That’s a good thing… we should always continue to work on that. But… in many cases these same individuals completely ignore one of the easiest ways to boost the traffic from the sources they already have. It’s called “optimizing.”

When you think of “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) you probably think of building links, creating a good internal linking structure and posting relevant content. But when it comes down to it, SEO consists of more than that. It consists of ANYTHING that you can do in order to leverage the Search Engines to drive more traffic to your pages.

One of those overlooked techniques is also “common sense.” It’s about giving the viewer exactly what he or she is looking for. Here is a good example. Last week I was checking the traffic stats of my Germany Tourism site and I noticed that one of the top keywords that Google was sending traffic through was “German Christmas Food.” I was getting a few thousand visitors just from that phrase, awesome!

Then I clicked over to see what page was getting the traffic. It was my “Germany Christmas” page, which talks very briefly about German Christmas Food, but is more about Christmas in Germany in general.

Then I went back and dug into the keywords people are using to find my site again. I found 13 other keywords related to German Christmas food that people were coming to my German Christmas page through. Most of them had smaller search numbers, but combine they accounted for more traffic than the thousands that the Germany Christmas Food keyword was driving. So always look at those keywords with small search numbers too because in many cases there will be several that are closely related!

You know exactly what needs to be done after hearing that info, right? Yep, it’s time to create a page TARGETING German Christmas Food. Now that page is going to turn around and drive twice the traffic and the Germany Christmas page will probably still hold it’s ranking as a double listing. It’s still too early to give you concrete numbers, but it’s just one of those things that I KNOW will happen… I’ve been doing it for years.

This is one of many examples of the same exact situation I have come across in the past. It happens ALOT!

Sometimes I’ll notice that a page I’m using to target “little blue widgets” is getting more traffic from the phrase “little blueish widgets” so I’ll change the title tag and within a week that page will rise in the SERPS, which means the traffic will rise along with it.

Sometimes the smallest things can make the biggest difference! If you’re not looking at your traffic stats and thinking of things like this I highly recommend you start doing so today. Don’t try to come up with ways to trick the SE’s. Just look for patterns and think “What can I do to give these users exactly what they’re looking for.” Do that and you’ll start seeing increased traffic right away!

img credit: kevinzhengli

————————————————————————————————————————–

There are a handful of niche topics in the Internet Marketing field, which are always talked about more than anything else:

1. List Building
2. SEO
3. Link Building
4. Article Marketing

In many cases each Internet Marketing Strategy is used along side another in one way or another and in all cases they are used with one very simple goal in mind, to generate TRAFFIC!

It’s no secret that these techniques work, but for some reason people are always looking for top secret traffic generating methods.

So, I’d like to share with you the #1 Traffic Generation “Secret” of all time!

OK, it’s not a secret. Actually, the secret could be that it isn’t a secret at all…if that makes sense.

Are there secret gold mines out there that will drive loads of traffic to your site? Probably, but is it worth it to spend hours, day, months or even years looking for them when you may or may not find one…and if you do, will it be long-lasting or a short surge of traffic?

The most important thing I’ve learned over time is that the most important aspect of traffic generation isn’t to get loads of visitors to your site from one traffic source, it’s to get a little here and there and RETAIN those you do get!!

You can work your butt off fighting the Search Engines, Writing loads of articles, trying to convince others to link to your site etc. etc. and do it over and over again just so you can duplicate the traffic you got yesterday, today, or you can retain the traffic you get today and add it onto the traffic you got yesterday and the day before that and so on!

So, continue to write and submit articles, continue to post to forums, continue to do everything you’re currently doing to drive traffic, but get a good auto-responder so you can implement a system within your site/blog that collects names and emails and/or do SOMETHING to retain them!

Simply creating interesting, valuable content is the best way to do that, they’ll come back simply out of will, but giving away a free report in exchange for their name and email is probably the most valuable!

Any way in which you can automate contact between you and them will work. Whether you build an email list, maintain an RSS subscriber base (this blogs lifetime RSS growth in image above) or use another technique to do it, you simply MUST retain your visitors. If you don’t you have a very long, steep hill ahead of you!

