Generating Traffic and Targeting Niches

Thanks to Carisse Garcia at My Techie Friend for submitting her Top 3 Online Marketing Questions.

Here are your answers Carisse.

What is the quickest and easiest way to generate targeted traffic to your web site?

First, let me say that the easiest and quickest way is not usually the best way.  Having said that, pay-per-click (ppc) advertising is probably the quickest and easiest way to get targeted traffic to your web site.  Within just a few minutes you can have an Adwords account set up with Google and have an ad created for your most important keywords.

The most effective way to get targeted traffic is to optimize your web site for natural search.  That way, you have a very good chance of ranking well in all the major search engines, not just the one you are advertising in.  Visitors from natural search also convert better than visitors from paid search.  In my opinion, that’s because people trust the natural search results more than the ads.  They feel like, if the search engine ranks it highly, it must be more relevant to their search.

There’s a great article today over at Search Engine Land titled Selling SEO Projects against PPC Campaigns, that gives a little more information on the comparison.

What do you do with the traffic you generate?

Provide them with lots of content about what you do and how you can help solve their problems and ease their pain.

You can also begin building a relationship with your visitors by offering a free newsletter, free download, free audio or video, etc.  Then build a sales funnel with higher priced products and services and continue to build trust with them and offer them more expensive products and services.

How do you target pre-qualified searchers that are intereste in your niche?

The best way to do this is by conducting keyword research.  Find out how people are searching for your niche, then find out where they hang out online.  Is it in Google groups?  Is it on Twitter? Is in on Ning? Is it a forum created around your niche?

Find out those things, then get involved where your target market is hanging out.  Provide them with good information without being sales-y and start to build your reputation as an expert within that group.

To you success,

Ken Partain

Follow me on Twitter!