Traffic Tips and Getting Your First Visitors

You may have the best content on the planet, but without exposure you are still in the dark. Your products mean nothing to anyone because there are no maps to find out where you are. In short without telling people you exist, you are simply running a hobby business.

“How you can you get people to your business?”

A steady stream of visitors to your blog is what you are looking for (This is Your Traffic).

Without people visiting your blog you will not make any sales or at the very least a lead or a subscriber.

No visitors pose a very big problem. If you have no visitors to your blog you have:

• NO SALES
• NO LEADS
• NO EMAIL SIGNUPS
• NO LIST BUILDING
• NO SHARES

How can you rectify the problem?

How can you grab the exposure you need?

The answers to all these questions are the same for your online business as they are for a physical bricks and mortar business.

You need to generate exposure by putting in place certain techniques to bring in the traffic you need to generate profits. By doing this your traffic streams will grow and so will your PROFIT, LIST BUILDING, LEADS, AFFILIATE SALES and SUBSCRIBERS.

I’m sure you can see now the importance of traffic and why we all need it. One of the key elements to making money from your blog is to generate traffic. One way or another we all need visitors to our blog to create income from our products, PPC ads, advertising and affiliate links and so on.

"Without traffic your site may as well be a hobby rather than a business"

One single source of traffic will not usually create all the traffic you will ever need to your website. The secret is a combination of traffic streams to create those explosive traffic stats you always wanted.

Didn’t the old expression go, “If you build it...they will come?” Yes, so imagine how disappointed you will be when you have your new blog setup, new graphics, opt-in’s content etc etc and nothing happens, no one comes...

It's important to understand that building a blog is merely 'step one'. Creating great content is 'step two', and then there are all of the steps afterwards, and this is what many blog owners forget.

So How is Your Blog Found?

No website is instantly searchable by Google. Based on each search engine’s unique algorithm, your site will be searched and ranked (indexed) when you hit the publish button and a series off pings have taken place to allow Google's crawlers to index your site.

Keep in mind that just because a search engine has indexed your site, does not mean you’re going to get the royal treatment.

While some popular sites and search-friendly sites have the privilege of practically 'live' search results, less popular, new and rarely updated sites will only be crawled and indexed on a periodic basis.

What to do To Get Ranked and Searched:

1. Create great content, that has length and substance
2. Create sharable content (more on this shortly)
3. Use the correct key words for your site
4. Use heading tags
5. Download 'Yoast SEO' plugin to help with all of the above

Social Media

Social media for marketing is a concept that is hugely misunderstood by the vast majority of big brands trying to bring more traffic to their websites.

You see this all the time. Take a look at many of the brands on Facebook or Twitter, and you'll see them repeating the same mistakes. Primarily, that means posting over and over again about the same promotional nonsense, without giving any thought to strategy or value.

These posts look like this:

• Why not sign up to our mailing list today to find out more about our business?
• Did you know that our CRM system was rated the top new software product last
  year?
• Sign up now for 20% off of our latest software package!
• Is your business doing everything it can to maximize efficiency?
  And on and on!

Answer this: "would you consider following a social media account that only published these types of comments?"

The answer for us is no, and the reason is obvious: there is no value being provided here!

What's more, is that these messages will be sporadic and random and with no real goal in mind. Then the owner of the business wonders why they don't see the huge numbers they feel they deserve for their efforts!

So whatever social media platform you are a five on, there are four key things you need to understand if you are going to successfully use social media to drive traffic:

• Value
• Community
• Integration
• Consistency
• 
Value

This should be obvious. If you want people to follow you on any platform, then you need to give them a good reason to do so. That means that you need to be able to offer some kind of value for their time, their effort, and their contact details(subscribers).

In the case of social media, there are a few ways you can do this...

Take Instagram for example, the best fitness brands don't just post random pictures of themselves topless. Instead, they combine these pictures with useful insights and information that might help someone to improve their own training and results.

Likewise, if you run a business brand, you can provide useful money-making tips. If you run a blog about makeup, you should provide tips that can help someone create a better look.

Community

Another more nebulous subject that is nevertheless extremely important when it comes to promoting your brand on social media is the idea of community.

Too many companies believe that social media is essentially a foghorn: a tool that they can use to shout loudly and reach a loud audience with a marketing message.

But social media is much more than that. In fact, primarily, social media is a communication tool! Understanding this is what will allow you to tap into its full power.

When you post something to social media, it's very important that you also engage with the audience who comment on it. Likewise, you should actively participate in other discussions or comment on other images.

This helps your audience to feel as though they know you, which once again makes them far more loyal to your business. You'll find they are then more likely to:

● Share your content
● Visit your website multiple times
● Engage with future posts

A great strategy is to join a Facebook group. This will allow you to develop a particularly loyal audience by providing insane value. You can almost guarantee these people will visit your site for every new post.

Integration

I also mentioned the importance of having a strategy. That means knowing how your chosen social media platform/s are going to fit into a broader plan to promote your business and drive traffic to your website.

What's the point of developing fantastic social media presence if you're not going to do anything with it?
The answer is to use each of your "platforms" to promote each of your other platforms. You can do this in a few ways:

● Reminding people to follow you on social media in your content
● Reminding people to visit your website from your social media posts
● Sharing (high value) content from your website to your social media accounts
● Including social sharing buttons on your website so that people can easily share
your post
● Re-sharing old posts on social media – you don't only have to post new content!
● Including social links on your homepage
Consistency

Finally, none of this will work unless you are consistent. If your social media accounts are like ghost towns for months on end, then you won't see them grow! Not only does this play badly with the algorithms, but it also looks unprofessional to you and your biz.

Consistency means posting regularly, but it also means having consistent messaging, branding, and quality. That means your content should be on as many platforms as possible or you like to use, but it also means that you should have a consistent brand and style across all of those platforms.

Your logo, brand and URL should be recognizable between Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter!

Traffic is a huge huge subject and there a 101 ways to gebnerate it. I suggest sticking with what you fnd worls for you. Some platforms are bettere served for individual buisness. For example I find success with Pinterest and SEO. You may find success with Facebook and Instagram?

"Whatever methods you use, always provide value".

I've added a free traffic guide in the resources and links section which digs deeper into traffic.

Ok, that's about all for today's lesson. I hope you enjoyed it.

What you should have taken away from this lesson is:

1. Traffic Training