Hey There,

Today I received an email about how to use new traffic development techniques and thought I would share it with you guys, enjoy.

Out With the Old (Link Development), In With
the New (Traffic Development)

by Jerry West

I'm not sure when it started, but sometime years ago webmasters
started to focus on things OTHER than traffic to boost their sites.
They would write their content for search engines instead of their
visitors. They would target links on pages not for referral traffic but
for "link juice".

It is time to stop the madness.

Stop aiming for the engines and aim for real, live human beings. Aim
for obtaining traffic and not just the backlinks. Aim for obtaining
authority and not PageRank. Stop aiming for the affections of a
mathematical computation and aim for commendations from
actual breathing individuals.

I feel like Robin Williams, Reality: What a Concept.

Let's discuss the "old methods" and I'll share with you the "new
methods".

Old:

Send out hundreds of reciprocal link emails each day with an
automated program explaining to webmasters how SEO works
and how linking to your brand new website can help "them" in
the search engines. Oh, and it's okay to email them three times
on the same day due to the scraper tool you used gathered
multiple email addresses from one site.

New:

Find sites that are about your topic in general but are missing
pertinent information that you can provide. Think "Outside the Box"
and look to either include your information on their site with a
reference link back to you, or they can refer directly to your site for
more information. Either way, you are getting a link in their content,
instead of a link on a "mile long" links page which benefits no one.

Example:

If you own a site selling photography film, write an in-depth article on
getting the best low light results with examples. Post the article on
your site or on your Blog. Then contact photography clubs explaining
that you have an article on your site that their members might find
useful and you were hoping they would consider including it in their
resources/favorite sites/information section, or they could post a
snippet on their site with a link to your full article. Get enough
camera clubs linking to you and you'll start to see a nice trickle of
visitors from the links, not to mention the windfall of traffic from the
higher placement you'll achieve in Google. After all, that is what we
are after here isn't it? Visitors? Of course it is.

Old:

Buy links on any site with PageRank hoping the engines will see the
links and think "Wow, your site must be great to be linked from such
a popular site." Even better if you can get on the bottom footer on a
large site and get 5,000 links for the price of one. Just find a big
network with a stable of link sellers and buy, buy, buy.

New:

Buying links is fine as long as you do it for the right reasons: traffic.
Ensure that link is placed somewhere on the page where visitors will
actually see it. And if you're going to buy a link, make private deals
with site owners or use brokers who do the same with a very limited
clientele of purchasers. Link brokers who advertise how buying links
from them increases your Google ranking should be avoided.

Example:

If you wouldn't purchase a link if it was "nofollowed", then you have
no business purchasing the link. Buy traffic, not "green pixels". Links
"age" and in order to get the full benefit from links, they must remain
for a long period of time. Many webmasters make the mistake of
jumping from link broker to link broker. This is not a smart approach.
You need consistency. This is also true with off-line advertising. You
just can't do it once and forget it. You have to be consistent in your
advertising so your target audience sees you again and again and
again. Advertising is an investment and you need to treat it as such.

Old:

Write 300 word articles of average to good quality and submit them
to as many article directories as your outsourced staff can manage.
Wash, rinse and repeat over and over and over using the same sig
file in all of the submissions.

New:

Write 800 word articles for sites that accept submissions that publish
based on merit and quality. Just because you know how to fill out a
form shouldn't give you the right to be published. Find out where the
"conversations" are taking place in your market and strive to get in the
middle with your content. Be heard.

Example:

If you own a site that caters to business owners, get an article
published on a site like entrepreneur.com is going to be worth far more
than submitting an article to 30 free article directories. Sure it takes
more time, more effort and is less certain, but the rewards of success
are also much greater. Be sure to ask about linking guidelines within
the article. Most sites are ok with you linking from within an article
provided it isn't biased, repetitive and makes sense.

Old:

Find the top 50 keywords for your sector and write a "thrown
together" article aimed at each one. Don't focus on quality or originality,
just regurgitate the same information available on every other site.
Headline: 'How to find online deals on discount widgets.' Yawn.

New:

Find the top 50 keywords for your sector and write an interesting
piece that relates to the topic in an unusual fashion that won't bore
people to death if they bother to read past the first paragraph. Give
something of value, something people can relate to and that they will
notice you by.

