Traffic Generation: Not as hard as you think

It’s well-known that I’ve been using Google AdWords for as long as I’ve been marketing online – nearly seven years! Having said that, I’ve also been diligent about generation traffic from other sources as well. While I’m not a proponent of traditional SEO on your own site – altering content & copy to make the search engines happy – I certainly exploit every free source of traffic available.

(In case you’re wondering, I’m such an anti-SEO person for the simple fact that you must optimize your sites for conversions, not SEO. I use external sites to drive traffic to my high-converting marketing site. I don’t mess with my site’s copy, content, and structure to make Google happy. No way. Not ever.)

Having said all that, I still spend a large amount of money on Google AdWords every month. Except for the past few days, that is, while my account was temporarily “Google Slapped” due to landing page issues that have since been corrected.

Here’s the funny thing: My opt-ins and sales didn’t suffer terribly while I was without AdWords. This was not what I expected at all.

You see, when you’re paying for traffic, you tend to focus on optimizing that source of traffic above all others. It only makes sense, since your dollars are at stake. The result is that you tend to forget that traffic is even coming in from other sources.

The bottom-line is this: You must exploit all available sources of traffic. In doing so, you diversify your traffic sources, thereby hedging against unforeseen events (like my Google Slap), while simultaneously enjoying the high ROI of pay-per-click advertising. This is what I do, and it’s the reason why losing AdWords for a few days only resulted in a drop in traffic of only about one-third, rather than a complete shutdown of my business – something those who market solely on AdWords run a constant risk of, especially now that Google has gone ban-happy.

Here’s a brief list of traffic-generation methods that will keep visitors coming to your site, with our without PPC:

Article Marketing. Article marketing is one of the most underrated methods of traffic generation. Simply write a content- and keyword-rich article about once a month (more if you’re new to marketing online), and upload it to EzineArticles.com. Include a link to your site in the resource box along with some incentive for people to click on it, like a free report or free e-course.

Blogging. Set up a Wordpress blog with my recommended list of plugins and you’ll have a traffic-generation machine on autopilot. Be sure to post at least two or three times a week to keep the search engines happy, and include a link and incentive to get people to click through to your marketing site, like the ad for my AdWords site you see below this post.

YouTube. YouTube is becoming one of my top sources of high-converting traffic. It has very high prominence in search engines, and videos give you the capability to both massively give yourself credibility, as well as to provide valuable content that will keep viewers coming back for more. Best of all, with video technology advancing as quickly as it has, you can produce high-quality video with an inexpensive camera like a Flip HD and upload it in minutes.

Podcasting & Vodcasting. After YouTube, my iTunes video podcasts are my next largest source of high-converting traffic. All you need to do is set up a blog to host the video content (you can use your existing Wordpress blog), set up a free account on FeedBurner with iTunes podcasting enabled, and complete the “Add A Podcast” form in the iTunes music store. You’ll be up and running in just a few days. Best of all, each time you create a new video for YouTube, simultaneously post it on your blog, which will automatically feed to iTunes via FeedBurner. That way you’re showing your videos on both YouTube and iTunes, with zero additional work on your part!

Twitter. First things first: I’m not a huge fan of Twitter for business. I think most people who tell you that you can explode your sales with Twitter just want to sell you their latest Twitter information product. Where I do like Twitter, however, is integrated with your blog. I use a free Wordpress plugin called Tweet This, that automatically tweets the title and link to every new blog post the instant I click the “Publish” button. Combine this with a large list of Twitter followers (follow people with tons of followers and turn on auto-follow), and you’ll drive a nice amount of traffic to your blog. This gets comments active, pushing you up in search engine rankings, which in turn get you more traffic and more clickthroughs to your marketing site.

That’s the basic list. Do those things diligently and you won’t have to worry much if and when your AdWords account gets slapped!