There are hundreds of ways to drive visitors to your websites. However, you can group these techniques into five popular methods that most online marketers use. The question is “what is the best method?” or what is the web traffic rankings of these techniques?
The best method or the top web traffic rankings for this post is defined as the largest number of visitors in the shortest possible time, assuming marketing budget is unlimited. So, here is my experience in dealing with all the five groups of web traffic generation techniques and their web traffic rankings.
1. Pay Per Click or commonly known as PPC. Google’s AdWords is the king and the most popular program for PPC marketing. You will start getting visitors within a hour after your ad is approved by Google. Lots of affiliate marketers use this technique to drive lots of visitors and earn insane amount of money by using PPC marketing.
You use short text ads and bid on keywords that people search in search engines like Google. Depending on your bid amount, Google will show your ad, along with the organic search results. If the searcher clicks on your ad and she lands on your web page, or the landing page, you pay the Google based on per click.
The PPC has evolved in to a sophisticated arts and sciences. Online marketers spend hours and use lots of software tools to do keyword research and optimize their ads and landing pages for the best return on invetment (ROI).
If you jump on this bandwagon without knowing what you are doing, you will lose lots of money quickly. However, you can start learning PPC marketing technique using a small amount of daily budget, e.g. $5 a day. If you master the PPC method, you can get traffic to your web site whenever you want. Click here for free articles on PPC marketing.
2. Link building involves a host of techniques like article marketing, social book markings, classified advertising, and in some instances link exchanges. A few years ago it was purely link exchanges with other web site operators or webmasters. Now the game has changed. There are lots of different ways to build one way links to your websites, most notably from social media sites.
It is a slow process but it is completely free. You can do it yourself if you have the time to invest. You will start seeing results in a couple of months. Your visitors are highly targeted if you use relevant contents and keywords in link building process.
The Link building also helps you in search engine optimization, which is the next technique for web traffic rankings.
3. Search engine optimization or more popularly known as SEO is free. You get traffic from search engines if your web page is ranked high in discussed in this article. Use SEO to increase organic search traffic to your website. If your web site is optimized for search engines, you will have a better chance of ranking high in search engine result pages.
Search engine optimization involves on page optimization where your optimize your web pages for better search engine rankings. You will also need lots of quality one way links to your site. Link building process, discussed in number two web traffic rankings, helps you obtain quality one way links to your web site.
4. Banner Ads. You place a graphic image on someone else’s site and visitors click on the banner to land on your web page. You can use Google AdWords for banner ads also. But most of the banner ads purchases are based on impressions. You pay on CPM (click per thousand impressions).
The click through rate of banner ad is not good and it is declining because web surfers are becoming blind to banner ads. You need to test this method using a small amount of budget.
Your return on investment depends on the attractiveness of your banner, relevancy of the banner to the site visitors and your landing page. You need to test all the three components before committing a large budget amount for this kind of ad. You can find more on banner advertising in Banner Snack blog.
5. Newsletter and Ezine Ads. You place ads on online publications that are sent to opt-in subscribers. Most of these ads are text ads and few newsletters with large subscription base do offer banner ads. It is good for building your own opt-in list. If you are offering a relevant free product, you will get decent traffic that will convert. Here is a good article on ezine advertising.