Example:

If you have a content site focusing on widgets, contact the big
companies who make them and ask what their media policies are for
an interview about their newest product or their company in general.
You get new, unique content no one else has (because you've
created the questions) and people are far more likely to link to a
page showing an interview with ABC Widgets talking about their new
widget development techniques than a page talking about how great
(yawn) ABC Widgets are.

Old:

Submitting press releases for no reason aside from getting your site
another inbound link from the press release distribution network of
sites.

New:

Waiting until you have a newsworthy topic (or creating one) and
submitting a carefully crafted press release focused on getting media
attention and making sure it is viewable in all the big news engines.

Example:

If you have a site selling 16 different brands of the same widget,
create a comparison engine that allows users to select four widget
brands and see a comparison between them. Then create a press
release that mentions how your site developed this 'propriety
technology' to help consumers of widgets and how your site is the
only site in the industry offering such a service. Cross your fingers
and hope a reporter gets interested. At worst, you get a ton of traffic
when people search your topic at a news engine.

Old:

Submitting your site to 200 free directories and a handful of paid
directories with decent PageRank in an effort to increase your link
count.

New:

Not wasting your time unless the directory itself has a large following
or page view tallies (meaning it will send traffic).

Example:

Submit a test site (or simply take a look at the logs of a website
following the tired tradition) and after six months, take a look at the
total referrals from your logs. Anything that doesn't produce a valued
amount of traffic or sales (depending on your objective) should be cut
from the list. You'd be better off during those 2 days of submitting to
those directories to put that time to good use on another method that
will actually bring you visitors with disposable income. Sound
familiar? It should. I have been pushing this for a long time. It isn't
about PageRank, it's all about referral traffic. That is how you become
great, and if a site isn't giving it to you, then why are you still in bed
with them?

Old:

Deciding on ten keyword phrases and developing links to fit within
that mold (having all of your links using one of your top ten phrases).
Contacting webmasters who don't link exactly how you asked and
demanding they change it immediately.

New:

Encouraging extreme variety in anchor text of your inbound links and
letting people link to you using whatever anchors they feel necessary.
Remove the "constraints" and focus more on the relationship with the
webmaster for possible future dealings.

Example:

Stop sending out pre-written anchor text in requests for links. Let the
site owner know about your site and if they choose to link to you, do
so using whatever anchor text they feel necessary. There is no better
way to accrue *natural* anchor text than by letting people label your
anchor with whatever they deem fit. Site owners know how to speak
to their readers and how to make them interested.

Old:

Making "hit and run" forum posts to get a handful of backlinks apiece
from 50 different domains.

New:

Finding one (or a few communities) and becoming a regular, valid and
helpful contributing member. This can turn into a larger role with the
community directory, expanding your reach and authority in the
market.

Example:

By making yourself at home at a limited number of places, you give
yourself time to really contribute and be a visible and useful member.
Rather than grabbing a few links on various identifiable forum domains,
you build up a reputation (aka trust) which gets you a good amount
of traffic through your profile or signature. This traffic will be very
targeted since you will be posting to people on a forum relating to
what you do or sell. Your post can also fuel more buzz as someone
may go post on their blog that you did a great post on widget making,
linking your name to your site and widget making to the appropriate
forum thread.

Old:

Button pushing to get thousands and tens of thousands of automated
links on blogs, guestbooks and forums.

New:

People pushing via hiring people to help out with traffic development
efforts and ideas.

Example:

Blind mass links are becoming extinct. Spend the efforts of your
programmers on developing useful tools for consumers/site visitors and
employ people to write great, quality content rather than buying cheap
links from reciprocal link farms. You can get a lot more "long term"
bang for your buck and it will get you visitors who appreciate your
content, not angry victims of comment spam looking for ways to dig
your heart out with a spoon.

Old:

Creating a blog on a free subdomain to put up nothing more than posts
about how great your products are and linking to yourself freely in
each one.

New:

Creating a blog that has real value and traffic attraction on your own
domain (or a separate domain if branding is an issue) which leads
readers into the commercial area of your site during opportunities
within posts or the blog design where it makes sense.

Example:

If you sell widgets, make an accompanying blog that acts as a review
center for ALL widgets. Be fair and include all products whether or not
you sell them. Do a writeup of each product that acts as a general
'spec' overview and allow users to leave reviews in the comments
section and link in to the products you *do* sell where appropriate.

========================

That's it for this time, and many thanks to Jerry!