In this webinar for Affiliate Summit, Evan Weber goes through ten proven ways that he uses to drive traffic to his blogs and affiliate websites.
There’s a point at the beginning of the video that he copies the title for one of his blog posts, does a Google search for it and then says:
“As I search Google for this particular topic I rank number one organically right here so my strategy is working.”
Uh, well duh! If you do a search for any remotely unique post title you’ve got a pretty good chance at being at the top of the search results. My BS meter was screaming but I decided to continue watching anyways. Surprisingly, the rest of the video was solid and contained some good tips. The outline in the video was a little hard to read so I’ve included for you below.
1. How to Create Content for Greater Organic Search Traffic
- Posting strategies (frequency, keyword based, titles/body)
- Post it yourself or outsource it
- Be intuitive, niche and laser-focused
- Gorgeous themes (NewWPThemes.com)
- Google Alerts – topics you are interested in pushed to you as they happen
- site:yoursite.com in Google. Tells you how many indexed pages and what the titles look like.
2. How to Syndicate Your Content on Social Networks and Social Bookmarking Sites
- Ping.fm – post to multiple social networks at once
- ShareThis Chrome Extension
- Share into related LinkedIn Groups
- Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Facebook, Fan Page, Twitter, LinkedIn (when appropriate)
- Post a different version of the same post/article to more than one site i.e. article directories, guest blog posts, classified sites. Any website that allows you to post on their site.
3. How to Gain More FB Fans From Your Web Traffic and Manage Them Properly
- Post Facebook Fan box prominently on your site/blog
- Cross recruit to FB Fan Page, Twitter, LinkedIn
- Post updates to your fan page frequently (5 or more times a day)
- Share helpful content, pleasantries, deals/coupons, posts
- Involver – Fan Page plugins
4. How to Sign-Up Email Subscribers and Send Effective Newsletters
- Post email subscribe box prominently (wpsubscribers.com)
- Encourage visitors to join your newsletter for special deals
- Have a good HTML newsletter layout designed
- Wildfire Sweepsteakes/Contest – builds fans and emails
5. How to Use Social Networks to Generate Traffic to Your Websites
- Build your friends, followers and connections – ALWAYS!
- Focus on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn
- Launch a niche social network (Ning.com)
- Post new pages/posts on your social networks
- Social Karma – like, comment, share on other people’s updates, tweets and posts
- Bit.ly – Change affiliate links to shareable links
6. How to Use Social Networking to Build a Following and a Brand
- Launch Fan Page, Twitter Account, LinkedIn
- Invite all your friends to your Fan Page, mass invites
- Post valuable content and pleasantries, interact with others
- Foster interaction! (polls, surveys, sweepstakes, contests)
- Don’t be lame or boring. Be positive/optimistic!
7. How to Use Paid Advertising to Generate Inexpensive, Relevant Traffic
- Look for niche keyword phrases – Google Keyword Tool
- Exploit MSN Adcenter – cheaper clicks, go broad
- Google AdWords retargeting – advanced technique, helps remarket to visitors leaving your site
- Facebook Advertising – Find cheap niches, Advertise for Fans
- eReleases.com – Online Press Releases – embed links
8. Links in Your Email Signature
- Gets clicks
- Add your Facebook Profile, Fan Page, Twitter and LinkedIn to your signature
- check out Rapportive.com for Gmail
9. Forum Posting – with Signature Links Added
- Builds inbound links
- Gets click-throughs
- Helps brand yourself/website on a niche forum
- Makes friends and partnerships
- Affliliate Summit Forums
10. Blog Commenting
- Builds inbound links
- Time consuming to leave good comments but worth it
- Gets clicks to your site
- make friends with the bloggers
- Offer to exchange blog roll links with bloggers – good for SEO
Final Notes
- Good Ideas for Learning and Expanding your Knowledge
- Mashable – Best source of social media information
- StumbleUpon – suggests great websites in any niche
- My Affiliate Resources Articles
- Friend/follow authorities in search, social, affiliate
- Avoid “affiliate systems” – basically anything supposed to teach you how to make money online as an affiliate for a fee.
Let me know if you’ve learned anything new. I certainly did.
Great list of things you can do to increase the traffic to your blog or website. I think biggest challange most people face is that to grow their following at one place first and then move on to the next. It is much easier to concentrate to build one powerful channel first and then replicate that on to as many as you can.
Excellent outline of the webinar, Howie!
I’ve been recently studying Pinterest and I would like to add that it’s also a great source that can be leveraged.
great info, thank you very much, good luck to you. I’m currently adding links to my emails. Sounds like a great idea to promote.
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