But… How Do I Get Traffic?

Yesterday I asked what you all would like to learn about next on this blog. To my surprise I got a lot of …

How do I get traffic?

Which surprised me a little lot since I just spent an entire month showing you different ways to get traffic. So there must be a piece that is missing. I’m not sure what it is, but I’ve got a couple ideas and I’m going to cover them in this post. (I had a post about getting traffic with video planned for today ~ but it’s getting pushed to Monday).

What’s the difference between getting traffic and building links?

Traffic ~ the holy grail of internet marketing, because if you don’t have traffic you can’t sell anything right? Everyone, myself included has gone on and on and on about how important backlinks are to traffic but at some point I think information overload and confusion has taken over.

Traffic is any person who comes to your site looking for what you offer.  This traffic can come from anywhere ~ twitter, Google, youtube, forums you’ve  participated on, blogs you’ve commented on, articles you’ve written and had published, articles you’ve published that someone else has published on their own site, guest posts you’ve made on other people’s blogs, stumbleupon, Squidoo, free ebooks you create and distribute, email groups you participate in, RSS subscribers. These are all traffic channels and there are probably many many more. These are all ways people can find your site.

Backlinks ~ are one piece of the puzzle that will help you get traffic from Google.

So while everyone talks about backlinks ~ and Google traffic is fantastic it is NOT, by FAR the only way to get traffic to your site.  Do you see how only one of those traffic channels involves backlinks?  Google ~ Google is the reason you build backlinks ~ so you can get traffic from Google. But realize here… Google is not the only game in town.

Here’s a fact.

Brand new websites, whether they are hosted by you, or on Squidoo or on blogger or wherever are VERY likely ~ like 95% likely (I just made up that number but I’m making a point ~ and I’m probably not that far off) to bounce around in the search results and at times get kicked out all together. This is known as “getting sandboxed”.

Getting sandboxed ~ (and I’m sure people will argue with me, but it’s been my experience) happens when you build links quickly to new sites.

So on one hand the “gurus” tell you to build links to your site to get search engine ranking.

On the other hand Google gives you a good slap in the head when you do.

What are you to do?

How about a mental shift? Yes, a mental shift.  Almost everything in the world can be changed with a mental shift.

Anyway…

Let’s change the way we look at this whole situation from

How many links do I have to create to get to the #1 spot of Google?

to

How can I help people find the information they are looking for that I provide?

It is a critical difference. Here’s why ~

As you go about your life helping people find your content you will be doing things that Google loves and you will end up getting where you want to be with them.

However, and this is big. You will be getting traffic all the while you’re waiting on Google to figure out how cool you are.

So how do I do that Jackie?

You start thinking about traffic as “communication channels”. This is what I learned from Yaro Starak, one of my mentors, (here’s his free ebook on getting traffic if you want it) When you start thinking about traffic in terms of communication channels you stop looking at how to game google and start thinking about how you can communicate with people. You actually start to remember that traffic is PEOPLE. Real people looking for real things, and if you’re lucky, you have what they’re looking for.

So how to do this…

Find a couple communication channels you enjoy participating in. There are some that are smaller than others, but they will all work. Some will get you trickles of traffic, some will bring you a ton, and some will surprise you and create huge opportunities for you.

Here are a few you can choose from:

Blogs
Forums
Articles
Twitter
Facebook
Stumbleupon

These are all places you can get into conversation (yeah communication) with people.  Pick one or two of these that you enjoy and do them. Regularly.  Consistently.  Do them. I don’t care if it’s for only 5 minutes a day, but do it every day for 5 minutes. (realizing that 5 minutes is not very much and you will have better results the more you put in to it)

If you choose to comment on blogs ~ find 5 blogs you love and go there everyday. Read the post and participate in the conversation. You will get traffic from blog comments, especially if you are participating in a conversation. You may find the blog owner stops by (especially after you’ve been commenting for a while), they may leave a comment on your blog, they may even tell their readership about you.

If you add a particularly juicy bit to the conversation you may find they go back and edit their post and give you some credit for new information ~ this just happened to me a couple days ago on Josh Spaulding’s blog. Don’t think this only works in internet marketing areas ~ it works for any niche you can think of.

