Why yet another article on more traffic?

It seems to me all the experts are writing over and over about the very same ideas. Most of these articles stress Website optimization using keywords and trying to figure what new algorithm Google is using this week. All these things are important, and to succeed you must address them all as well as pay-per-click plans.

But all this advice overlooks the most important problem facing every marketer.

The issue is few people are looking for any kind of Internet marketing at all. This is true even though online auctions, banking, and e-commerce have grown exponentially. The World Wide Web was developed to perform scholarly research; at the beginning, there was ZERO e-commerce. To grow exponentially from zero is very small in comparison to other uses; communication remains by far the greatest segment. Zero times Zero equals Zero!

Most Web surfers are NOT looking to buy anything, nor are they looking for any way to make money on the Web or any other way.

They are looking for all kinds of information not related to any kind of marketing or business opportunity; they want to be entertained with games, gambling, or pornography. They are looking for knowledge, training, or religion for disturbed times. Only 10% to 11% of time spent on the Internet is involved with any kind of work-for-pay or selling, says a recent Stanford University study. The same report says over 40% of users communicate with others in some form.

This quarterly report about US consumers on the Internet shows 67% do use the Internet. But less than 42% are satisfied by their Internet usage, and only 27% trust the sites they visit.

Does his tell us anything?

If we can find ways to offer more satisfaction, and if we can provide the kinds of information and service to earn the trust of our visitors, could we not then expect a lot more traffic to our Websites and more income from these extra visitors?

To do this we need to not abandon all the old ways experts repeat, but embellish what we do with new ideas. These new ideas are not new at all; they have mostly been around in one form or another since the beginning of history. The new ways to use some of them are called “thinking outside the box.”

What I advocate is making better use of search terms and keywords to wrap our home based Internet businesses in the packages most people want. The new visitors will be interested in the packages we offer, but since most aren’t interested in our businesses they may not buy into the business offers we display along with the package. But a few will investigate our offers; these will be customers we otherwise would never get to our Websites.

How can we develop these “packages?”

Before we get into the method let’s look at what some will call the ethical side of these ideas. To wrap our offers in a package other than a straight sales pitch could seem dishonest. It isn’t. All we will do is provide some useful information people are looking for and in an incidental and very unobtrusive way, introduce something we really want our visitors to see. I despise pop-ups, but they are certainly a way to introduce ideas to your Website visitors. If you are comfortable using them, have at it. There are better ways to do this which we will examine further.

SunTsu was perhaps the greatest military strategist of all time, and his teaching is still part of most military training courses as well as used in many business schools. His principals of war often apply to daily situations. One thing he said applies to this discussion: “Offer the enemy a bait to lure him.” We have no enemies, but we do face disinterested people. What we intend to do is attract visitors to view our products and services who have no idea they ever would want to know anything about us.

Another technique we’ll use is the blockbuster headline to get someone to read what is on our Website. While researching this article, I found a few examples of what most writing is about: the headline! Two headlines that came up today got me interested enough to read an article I would otherwise have passed up.

Here they are:

From a local TV station Website comes this: “Bus Service Closing.” You would think a bus company was closing its entire operation. The article refers to closing a few stations in small towns near larger ones. The company isn’t closing at all; it’s just trying to make more money.

Look at this national newspaper headline: “Body of Toddler Found in Indiana River.” This suggests someone just happened upon a kid’s body while taking a walk along a river bank or fishing. In fact, search crews finally found the child; she had been thrown from a vehicle involved in a crash.

Al Schreiter has archives of headlines from everywhere. These are three samples:

• My husband is eligible to retire in August. We started a home-based business so he will be able to.
• Be a professional and make the world your business - be an entrepreneur and make the world your playground.
  
• Discover the alternative to working until you’re dead!

Because the term “headline” has been introduced, you are probably horrified at the prospect of having to write. It is certainly better if you can make your own personality show through in articles you have personally written, but there are a great many places where you can find good content for your site. Much of it is free. Just search Google for articles about whatever subjects you are using in your packages.

Here is an additional very good reason to write – a reason which is as valid today as it was 4,000 years ago. John Taylor quotes ancient Egyptian funeral texts this way:

The Egyptians were well aware of the futility of trusting to tomb and cult for eternal survival, as literary compositions often emphasize. One text exhorts the reader to make himself remembered by his writings; only thus are the names of the wise men of the past recalled, for “their portals and mansions have crumbled, their ka-servants are gone; their tombstones are covered with soil, their graves are forgotten.”