1: Article Marketing
2: Social Media
3: Forums
4: Guest-Posting on Blogs
5: SEM/PPC

…and the list goes on and on and on, like the Energizer bunny

I busted my butt for a few years before I realized something and this one realization is what brought my income from barely feeding my family to doing extremely well online. What was this magical realization?

You CAN’T run a successful online business off of one-time visitors!!

You simply MUST find a way to get those visitors back multiple times!

Of course you’re never going to get 100% of your traffic to come back 100% of the time, but just a couple percent can and will make a huge impact on your business!

All of the techniques above work and although there will be times where you’ll receive bursts of traffic, most will not return loads of returning visitors. unless you turn them into return visitors!!

So How Do You Do It?

There are many ways to do it, but 2 really stick out:

- Building a List
- Blogging

Building a List – How many times have you heard the phrase “The Money’s in the List?” More times than you care to count, I’d imagine!

Getting your visitors name and email provides a GREAT way to get them back to your site and if you do it correctly, they’ll be happy to do so!

To do this you need to be knowledgeable in your niche. If you’re not knowledgeable you’re not going to be able to provide them with anything useful and if you can’t provide anything useful they’ll just unsubscribe.

BUT, don’t let that get you down! Just about all of us have knowledge in something, which is above average for those in that niche. If you’re knowledgeable in gaming, build a list of gamers. If you’re knowledgeable in gardening build a list of gardeners etc. etc.

Lee McIntyre created an excellent video and posted it to his blog titled: “Why you need to Build a List Starting Today, that really explains the benefits of email marketing to a T. Anyone interested in starting their own list really should take a look at it!

Blogging – With the RSS capabilities of blogs and their ability to quickly and easily upload content, they are much like newsletters. Visitors can subscribe to your feed and be updated when you have something to say. If you have something to offer they will come back again and again. Blogs are powerful content platforms and an excellent way to brand your name and develop a strong presence in your niche! However, many people start blogs on topics in which they are not knowledgeable. If you’re not knowledgeable about the niche yourself, why should others keep up with you? There are some exceptions if you do it properly and really excel, but most people are better off blogging about niches they are familiar with.

Combining Blogging with Email Marketing!! – This is where the real power comes in and if you can pull it off you’ll do much better and save alot of time by combining the two as opposed to running your blog and newsletter as two separate entities.

I recently begun doing this with great success! Using your blog as a discussion platform for your newsletter provides interaction between you and your list members, while at the same time reducing those big, long emails that everyone hates! Write a nice, long, informative blog post that teaches your viewers something then directing your list to it! You’re now creating a presence in the blogosphere, building organic traffic from the Search Engines, providing a “social” atmosphere and PROVIDING VALUE all at the same time!

Whether you build a list, blog or do something else, you simply MUST turn your visitors into followers! If you don’t do this you’ll continue to have a very long, up-hill battle!

Those of us who know better, know that although all of these “secrets” may not be scams, 99.9% of them do not offer any kind of secret.

Most of us know that there really isn’t any kind of secret. The absolute only thing that will make you rich (unless you win the lottery or get a big inheritance) is Knowledge!

This is really something that shouldn’t need to be mentioned. I mean, it should be common sense. But, the average Internet Marketer is constantly asking how to get more traffic.

Short-cuts don’t work. There may be some that will increase your traffic in the short-term, but if your content isn’t worth their time they aren’t going to come back.

So What is the “Secret” to Traffic Generation?

Know more about your sites topic than the average visitor!

That’s it! You don’t even have to insert a special line of markup into your pages or sign up for a $1,000 course. All you have to do is research and learn!!

How many “my journey to making money online” blogs have you seen rise to the top? I could name a hand-full and those were done by people who had already been making money. So why don’t these blogs ever see success? Because they didn’t teach their average visitor anything. If I want to make money, why would I want to follow someone who isn’t making any? It just doesn’t make sense!