You like to participate in forums? Then go do it. Add to the conversation, participate. Just remember, reading all the posts does not count as participation.

Enjoy social networking? Then do it and do it regularly and consistently.

All of these things will bring you traffic, and in doing all these things you will also be building links that Google loves and will use to rank your site.

Traffic before I even got indexed

I recently started a new site. I’m doing a little quiet experiment. New niche, no followers, not using my current assets, starting from scratch, just like anyone else.

Well it took a while for that site to get indexed. I kept watching it and watching it and getting more and more irritated. One day I was in my statcounter account for some reason and I happened to see the site was already getting 25 to 50 visitors a day ~ and the damn thing wasn’t even indexed yet and was less than a week old. Had less than 10 posts on it and getting traffic. I checked yesterday and it’s still only been 2 weeks since I started the site ~ 21 RSS subscribers.

You can get traffic, it’s not hard ~ you have to do a couple things.

1. LOOSEN UP! The entire internet really goes round on information and more and more on connection. Loosen up, have a little fun and get involved.

2. Quit thinking there’s a “right” way to do this. There’s not. There’s a million different ways and the only right way is the one that you can take action on consistently.

3. Open up to the possibility of getting traffic somewhere besides google. (yes, once established it is THE most kick ass traffic you can get ~ but that takes time and not all of us have that long to wait for traffic)

Now let’s address the BUTS ~ because I can hear you yelling “Yeah, but… Yeah, but… Yeah, but… from here.

This won’t work for small niche sites.

Yep. You’re probably right, which is why I am moving in the direction of focusing on a couple of larger sites instead of a million little ones.

It costs a lot of money to throw stuff up against the wall to see what’s going to stick.

Part of the small niche sites strategy is doing many many many many of those sites so you can find the 20% that will work. I personally can not keep track of that much stuff, and I don’t want to have to rely completely on Google for my traffic, which is what those kind of sites are all about.

If you are doing these micro niche type sites your best bet for instruction is Brian Johnson and Commission Ritual. (I have it, have used it and it is an excellent tool to learn how to do these kind of sites) He is doing it and making it work ~ but don’t be fooled ~ he’s spending a LOT  of money to do it. He also recommends you only build 1 or 2 links when the site is first built and then leave it alone for at least 3 MONTHS. (this is to bypass the whole sandbox thing), so you just keep building and building and building while your sites age. This is also why we tell you to do the basic linking on lenses and then let them SIMMER.

You can NOT MAKE something show up in the Google search results ~ unless you buy your way in with PPC. You have to relax, and give things time to work. If you want traffic in the meantime ~ there are all the other ways.

If you really like doing small sites ~ or you’re working on Squidoo my suggestion is to create them all in a specific “niche” ~ then you can use more communication channels to send traffic to your sites. It’s much easier to build a following of people interested in one niche and then provide them a way to get to your sites than it is if you’ve got sites on a million different topics.

I don’t have time to do all that!

It doesn’t take much more time than anything else. A tweet is 140 characters, seriously, how long can that take? I spend probably 30 minutes a day on Twitter, and maybe 30 minutes to an hour commenting on blogs and building relationships with other bloggers. Do you have an hour to kill two birds with one stone?

I think social networking/blog commenting/forum marketing is a waste of time.

Then you probably have not done it conistently for any period of time.

Challenge yorself to a 7 or 14 day challenge where you consistently do any of those things and then let’s talk.

I did one _______________ (fill in the blank) and I’m not getting any traffic.

If you think one of anything online is going to be enough to get you traffic you are wrong. One will never get you were you want to be. Internet marketing is an ongoing, consistent action business. One article is not going to get you traffic or enough links to rank in google. One blog comment is not going to create a communication channel or a relationship with that blogger. One comment on a forum is not going to help you build a reputation as someone who knows the subject and is willing to help.

So… how do you get traffic?

Pick a couple ways you can connect with other people who like the same thing as you and do them every single day. It’s not magic, and it’s not rocket science. Don’t let being new, or feeling confused make this any harder than it is.

Choose something and do it. Do it every single day.

I’m sure there are questions ~ so fire away.