In other words write something others will always have to remember you!

We must begin to use new ideas to attract more prospects by viewing search terms and keywords in a different way. All the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts tell us to determine a number of the best keywords referring to our Websites and use them in the title and throughout the information on the Web page. This is supposed to attract search engines to us. That’s fine; we should continue to do this. But instead of just using words specific to our business let’s determine what people are really looking to find and furnish it to them.

To do this use a service like Wordtracker to see what terms people are currently searching. They offer a free trial; if you decide to use it for significant work on your site it’s about $8 USD for a week You can subscribe as often as you like. With the free trial you may also ask for a weekly list of 300 most used searches. Overture is also a powerful tool, but YOU MUST TELL it what words to search whereas Wordtracker TELLS YOU those being used.

The Wordtracker list (the list I receive is cleaned of most porn terms) at the time of this writing shows these terms near the top in the 300 queries received in the past 24 hours:

• jessica simpson No. 1 with 3377 queries
• jessica alba No. 2 with 3314 queries
• music lyrics No. 3 with 2679 queries
• daniela hantuchova No. 4 with 1955 queries
• paris hilton No. 5 with 1469 queries

The same list shows these near the top during the past 60 days:

• paris hilton No. 1 with 184,512 queries
• google No. 2 with 128,645 queries
• games No. 3 with 121,764 queries
• yahoo No. 4 with 102,215 queries
• poetry No. 5 with 98,729 queries

All these searches can be the subject of very good “wrapping” for our lure packages. Out of these I might choose” paris hilton” because this term appears in both lists. So let’s check Google and see what we can find to use on our Website that will interest the “paris hilton” fans. Not surprisingly, Google shows nearly 8 million references, but the first few pages will give you more than enough information to write a brief article, link to the page, and maybe incorporate an RSS feed on your site. RSS with constantly updated news could be a perfect way to draw fans of Paris Hilton; a few will want to see what else you offer.

Use another Google search for “articles about paris hilton” to find some articles you don’t have to write. When I did this, I found something that substantiates this very idea we’re discussing. “The Power of Paris Hilton” shows what can happen when you include a popular search tem on your Website.

To summarize this discussion here are the basics of thinking out-of-the-box to gain traffic:

• Use popular search terms to discover desirable information people want and wrap a Web page in this “package.”
• Use attention grabbing headlines with appropriate embedded keywords throughout your new page.
• Write articles about your search term subjects or find articles by others that you can use.
• Install RSS feeds on your package pages related to your search term subjects.
• Promote your new pages to the Internet to be sure the search engines find them. Use this site free and pay only if you like it.

For this plan to work you must have your own domain name and Web host. It is unprofessional to merely use replicated and free Websites furnished by your company. Most search engines ignore these pages; besides, all 200,000 of the other company representatives are using the very same ideas. You MUST BE DIFFERENT.

Here are two excellent ways to use your new “packages”:

1. Make a package page for your most important affiliate replicating pages; just place one or two incidental links in prominent places from your “package” to your best affiliate page. As an SFI affiliate you have numerous gateway pages; refer to one or two from a “package” page.
2. Recently I have written several articles posted on this IAHBE site dealing with making a successful business using many different affiliate programs at the same time. This “package” page idea is an excellent way to attract visitors to your Internet affiliate store.

RESOURCES:

Consumer Internet Barometer - Trends in Usage & Attitudes

Fortune Now! “Big Al’s” Recruiting Newsletter

Google Search Engine

Overture - Keyword Selector Tool

Self-Promotion: How to Create and Submit Websites

Taylor, John H. Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt.
The University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Ten Years After The Birth Of The Internet, How Do Americans Use The Internet In Their Daily Lives?
Stanford Center For The Quantitative Study Of Society

The Power of Paris Hilton

Wordtracker Keywords - The Ultimate Tool to Increase your Website Traffic

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© Yank Elliott.  All rights reserved worldwide.
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Yank is a home-based entrepreneur and freelance business writer living in Hurricane Alley, North Carolina, USA. His Website is www.furriwhalesworld.com. Contact Yank at globalbiz@furriwhalesworld.com.