Traffic
The second part of Chapter 1 deals with targeted traffic. I mention this along with conversion because it is a “backbone” issue that (technically) has nothing to do with your website itself, but has everything to do with its success. Everything I will talk about after this point, from the fundamentals of a successful website to writing copy for the pages, will assume that you are bringing targeted traffic to your site.
What is targeted traffic, and why is it important?
Targeted traffic refers to website visitors that are interested in what you have to offer. In other words, they largely came to your website specifically looking for your service, product, info, etc. They aren’t simply randomly web-surfing, they aren’t just curious — they are looking for what you offer.
This isn’t to say that you won’t get random traffic. Your website will get all kinds of traffic. There will be surfers and browsers, people who landed on your site for whatever reason, etc. You won’t be able to help that. But you want as much targeted traffic as you can get. And you have to work at getting targeted traffic — it won’t just find you.
Targeted traffic generally comes to your website one of three ways — someone searched for your site online, someone saw an ad on a related website (or in an email message), or someone saw an offline marketing piece that drove them to the site.
Regardless of where/how the traffic originated, it shares a single concept: Someone said, “Hmm, looks interesting” (or something like that. Don’t quote me) and went to your website.
Targeted traffic is extremely important, because it’s the very essence of how the web works. Fundamentally speaking, the web is a lot closer to the Yellow Pages than it is to TV, for example. By and large, regardless of how they got your website address, people will go to your website because they feel the content will be of interest to them and/or their situation.
How do you get targeted traffic?
I’m not going to kid you. Targeted traffic will likely cost you a few bucks. There’s almost no way around that. You usually have to pay for online advertising (on search engines, online banners, etc.), and offline (well, that’s self explanatory: brochures with your web address, business cards, and the like). If you are not prepared to spend money getting traffic, you will have a very hard time succeeding online. This is reality.
I know, I know … everyone wants low-cost/no-cost “guerrilla-style” ways to get traffic. Well, they do exist, but I have to tell you, in my experience, they are very time consuming, and the results are almost always substandard at best (they can be nice additions to your paid efforts, though). In fact, it seems the only people who benefit from this type of marketing are those who sell the information on how to get free traffic (making it not-so-free anymore). Smart, successful web people are ready to spend a few bucks on advertising, so be a smart, successful website owner and do the same. You can experiment with other, cheaper ways of getting traffic later once you are making money.
Okay, here’s how you generally get targeted traffic:
1. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC): When you use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising through Google, Yahoo! (formerly Overture), or similar, this is advertising where you bid on certain keywords (keywords that people would search for if searching for you), and you pay each time someone clicks on your ad (usually anywhere between ten cents and two bucks, depending on the popularity of your keywords). This may seem expensive, and it can get that way, but I have to tell you, I love PPC, and here’s why: The people clicking on your ad searched for your specialty, read your ad, and were compelled to click and go to your website. By and large, that’s seriously targeted traffic. These are people who are really interested in your service.
Now, there are entire books written on PPC advertising, so I’m not going to get into the technical “hows” here — you can figure out “how” by going to these websites (Yahoo!, Google, etc.), and reading about their advertising programs. But, for almost any web business, you are going to have to engage in some form of PPC.
And not only do you have to participate in PPC, you will have to have a sufficient budget (this is the reality of today’s Internet). I can recall rewriting webpages for a guy that had a budget of $2 a day for his PPC ads … That $2 delivered three people, and this was the only advertising he did. Suffice it to say, that’s simply not enough. It is close to impossible to run a serious business on a $60 per month ad budget (to give an example, currently for my little home-based business, I’m spending ten times that).
I’m sure someone out there will argue with me on this point and tell me that they get thousands of people for free, but I gotta tell you, I’ve seen countless good web businesses go belly-up because they were underfunded in an advertising sense.
So PPC, with a sufficient budget, is the first way to deliver targeted traffic. And I’ll have a few tips later in the book about actually writing these ads (in Chapter 8, to be specific).
By the way, most search engines that sell PPC advertising have built-in fraud prevention, meaning your competition can’t sit there in his or her underwear clicking on your ad all day. So don’t worry about that. And in all honesty, people generally do not do this. Your competition is probably more likely to show up, in his or her underwear, at your place of business (which would make for an interesting morning, wouldn’t you say)?
2. Your other advertising: This should go without saying, but your web address should be on every piece of advertising you use — brochures, business cards, letterhead, Yellow Pages, billboards, radio and TV commercials, and even those plastic bags you hand out at the trade show.
I have to mention this here because there are many companies that do not do this. I’ll never understand why, because a website just enhances any other advertising you do — having a Yellow Pages ad with a web address allows you to tell a consumer SO MUCH MORE about your business. Also, anyone who goes to your website from other pieces of advertising is most likely pretty targeted traffic, wouldn’t you agree?
This can be extended whether you utilize expensive advertising or not. It really doesn’t matter if you have a TV commercial or you are just setting up a table at your local craft fair and handing out leaflets — if your web address is not on your advertising, you are missing out. In fact, in some cases, the smaller of my just-mentioned examples (the leaflets) will probably result in more targeted traffic percentage-wise (after all, this might be a stretch, but I’ll bet almost all of the people who go to craft fairs are interested in … I don’t know … crafts? Except that one husband who was dragged along unwillingly. He’s not interested at all. In fact, he’s planning his escape, and will hopefully be joining me on the golf course in a few hours).
Now, attaching your web address to any “big” advertising like a TV commercial might, of course, result in lots of browsers along with targeted traffic, but so what?
A Bit of Advice on Web Addresses
It’s fine to have a website address that’s your company name (in fact, if at all possible, you should). But did you know that you can buy as many web addresses as you want (very cheaply, only about ten to twenty bucks a year), and easily forward them all to the same place?
This means you can have a website address with your “impossible to remember or spell” company name, and also have a few “really simple, catchy names” forwarded to the same place. If you get creative, there are millions of great web addresses still available (and with the additions of other top level domains, like .biz, etc, many more are now available).
To give an example here, say you are a plumber who specializes in water heaters. You already have a website for your plumbing business: www.jpmcgilloughcuttyandsonsplumbingcompany.com. So why not spend the ten bucks and get www.weinstallwaterheaters.com forwarded to your site as well (or even better, to a page or website specifically about water heaters)? You can put this address on all advertising that pertains to water heaters (it’s also easy to remember when said