“What is the absolute, hands-down best website traffic sources?”
This is a common question from people who have just put up their websites and are starting to drive traffic.
Of course, the really important question is:
“What is the best source of buyers?”
Because traffic is useless if no one is buying!
I have a couple of different answers to this question.
Best Website Traffic Sources – Your In-House Email List
Now, I understand that you need traffic in order to build a list, but the fact is that an email list that you have a strong relationship with is your BEST source of buyers.
At the flick of a switch, you can send out an offer to a solid source of buyers and make sales.
Of course, this is assuming that you have been marketing responsibly and creating a strong relationship with your list!
Remember…
The money is in the list!
Best Website Traffic Sources – Affiliates
If you have a brand new business and haven’t built a list yet, you need other sources of traffic.
After an in-house list, affiliates provide the next highest converting source of traffic.
Getting affiliate traffic means using sites like:
- Clickbank
- Commission Junction
- Share a Sale
…and leveraging the traffic that these sites get for your own site.
Of course, you can also build your own affiliate program using 1Shopping Cart, Infusionsoft or any of the other ecommerce systems which have affiliate technology built in. You would then go out and find affiliates who will recommend and endorse your product.
The reason that this is such a high converting source of traffic is because these are people coming to your site who have been partially or completely pre-sold by the referring site.
The right affiliates who have strong relationships with their list and audience can send a ton of qualified traffic to your website.
Affiliate marketing does have a downside though – consistency.
There are two reasons that consistency is a problem with affiliate marketing as a primary website traffic source.
When you get a new affiliate, they’ll generally write a blog post or send an email that directs their readers to your site and you’ll get a bunch of traffic and sales.
Your affiliate might even make your product a regular feature, but the fact of the matter is that each affiliate you get can bring a spike in traffic but it won’t be a consistent flow of website traffic.
The second reason the traffic is inconsistent is because affiliates tend to be most loyal to the product that has the highest conversion and pays the highest commission.
This means that an affiliate who’s sending a lot of website traffic your way can suddenly get a better offer from a competitor and you’re left hanging.
So although affiliate traffic is one of the best website traffic sources giving you high converting buyers, it’s not a good long-term source of consistent traffic.
This is why I recommend that people who are just starting out also pay attention to my third choice…
Best Website Traffic Sources – Search Engines
There are a couple of different strategies to use with search engine traffic – organic and paid.
Organic Search Engine Traffic
If done properly, organic search engine traffic is by far the most consistent and the highest converting source of website traffic.
Someone coming to your site from an organic search listing in Google is going to convert as high as 7 times higher than someone coming from an equivalent paid ad.
So if I have a keyword such as “Internet marketing training” and I rank in the number 1 or 2 spot organically and I also have a pay-per-click (Adwords) ad, the people who find me organically are 7 times more likely to buy than the ones who click through the paid ad.
There are lots of theories as to why this is true, but the one that makes the most sense to me is because people are sophisticated enough to know that you can’t pay to be ranked organically.
So if Google has you listed in the top spot for your keyword, Google is basically endorsing your product!
That is hugely powerful and makes the organic search engines (primarily Google) a great source of qualified buyers.
Of course, when we talk about search engine marketing, we’re basically talking about Google because it’s by far the biggest source of search traffic.
So, getting ranked organically for your keyword will get you:
- The most consistent website traffic source
- The highest converting source of website traffic
Website Traffic Sources Summary
In summary, your list is your highest converting source of buyers but you need traffic sources such as affiliate marketing and search engine marketing to build that list.
Affiliate marketing is awesome for its high conversion rate, but inconsistent and tricky for building your business.
Organic search engine marketing can drive you the most predictable, consistent source of qualified buyers.
And really, even your affiliate marketing is driving traffic that originated from the search engines in many cases anyway!
PPC (Pay Per Click)
PPC is a traffic approach which one pays for clicks made on their display advertisements. An advertiser sets a bid per click and creates a display ad. A webmaster places the ad on their website and when it is clicked, you pay for the visitor that comes through to your website. PPC has grown to be one of the most popular traffic source and arguably the best for many marketers. Many internet marketers will swear by PPC. This is because scaling up and setting up campaigns gets easy once the testing has been done. Tracking your ROI is also super-easy and manageable.
The downside with PPC traffic is that you need a sizable budget to get started and you will also need to do a number of tests to ensure that your campaigns yields are realistic. It may also demand that you have some background understanding of the industry and how the model works.
How to get the best out of PPC
-Spy on your competitors to know their PPC marketing approach. If you want to beat your competitors you need to do know their marketing approach. There are lots of tools out there that will come in handy when it comes to insights and doing competitor analysis.
-Know when to bid low and when to bid high. Among some of the things that a PPC advertiser should master is the bidding tricks. This will help in ensuring that one’s campaigns are cost effective and yields good ROI.
-Focus on buyer intent keywords. Not all keywords will give you good results when you bid on them. Some irregardless of their attractive bids are not worth going for. Buyer intent keywords are those that the buyer prospects search for.
Re-Targeted Traffic
Research shows that most shoppers do not buy the first time they come across a product. So how do you get the visitors to come back again so that they can grab you product? It’s simple you set up retargeting ad campaigns. Retargeting ads are meant to reach out to the audiences who have previously visited your website. This way you can woo them and convince them to get the product or the service that you are offering. Usually retargeted traffic works perfect when one has a sales funnel and offers. Having a sales funnel in place helps you to capture leads which you can get to your email list.
Just like PPC, you will need to have some knowledge into the industry. Otherwise your campaigns could end up not yielding the expected ROI.
How to get the best out of Retargeted traffic
-Just like the case with PPC, you need to know the bidding game well. Apart from being cost effective to mater this, it gives you a chance to easily expand and reach more targets.
-Focus on using large networks. Since you will be looking to reach a wider coverage with your ads, you should focus on huge advertising networks for this. Larger networks also tend to be a little cheaper as compared to the upcoming ones.
-Capture leads. Although you can always reap the benefits right away with retargeted traffic, it is advisable to always have a sales funnel to capture leads. It is also advisable to hire someone who is more knowledgeable with optimizing retargeted traffic so as to get the best out of it.
Sponsored Reviews
Ever gone to an open market where there are lots of buyers shopping? Imagine getting your website to become a sales hotspot with little hassles. With the use of sponsored reviews, this is easily achievable. A sponsored review is when a webmaster who charges for reviews writes a review about a product or service that an advertiser is offering on their website. The charges usually vary from blog to blog but it is mostly affected by the authority of the site and the number of traffic that it is getting.
The use of sponsored reviews has been gaining traction with many marketers since it is easy to get started with as long as you have a little budget. Beyond getting traffic, you will also be building stronger links to your website which helps in gaining authority.
How to get the best out of Sponsored reviews
-Focus on sites that are only in your niche. If you want to get results you have to make sure that you are getting the right audience. On that score, getting reviews from the right site can see you get better conversion rates.
-Make sure to go for sites with high traffic. Although it may be a bit costly to get reviews from websites that are getting high amount of traffic, your conversions will also be higher.
-Get reviews from many websites. The rule of the thumb is to get more and more visitors to your website and the best way to do this is to increase the number of site that you get reviews from.
Final Word:
The 6 sources above are proven and guaranteed to send you huge amount of high quality traffic to your website. However, you will need to be patient and have a side-budget to do split testing. If you are looking for a solid alternative to the methods above, then why not try us today? In fact, we do all the testing for you so that you don’t have to worry about spending more.
