I'm going to give you an action plan that will show you:
How to get cheap,instant traffic to your website so you can test key components of your opt-in process- offer-before rolling out a large-scale traffic campaign,
How to ensure that every element of your opt-in process is optimized to convert maximum traffic into maximum sign-in
The most effective strategies for attracting thousands of highly qualified potential traffic to your site right away; and
The secret to putting your entire traffic campaign on autopilot.
So even if your site is getting no traffic right now, you can be testing the key elements of your opt-in process tomorrow--and as soon as two weeks from now, you can be rolling out your traffic campaign in full auto.
As you may already know, there are an infinite number of things you can test on your site to help you increase sing-in. From layout to copy to design, there are limitless combinations of changes that may improve your visitor-to-sing-in conversion rate. But what's "enough" when you're just starting out? What elements should you focus on testing before rolling out your traffic campaign?
My advice is to stick to the basics. Focus on testing your:
Sing-incopy, especially your headline, benefits, guarantee and call to action
Order process, which needs to be simple enough for a novice web user to place an order
Opt-in offer, so you can determine if you're successfully capturing your visitors' contact information
Site navigation, so you can figure out how many clicks it takes to buy. Ideally it should take less than three.
These are the four critical aspects of your sales process that need to be tested before you start driving traffic. Later on, once you've generated sales and have some steady traffic, you can move on to testing other parts of your site.
Of course, all this talk of testing your new site raises one big question: How can you test without traffic? Because if you're just getting started, chances are good that your website doesn't get much traffic yet.
The solution is simple: Buy traffic through PPC search engines. Pay-per-click search engines are a lot like auctions--they allow you to bid for top-ranking positions under keywords of your choice. For each visitor who searches the keyword(s) you bid on and then clicks through to your site, you pay whatever you bid. Prices typically range from five cents to a few dollars per click-through for popular keywords.
There are a ton of PPC search engines out there
Get free traffic from search engines like Google:
Now that you've bid on keywords for a strong showing in the PPC search engines, it's time to tackle the organic search engines and directories. Search engines like Google and directories like Yahoo! can still be a great source of free traffic for your website. The trick is getting a competitive ranking for your best keywords.
The first step in getting a top ranking in the search engines is to submit or suggest your site to them. In other words, you have to provide them with details about your site. You want to make sure that the "spiders"--automated programs that crawl the web indexing sites for the search engines--find your site and include it in the search results.
While the spiders do index sites and pages that haven't been submitted, you certainly don't want to leave this to chance.
A spider might find your website and index it next week--or it might be two years before that finally happens. So take the time to submit your site to be sure you're included. Once your site's been submitted, expect it to take two to six weeks for your listing to appear.
Every engine has a slightly different process for site submission, and it pays to follow their guidelines. For example, there's a fee to list your site in the directory at Yahoo!, but Google doesn't charge for their submission process. Here's a tip: If you submit your site exactly as they ask, you stand a better chance of getting a good listing on the first page of search results.
Give away irresistible free content :
Believe it or not, a really easy, frequently undervalued strategy for getting traffic is giving away free content to other websites. Even just two or three well-written articles can generate truckloads of traffic, as long as they don't contain a sing-in pitch.
You want to include rare, hard-to-get information that'll lend your articles automatic value--the kind of information that establishes you as an expert in your field.
Once you've finished an article, write a short bio paragraph about you and your business and place it at the end of your article along with--and this is the most important part--a link to your site.
To locate sites that might be interested in your content, e-mail other website owners in your industry--be sure to choose sites that receive attention and visits from your target market--and invite them to use your article on their site or in their newsletter at absolutely no cost. Many site owners need fresh content, so they'll be more than happy to post your articles--and it won't be long before those articles start driving traffic back to your site.
less