6 Easy Ways to Drive Paying Customers to Your Site

By Derek Gehl Quality traffic -- it's the "Holy Grail" of online marketing. After all, there's not much point in having a website if your potential customers aren't able to find it!


This week, we're going to focus on some of the different ways you can drive quality traffic to your site. (And by "quality," I mean visitors that are likely to BUY what you sell on your site!) In this article, I'll talk about 6 of my favorite ways to attract more customers to your site. (And all of them are cheap or even freeee!)

And in the article below, two very special "guest contributors" are going to give you ANOTHER hot tip -- and talk about how you can use one of the 'Net's hottest communication tools to drive even MORE qualified traffic to your site! So let's get started with my top 6 tips -- if you're not using any of these strategies, the time to get started is today!

Traffic Tip #1: Give away content
This is one of the best traffic strategies out there... Simply write a series of short articles that are packed with useful information and tips, then submit them to online article directories and other free content sites. Not only will you get some great inbound links pointing to your site, which will help you with the search engines -- other people can republish your articles on their own sites, which will help spread the word about your business and build your credibility as an industry expert! Here are some article directories you should check out:
www.ezinearticles.com
www.freesticky.com
www.ideamarketers.com
www.goarticles.com...

Want to know more? Click here to visit my blog and discover what my other 5 traffic tips are!

4 Ways to Attract Traffic -- With a Blog! By Rosalind Gardner and Anik Singal
[Note from Derek: One of my readers recently asked me how she could use a blog to drive more traffic to her site. Since my friends Rosalind and Anik are true blog marketing experts, I asked them to provide an answer -- and they ended up writing an entire article for me! I hope you enjoy it... D.]

Blogging -- both writing blogs AND reading blogs -- has gone from being a "fringe" activity to one of the most popular pastimes on the 'Net. In fact, blogging is now a global phenomenon.

There are currently 112.8 million blogs in existence, with 175,000 new ones launching every day.... But did you know that blogs are also a great way to drive traffic to your site?

Blogs, by design, are built to quickly and easily attract traffic, whether it be from search engines or from a rapid influx of links. The moment you publish a post, your blog goes to work for you letting the world know that you've made an update - the search engines come running and you find yourself ranking #1 for keywords in no time.

Here are 4 ways to attract traffic to your site using blogs (and 4 reasons why you NEED to start blogging):

1. Long-Tail Keywords
Instead of using only the most obvious or generic terms related to the topic of your post, focus on more specific words and phrases, i.e., long-tail keywords. For instance, if you are writing a post about nordic skiing at Sun Peaks Resort near Kamloops, British Columbia, you don't want to target keywords such as 'travel' and 'skiing' which will put you in direct competition with Expedia.com, SkiNet.com and the like.

Instead, use "cross country skiing at Sun Peaks Resort" and not only will your post show up in a blog search, but it'll soon rank in the top ten in Google's organic listings as well.

Blogs are notorious for ranking high and fast for long-tail keywords. Over time with hundreds of these, the traffic is far more valuable than having one "highly competitive" keyword.

2. Bookmark with OnlyWire
Onlywire is a service that allows you to automatically bookmark your post on well over 17 high-traffic sites.It takes just a few clicks to do this every time you post. You simply click a button on your browser, type in a few keywords and hit "submit." Yes, the service is absolutely free.Onlywire is a great way to not only attract visitors but to also get the search engines running in to index your new post.

3. Leave Blog Comments
One of the best ways to get traffic and highly valuable links in the beginning is to leave comments on other high-traffic blogs in your niche.Finding these blogs is easy -- either just search Google or visit Technorati and find the most popular in your topic.

A couple of key techniques to use:
A) Don't use your name, use something catchy (or a keyword). When they post links to your site, they link the "name field" -- so as long as you use something enticing, you'll get people to click.

Or you can use a keyword and that way you get more search engine recognition for the term you are optimizing for.

B) Don't abuse this -- You can easily find yourself blocked from leaving future comments. Leave a comment that is useful and shows that you read what you're commenting on. Not only will this make the blogger happy but it'll get you more traffic and credibility.

4. Involve the Press
Too many people have forgotten how great press releases can be for traffic -- mostly because they don't know the "right" way of using press releases.The trick is to base your press releases on information that actually MATTERS to people. The easiest way to generate the valuable content for press releases is to quickly poll your readers (or get another blogger to help generate the results). So long as you can get at least 50 people to respond, you can issue a press release with your new-found data.

The press loves data, readers love data -- posts and press releases like this make their way around the Internet very fast.In summary, the above 4 tactics represent less than 20% of the ways that a blog can generate free and targeted traffic to your website.

If you don't already maintain a blog, you should seriously think about starting one up right away. It's the easiest way to establish a solid online presence. ... And if you're not sure how to go about setting up your own blog, don't worry -- we can help!

Simply click here to check out "Blog Classroom."There you'll find 130+ videos that will walk you through the entire process of setting up a blog, managing it, and making posts, plus over 18 techniques to drive traffic.

You can get started today and have FULL access for only $2.97! Just go to: www.marketingtips.com/blogclassroom -- and you can literally have your blog up WITH traffic in less than 10 minutes.

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Do you have a question or comment for me and my team?Drop us a line at questionsforderek@marketingtips.com -- and you may see your question answered in an upcoming issue of The IMC Insider!Click here to visit our blog - we add new articles daily covering subjects that offer something for everyone. To contact us...If you have any questions, email info@marketingtips.comTo unsubscribe, click hereTo change your email address, click hereOr, if you would prefer to use postal mail,please contact us at:The Internet Marketing CenterAttn: Newsletter Subscription Dept.400 - 1155 West Pender StreetVancouver, BCCanada V6E 2P4