On the other hand, if I want to make money and you’re making more than me and regularly share your knowledge I’ll subscribe in a heart beat and read every single word you put out!

So the next time you think to yourself “damn, my blog doesn’t get any traffic,” think about what you have to offer! Do you honestly know more about your sites topic than your average site visitor? If not, are you providing them with something they can at least use? or are you just putting on a show, like so many others? Acting doesn’t work in this industry and those who realize that are the ones who make the money!

As with anything else online or offline, knowledge really is the key!

The Stumbleupon Problem

It’s a great source of traffic, but in some cases it’s a great source of childish, immature, and downright nasty reviews! These “hate” reviews normally come from “non-marketers” when a post is submitted to a non-marketing category. The category I see it most in is the “stumbleUpon” category (topic).

In some cases I honestly don’t blame them. These are people who are using a social network to find fun, cool and interesting sites. They aren’t looking for pages on how to get traffic from Stumbleupon etc. They don’t know what marketing is all about so they just assume that all marketers are spammers.

BUT, there are some idiots out there who are out of line in a big way! One of my more recent posts titled “How to be a Power Stumbler on Stumbleupon” received over 40 thumbs up, but it also received 9 thumbs down. Here is one of the 9 negative “reviews:”

More Stambler crap; as the reviews indicate, this kind of junk is getting tiresome. Even better, this clown hides his negative reviews. Jackassery to the Nth degree.

What’s a stambler? Is “jackassery” a word? So I’m a “stambler” a “clown” and I’m guessing since I take part in “jackassery” I’m also a “jackass.” I also hide my negative reviews. I’m not sure where he got that one, or any of the other garbage he typed, but I don’t think it’s even possible to hide negative reviews. If it were, I’d do it though, hell yeah. Why let garbage like this see light? btw, if you know how to hide negative reviews, like this clown is accusing me of doing, I’d love for you to tell me!

Caroline had a great post degraded as well and it was very well intended, as mine was. It’s titled “Do you Thank your Stumblers” and she wrote about the negativity here.

What we can do as Marketers

Although there are some idiots out there who are trying to spam Stumbleupon and everywhere else they can, I think the majority of us aren’t spammers. This is why we need to look out for one another.

1. When you stumble a good post that is marketing related submit to an appropriate category (TOPIC) and stay away from the “stumbleupon” category all together. If you’re not the one to discover the post, insert marketing related tags. Doing this would reduce the amount of hate reviews by 90% I almost guarantee.

2. If you see a bunch of non-marketers attacking a legitimate page, add a positive review to offset that misguided soul who felt it necessary to degrade something they know nothing about.

3. Report abusive “stumblers” through Stumbleupon’s contact form by selecting “complaint” in the drop-down subject menu.

Now, if this post gets stumbled, I’m curious as to whether or not it’s submitted under “stumbleupon”

Mark over at 45n5 made a pretty accurate post stating, among other things, that the same people who say PageRank is useless are the ones making a million posts about it. Obviously they think something of it or they wouldn’t be ranting all over the place.

I’ll be the first to admit the recent PageRank update was just crazy and that toolbar PR is next to worthless unless you’re selling links/advertising, but the fact is they drive traffic, period!

Google search is currently my #1 traffic source on average and I’d imagine it’s the #1 traffic source for many others as well. Even if it’s not, if you’re not penalized, you’re more than likely receiving a good deal of traffic from Google.

I’m not one to kiss google’s ass, but as long as they’re sending me traffic I’m going to play by their rules. If they want to assign a skimpy PR3 to my blog, but continue to send several hundred unique visitors my way everyday, so be it! If they start taking away that traffic for no reason then I’ll be a little upset!

While were on the subject, Vlad has a comical post going titled “Tips to Keep your PR Unblemished” where he’s asking for you tips.

So should we boycott Google? Stop worrying about PR? My answers are hell no and kinda. Stop worrying about your toolbar PR, but DO worry about your actual PR, which is what determines where your pages come up in the SERPS and directly influences the amount of search traffic you get from Google.

