the anxiety-producing angle for customers, or they’ll just get worn out. Save it for times when it really makes sense.

In search of a great tool to increase urgency in your online marketing efforts? We highly recommend Urgent Timer. A cloud based software, created and designed by Snaptactix.

Inspire viewers to take immediate action on your eCommerce store, website or blog and even within marketing emails. Grab our easy to use, copy and paste tool to add countdown timers anywhere!

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The Beginner’s Guide to Solo Ads (Solo Ads 101 is now in session!)

IN the online marketing world, it seems like there are endless opportunities to market you or your business.

Marketing opportunities like pay-per-click (PPC), native advertising, search engine optimisation or display advertising are among the most common.

But have you heard about solo email ads?

Solo email ads can be a great addition to your advertising portfolio.

Not sure what solo email ads are?

No worries, we’ll cover some of the important basics for you.

What Are Solo Email Ads?

A quick list or solo email ad is a one-time email blast sent on behalf of another party to their own email list, typically for a fee. Typically this is a flat-fee or performance based.

The ‘quick list’ component actually refers to a list that has already been built, but by someone else. This is not the same as purchasing an email list where you do get the email and contact information of people.

The list being emailed to is created, owned and maintained by the person or company you are paying. You do not have access to their list as the email is sent by the person or company who owns it.

You will typically provide the sender with the copy you want to appear in the email. In some cases, the sender may choose to edit your copy or write their own.

Now that we are on the same page of what solo ads are, let’s dive into some details.

Should You Buy Solo Ads?

The first thing you need to do is ask yourself, “Should I buy solo ads?”

While emailing thousands and thousands of people might sound good on the surface, there are some key questions you need to ask yourself.

Questions like:

• How responsive is the list? Has the list owner blasted it too many times and now it has dismal open rates?
• Does the list contain prospects of your ideal target audience? If the list is not targeted or related to your audience, chances are they won’t be interested in what your email has to say.
• Do you have proper tracking in place? You need to be setup to track these initiatives to know if you are getting what you are paying.
• What does my return on investment need to be in order to make this worth it? You’ll need to know what goals need to be met in order to make sure you are not going to lose more than you invest.

While there are certainly additional questions that might be specific to your situation, I’ve found that these are among the most critical that must always be answered.

Solo Ad List Responsiveness

Let’s dig a bit deeper into the importance of the solo ad list and their engagement.

Most solo ads will just tell you how many people are in their list in that they like to “wow” you with the potential to reach such a large audience.

While the size of the list is important to an extent, what’s more, important is how active the list is with the emails they get.

If you are purchasing solo ads from a person who blasts emails every day for anything and everything, chances are there will be a low engagement within that list.

So out of the thousands of people in that list, only a small percentage will be paying attention to any email coming from that sender. In reality, you aren’t going to be reaching thousands of people – just a fraction of what was promised.

If possible, ask the sender about their typical open rates.

Of course, it is not always the responsibility of the sender to generate opens since subject lines play a huge role in this. In fact, 33% of people say that subject lines determine whether or not they will open an email.

Finding the Right Audience For Solo Ads

While it is definitely important to find solo ads with an engaging audience, it’s more important to make sure you are messaging the right audience.

Think about this, would you talk about the top backyard landscaping tips to people who are apartment owners?

Probably not since they won’t have much use for this information since they don’t have a yard.

So with solo ads, you need to know not only your target audience but the audience of the list you will be emailing.

Most reputable solo ad providers can give you a good idea of the demographics of their list.

If a provider can’t give you these details, I recommend finding someone else to buy solo ads from.

Once you have identified a list that has your ideal audience on it, you need to evaluate if it will be worth your time and money.

Setting Up Your Solo Ads For Success

In the digital marketing world, everything needs to be tracked. This includes your solo ads.

Some solo ad providers will supply you with their own data, but it is important for you to track the data yourself.

This can easily be done with Google Analytics.

The ideal way to do this is by using UTM parameters in your URLs of the solo ads. UTM parameters work in Google Analytics and are essentially tags that can get passed to your analytics account with some detailed information.

For example, your URL might look something like this:

• www.yoursite.com/sales-page?utm_source=solo-ad&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=website-you-bought-the-ad-from

There are 3 required fields when using UTM parameters:

• utm_source – this is used to identify the source of the traffic
• utm_medium – this is the medium that the link was on (email, CPC, etc.)
• utm_campaign – this is used to label the campaign the link was marketed in (in this case, it could be the website you purchased the solo ad from)

When using UTM parameters, keep in mind they are case sensitive – so be sure to be consistent with your naming conventions.

You’ll want to use these URLs in your solo ad campaigns and then be able to tie your initiatives back to sales. Of course, you will want to be sure to have goal tracking setup as well in Google Analytics.

Having proper tracking installed will help you know if solo ads are worth it for your business.

It’s important to stay on top of your metrics, especially after you participate in a solo email.

Know Your Break-even Point With Solo Ads

With any investment you make with your business, you should always know what your expected return on investment is. You probably don’t want to spend more money than you will make – that’s typically not the best way to run a business.

Let’s say you found a solo ad with 1,000 emails and it is going to cost you $1,000.

This means that you will be spending $1 for every email that goes out.

Now, take the low-end worst case scenario expected a conversion rate of 1/2%. So this means you would expect 5 sales from this list of 1,000 emails.

With your $1000 investment, this would lead to a cost of $200 per sale. Therefore, at a minimum, you would need to have a product or service that will bring in at least $200 per sale to break-even.

If your typical sale is $500, then this particular list would be worth a potential investment.

However, if your typical sale is $50 then this would not be a good list in that you will be losing money.

But if you are confident that you can write a compelling email subject line and engaging content that will drive people to your website in order to purchase you can increase your expected conversion rate and re-run the numbers.

Over time, you will be able to have a good idea of what your typical conversion rate is and make more educated decisions when exploring solo ad opportunities.

You may find that your solo ads initiatives are driving a 2% conversion rate which would mean you would only need to make a minimum of $50 per sale to break even. But if you are selling a $200 offering, with a 2% conversion rate you could net $4000 in sales. Subtract out your $1000 investment and you would be left with a $3000 profit.

Ca-ching!

When you can get efficient with solo ads, it’s like printing money. Just be sure you have a tool in place to evaluate the return on your investment.

Knowing Solo Ad Basics Can Go A Long Way

Understanding the core basics of solo ads can help you be smarter to your approach. When you know what to look for, how to track it, and how to evaluate your return you can make smart business decisions.

Look, there are many shady providers of solo ads out there – but there are some really great ones.

Knowing the basics can help you weed through the garbage and find the right provider for your solo ads.

While there are not any guarantees around using solo ads, by asking the right questions and implementing proper tracking you can put yourself in a better position to make the right decisions.

Interested in using solo ads? Great!

Looking for a way to track their effectiveness before you get started? Well, kudos to you for being so business savvy.

Knowing how well solo ads perform financially is important and ClickPerfect provides the insight you’ll need to evaluate your success. This simple tool will help you learn more about the benefit of sending to a solo ad list as well as overall customer responsiveness.

Happy sending!

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