How do I increase visitors to your website? There is SEO; however, there are some weaknesses to SEO which are:

1. SEO takes months to implement fully — and you need traffic to your site now!
2. SEO may deliver an insufficient volume of traffic. You may need to supplement SEO through paid search ads.

Paid search, often called Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, displays your text ad on search engine results pages when someone searches on a keyword or keyphrase that you’ve selected. The beauty is that you get targeted customers, but pay only when someone clicks on your ad. Start with Google AdWords (http://adwords.google.com), since they have the most search traffic, but also consider Yahoo! Search Marketing (sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing/) and MSN AdCenter (adcenter.microsoft.com).

Paid Search is complex, but you can begin to understand it if you visualize it in four basic stages.
Stage 1. Selecting Your Keywords

Start by compiling a list of keywords that people might use to search for your service or product. Tools such as Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com) or Google AdWords Keyword Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) will help you develop such a list. Generic keywords may not be best. The more specific the search phrase, the greater the likelihood that your searcher is ready to buy and the higher your conversion rate will be. Bid on a list of hundreds of keyphrases with two or three words each, not just the top dozen. If you’re a local business, use local place names in your keyword list and use Google’s geotargeting feature, so your ad isn’t shown unless the customer is in your trade area.
Stage 2. Developing a Landing Page

Don’t pay for advertising just to send click-throughs to your homepage. It’s a waste of money. Rather, develop a specific landing page for each category of keywords. The landing page is designed to get your visitor to make the purchase, sign up, or leave contact information — whatever your objective is. Read my book How to Develop a Landing Page (www.wilsonweb.com/ebooks/landing.htm) for specific instructions.
Stage 3. Forming Your Bidding Strategy

Next, develop a bidding strategy. Factors to consider are:

1. Price. Price per click is based on two factors: (a) The closer to the top, the more you’ll pay. (b) Quality Score measures how relevant your ad is — in Google’s humble opinion. Not having a relevant landing page, for example, will lower your Quality Score and raise the cost per click you’ll be charged.
2. Position. Position #1 gets the most traffic, but position #7 might get a better conversion rate at a lower cost.
3. Ad location. You can specify your ad to appear only on search results pages, but you might experience good sales by allowing your ad to be displayed on content sites, too.
4. Precision of keyword matching. You can select “broad match” so your ad is shown when any of your keywords appear in someone’s search phrase. “Phrase match” requires these keywords to be in your precise order. “Exact match” means that your ad is displayed only when a searcher uses your precise keyphrase and no other. “Negative match” will stop your ad from showing if specific keywords indicate that this searcher isn’t a good prospect for your product or service.
5. Daily Budget. If you’re on a tight budget, specify the maximum amount you can be charged in a single day.

Stage 4. Testing and Refining

Fortunately, the search engines provide statistics so that you can determine the cost, the click-through rate, and the conversion rate for each ad and keyword combination. Use this information to fine-tune your strategy and improve your results.

1. ROI analysis. Some keywords cost you money, but don’t get any conversions. Eliminate them or change wording and positions to make them profitable.
2. Ad testing. Test your ads with variations in the title and text to see which performs best.
3. Dayparting. You may find that most of your sales occur only during certain times of the day. To improve your overall ROI, show your ad only during these hours.
4. Click fraud. Unfortunately, you could end up paying for bogus click-throughs. Monitor click-throughs for patterns that might indicate fraud.

This week let’s consider traffic from other forms of advertising. Good traffic is traffic that is interested in the products and services you have to offer.

Let’s look at several of these briefly and I’ll give you my take on each.
E-mail Newsletter Advertising

Perhaps as a newsletter publisher I’m biased, but I believe that one of the most cost-effective advertising approaches for small businesses is to find e-zines that are squarely targeted on your particular niche and advertise there. To find appropriate e-zines, search Google for a keyword for your niche along with the word “newsletter” or “e-zine.” Also try these e-mail newsletter directories:

* BestEzines (www.bestezines.com)
* The Ezine Directory (www.ezine-dir.com)
* EzineHub (www.ezinehub.com)
* John Labovitz’s E-Zine List (www.e-zine-list.com)