Some bloggers have a big decision to make – Sell links/advertising without the rel=”nofollow” attribute and risk a google penalty, don’t sell links/advertising at all, or sell links/advertising but include the rel=”nofollow” attribute and get far less advertisers. For the time being I’m going to choose not to sell advertising. So far, from what I’ve heard, Google hasn’t handed out any actual PR penalties, just toolbar PR. If it continues this way I just may start selling adverts on the blog, but I don’t want any risk so I’m waiting it out.

Unfortunately, much of that traffic was extremely untargeted. This leads me to believe that the category that is chosen when the story is first stumbled will truly determine whether or not that story receives targeted or untargeted traffic. In the case of the post in question, I submitted to the “stumbleupon” category and I probably should have submitted to “marketing” or something similar.

Although the post became the most popular post on this blog due to shear pageviews, it received very few comments and I’d imagine many of the visits were from stumblers who were just using the stumble function in there toolbar and not intending to actually dig into any site and take any action.

The post also received a few thumbs down, which made me a little upset at first, but I quickly cooled down when I thought about it.

One “stumbler” gave the post a thumbs down and stated “What in the name of sweet baby Jesus is the point?” Obviously he/she isn’t a marketer and so that comment really doesn’t get to me. If I weren’t a marketer I’d probably say the same thing.

Another stated “STOP STUMBLING YOURSELF.” And my response is “WHY?” If a story isn’t interesting, it’s not going to get many stumbles. The way I see it, if I stumble a post here in there of my own that I believe provides good info, theres absolutely nothing wrong with it. If I were stumbling every post I write then I could see how that could be “spammy.”

Then theres the guy who said “Way to state the obvious … How to become a power stumbler from someone who has no experience being a power stumbler … ??? … I don’t buy it, but someone else might…” lol I think this guy just got dumped and needs to rant?!? Did I say I was a power stumbler? Nope, I simply put a complex post made by Tim Nash into “laymen terms” and I very clearly stated that.

All in all I think it was a great success. You’re going to have negative feedback when any post goes viral on any social network and it’s very hard to get extremely targeted traffic from these networks, unless it’s a targeted niche social site like Sphinn.

Here is why it was a success:

1. I now have 61 fans, compared to the 8 or so I had before, which will help increase my own audience score and make my stumbles a little more powerful.

2. I got a few new RSS readers for sure and possibly more than a few. I received 3 emails from stumblers who gave my blog compliments and let me know they had subscribed to my feed. If I received 3 emails from people who subscribed, I’d imagine there were several others who did the same without going through the trouble of emailing.

3. It may have bumped my Alexa ranking up a bit. I was sitting at 99,000 and it’s now showing 94,899. It was on the rise in the first place so I’m thinking the real bump from the stumble is coming in Alexa’s next update.

4. Since I stumbled the actual post and it became so popular my audience score should rise even more.

Whether it’s targeted or not, free traffic is free traffic and I plan on stumbling every interesting page I find from here on out!

However, the last part of the post is for guys like Tim and Andy who are much smarter than I So here is how to become a power Stumbler by increasing your audience score in extreme laymen terms:

1. Be the first to stumble stories that have a good chance of becoming popular. Being a frequent reader of the more popular blogs is a good way to do that. I don’t see anything wrong with stumbling your own posts as well, as long as you are only stumbling those which you believe contain awesome info.

2. Stumble alot. The more thumbs up or down you give, the stronger your stumbles will be. This is as simple as the obvious. Use the SU toolbar to stumble pages. I normally only stumble pages from friends.

3. Get as many fans as possible. In your account you’ll see the number of mutual friends and the number of fans. If someone adds you, but you don’t add them, they are your fans. Once you add them they are no longer fans; they are mutual friends. I’d imagine they are one in the same when it comes to the algorithm. So don’t be afraid to add friends! If you want to add me go for it, I’ll add you as well – http://josh-spaulding.stumbleupon.com/ and as I said, I frequently stumble friends pages, so I’ll more than likely stumble your pages if they are good.