Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
Editor notes: This Post Contains Outdated Links or information.
At one point or another in your Internet Marketing career, you’re going to have to make the decision of using free or paid traffic generation.
In fact, most people make the choice when they’re just getting started and I can tell you; it’s a really bad idea.
The truth is, free traffic is great, it really is. The majority of people think if they can generate traffic for free, then why on earth would they spend any money?
The answer is time. For a free traffic generation strategy to really kick in, it can take months.
So if you start blogging or writing articles today, you might be getting a few hundred daily visitors 3 months from now. That’s just the way it goes. Obviously, you can speed up the process by increasing the volume of your marketing strategy.
You can also outsource most free traffic generation strategies which is my preferred option. BUT – paid traffic can be very useful. I personally think you need to use a bit of both. If you want to get a new business venture off the ground then you absolutely need to use paid traffic.
You can’t wait a quarter of a year to figure out if a business is worthwhile doing or if a bunch of keywords are worth targeting. So what’s the ultimate solution? Test traffic sources with paid marketing, find the optimum source and begin free marketing campaigns. The most simple example to explain is SEO and PPC.
SEO is one of the most popular if not the most popular free traffic generation strategy out there. It involves targeting keywords, creating content, developing websites, building backlinks, and ranking in the search engines. Using SEO you can quickly rank in the search engines and receive targeted traffic.
You pick a keyword people are searching, do the whole SEO thing and start receiving targeted traffic. With pay-per-click, you pick the keywords and write a quick ad which then gets displayed on the right side of the Google search results. Unlike SEO, you have to pay for every visitor you receive from each targeted keyword. So PPC is like SEO in the sense that you get the exact same traffic.
You have to pay for every visitor you receive, but get “instant rankings” without doing any link building or promotional work. Most people choose one of the two strategies when really they work perfectly together. SEO takes a lot of time and if you’re going to work 2 months to get a single top ranking, you better know the traffic is going to convert. Unfortunately, most people waste their time ranking for keywords that never yield a penny.
So what’s the best strategy?
1. Go To Google Keyword Tool And Locate Keywords
The first thing you need to do is find about 30+ different keywords you believe will make you money. All the keywords must have over 1000 searches/month. Next, you need to set up proper tracking so once you’re getting traffic you know exactly which keywords are producing the best results.
2. Set Up Ad Campaigns
Once done, you need to log in to your Adwords account, input your site details and set up ad campaigns targeting all of the keywords you found in step 1. Since you’ll only be using paid traffic for testing purposes, make sure you allocate a sensible $40+/day for the testing period.
As a rule of thumb, I run ad campaigns for a minimum of 7 days.
3. Analyze Results
Once your campaigns are approved and the traffic starts flowing, analyze the results. You need to figure out which keywords are making you the most money – that is all. That’s why proper tracking is so important, so you can see exactly which keywords convert best.
If you want to conduct a fair test, you need to receive several hundred visitors from each keyword before you make a judgment.
4. Ongoing PPC
Now take the top 5 best converting keywords, leave their ad campaigns running, and kill the other campaigns. If you’re making more money in sales than you’re paying for traffic – keep the campaigns running. Why not, ehh? (At the same time – keep a very close eye on them because PPC campaigns are known to go tits up overnight)
5. Set Up SEO Campaign
This is the part where you commence your SEO campaign. It’s where you start to rank in the natural search results for your keywords and stop paying for clicks. You do this by using SEO.
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You need to take the top 5 best converting keywords and set up SEO campaigns for them. This means optimizing your website on-page for the keywords and then setting up link building campaigns.
You can use forum profiles, blog comments, article directory links, web 2.0s, guest posts, and more. Whatever it takes to rank page 1 for your top 5 best converting keywords. Of course, the variables are flexible. If the top 5 best converting keywords are super high in SEO competition, maybe go for some of the worse converting keywords.
The whole idea of this strategy is to find out which keywords perform best before you start expensive/time-intensive SEO campaigns.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments, and questions below.
Comments
Jeanette Clost, February 20, 2012, 10:00
This article really opened my eyes to the benefits of combining free and paid traffic strategies. Thanks for the detailed guide!
Lars, February 20, 2012, 11:15
Great insights, David. I always thought free traffic was the way to go, but I see now how paid traffic can boost my results.
Mike Johnson, February 20, 2012, 12:30
Thank you for breaking down the strategies so clearly. I’ve been struggling with traffic generation, and this post has given me a clear path forward.
Emily Davis, February 20, 2012, 13:45
This is a game-changer for my marketing approach. Combining SEO and PPC is something I hadn’t considered before. Thanks, David!
Isabella Ramirez, February 20, 2012, 14:00
Your explanation of using both free and paid traffic strategies is very helpful. I’ve been hesitant to use paid traffic, but now I see its value. Thank you!
Liam Chen, February 20, 2012, 14:15
David, your advice on traffic generation is spot on. I’ve been relying too much on free methods and not seeing the results I want. Time to invest in some paid traffic!
Emily Gupta, February 20, 2012, 14:30
Thank you for the comprehensive guide on traffic generation. The step-by-step approach makes it easy to follow and implement. Great work!
Jackson Lee, February 20, 2012, 14:45
This post is incredibly informative. The combination of SEO and PPC is something I’ll definitely be trying out. Thanks for the insights, David!
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$40+/day testing budget for a minimum of 7 days assumes there’s enough local search volume to even test against. In my town of four thousand, most of these keywords wouldn’t clear 1000 searches a month nationally, let alone locally, so half that budget would just sit there with no clicks to show for it, and I’d have learned nothing about whether the keyword converts.
Look, the premise is bigger than budget. The whole system assumes you already know which offer to test. Most people reading this don’t. Test what, exactly?
The post frames the SEO-only route as something only impatient people avoid, waiting a quarter of a year to find out if a keyword’s worth targeting. But some of us built entire audiences slowly, in writing, without ever running a paid campaign. That’s not indecision, it’s a different kind of business, built on a timeline the post doesn’t seem to consider valid.
The strongest case against Anneke’s position: if you never test with paid traffic, you never really know whether a keyword converts before spending two months ranking for it, and the post is blunt about how often that time gets wasted on keywords that never yield a result. Patience is fine right up until it’s patience spent on the wrong keyword, and by then the months are already gone.
If you’re only spending $40+/day for 7 days minimum, how many of the 30 keywords actually get a fair sample before the budget runs out?
Or the sample size, whichever runs out first.
Roy’s one-liner is funny but I think what’s being missed is that the post does say to run several hundred visitors per keyword before judging — that’s the whole point of step 3. The budget is a floor, not the ceiling.
Reading step 1 — thirty-plus keywords, proper tracking set up before a single ad runs — and recognising exactly the kind of preparation I use to avoid actually launching anything. The post makes it sound like a week’s work. For me it’d swallow a month, because I’d want to double-check the tracking was tracking before I trusted a single number it gave me, then I’d want a second look at the keyword list in case I’d missed a better one, and then — well, you can see where this goes. Step 2 is ‘set up ad campaigns.’ I’d still be on step 1, refining a spreadsheet nobody asked to see, calling it thoroughness because ‘stalling’ sounds worse out loud.