Then contact the publisher of each matching newsletter regarding advertising rates. Some will have unrealistic rates, others don’t really take ads. But you’re looking for the one with a targeted list and “reasonable” ad rates. Of course, what seems “reasonable” to you will depend entirely on the profit you earn on each sale. Implementing this strategy will take some work to find the right newsletters with responsive subscribers. But it may pay off big in getting targeted traffic to your site. Be sure to encode the URLs so you can track click-throughs and sales using your analytics program.
Solo E-mails

These same niche e-zine publishers may accept solo e-mail ads, that is, e-mails that consist entirely of an advertisement which is sent to the entire newsletter list. Don’t confuse this with sending spam. Readers of such lists implicitly agree to receive some advertising e-mails in return for free newsletter content in their chosen area. Solo e-mail “drops” or “blasts” may seem expensive, but since the click-through rate is often significant, this is the advertising vehicle of choice for many savvy advertisers. If you’re going to try this, consider employing a copywriter to write powerful ad copy that gets the click-throughs you need. More info.
Comparison Shopping Engines or Bots

Online merchants often have good results using comparison shopping engines or “bots” such as Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, NexTag, and Shopzilla. Some charge merchants on a cost per click determined by the category of products you are listing. Others have a bidding approach. Many merchants use shopping bots to advertise tangible products, especially commodities. More info.
Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are sweet for merchants. They pay a fixed commission only when a sale is made, a subscription is complete, or a lead is confirmed. The difficulty, however, is finding affiliates who (1) have targeted traffic to their site or a good e-zine list, and (2) who are willing to commit to featuring a link, button, or banner ad on appropriate places in their websites or newsletters. Perhaps 95% of affiliates bring zero traffic to the merchant, so you’re looking for the 1%, the super affiliates. To attract them you need to offer commissions generous enough to lure them away from competing merchants’ programs — not an easy task. If you can recruit your own affiliates, you can purchase your own affiliate software for $100 or so. The other approach is an affiliate company that will expose your company’s ads to its existing network of affiliates. Commission Junction (www.cj.com) does this for medium to large companies. More info.

Get more traffic! Yes, but what about the people who have already visited your site and liked what they saw? They are the very best prospects you can imagine for your products or services. How do you bring them back? Develop an e-mail newsletter or blog.
Insulate your Website against Energy Loss

You’ve spent lots of time and money for search engine optimization and advertising to get people to your website. But if your conversion rate is only 2% to 3%, like energy being lost from an house without insulation, you’re wasting 97% to 98% of your marketing efforts.

You can turn this around using a strategy adopted by tens of thousands of successful online businesses — develop an e-mail newsletter of value and then make it a high priority to get site visitors to sign up. Done right, you should be able to get at least 10% to 20% of your visitors to subscribe. Multiply that over a year and you’ll have a substantial e-mail list of highly targeted prospects.
Develop an E-mail Newsletter of Value

People won’t sign up to get more e-mail unless they believe they will receive value from doing so. So what value could you offer site visitors in the form of an e-mail newsletter? It will vary from one business to another, but consider:

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Helpful how-to articles
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Industry updates and analyses
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Links to new trends and important news articles
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Product reviews
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Special prices on Internet-only sales

Pause right now and write down several ideas. Once you’ve determined how to offer value, you have two primary challenges.
Get Visitors to Sign Up

The first challenge is to get site visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. You can get a subscription form from your e-mail marketing service such as iContact or Constant Contact. To get sign-ups:

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Put the sign-up form in a high-visibility spot on every page of your site.
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Next to each sign-up form explain how a person will benefit from this newsletter.
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Provide incentives for signing up, such as a free whitepaper or a coupon.

Build Trust Regularly

The second challenge is to provide great content on a regular basis. Too often a small business will start an e-mail newsletter or blog that bogs down after the first month or so. Indeed, writing a regular e-mail newsletter is a commitment of at least half a day each issue. Look at the time as a marketing expense that will bring back your best customers to your site again and again. I recommend that you:

* Set a regular schedule of at least once each month.
* Plan ahead with an editorial calendar that lists topics you’ll cover for the next 6 to 12 months, one topic per issue.
* Assign a person the task of writing and publishing this newsletter and give him or her time to complete it.
* Hire a local writer to take this project, if you don’t have the resources in-house.
* Consider using free articles available online at article sites, such as EzineArticles.com.
* Feature and link to one of your products and services in each issue to generate repeat traffic to your site.

Article by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson Web Marketing