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Traffic, lots and lots of traffic, every site owner's dream.
Without a steady stream of visitors (potential customers) to your web site... it will wither and die. Every Internet business owner should understand this fundamental truth.
Still, most of the sites I review get almost no traffic... or next to no traffic... day in, and day out. Many of these sites are selling excellent products and services... some support very worthy non-profit causes.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are sites that get lots of traffic... hundreds to thousands of visitors per day... but many of these sites aren't making much money. How can that be?
All traffic is not equal
Traffic is certainly a primary part of online success—but you don't necessarily need lots of traffic to make money online. You need the right kind of traffic—you need "qualified traffic."
"Qualified traffic" simply means visitors who are specifically looking for the information or solutions your web site offers. Now that may seem obvious, but let's take a good look at what that statement truly means.
Here's a real-life example that illustrates "qualified traffic."
Imagine you're selling an accounting package you created specifically for beauty salons. In just a few minutes per day, it does everything that a salon owner could wish for. You've already sold a few and the buyers are all raving about it. The product is a winner!
The package sells for $650—most of which is pure profit—since it will be delivered via digital download (no shipping).
You hire a web designer who does a great—but expensive—job designing a fabulous looking web site—salon owners will find it visually appealing.
You select some keywords: hair salon, beauty shop, beauty salon, salon, hairdresser, and lots of similar terms used in the beauty industry.
You launch your site—and after a few months your traffic soars. Within six months your site is getting 300 to 400 visitors per day—but after a couple more months you've only sold 5 packages!
You just can't figure out what's wrong. The product works well... your site looks great... and you're getting thousands of visitors per week. What can be wrong?
The answer is...
People use the Internet to seek information, to look for solutions to their problems.
And research statistics show that anywhere from 20% to 80% of your visitors will find your site through search engines.
Search engines use your web site's keywords, combined with other meta-tags in your page, to determine when they should serve up your page as the answer to someone's search query.
Now... answer these questions all by yourself:
- Who do you think is using keywords like hair salon, beauty shop, or hairdresser—and what do you think they may be searching for?
BTW... the term "hair salon" is searched for over 400,000 times per month!
- Do you think that owners searching for a better way to manage their business finances are searching with those keywords?
- Or do you think shop owners might search using a term that only gets about 600 searches per month, like "salon management software"?
- Which keywords do you think will sell more accounting software, "hair salon" or "salon management software"?
If you said the latter, then you understand what "qualified traffic" means. If you still think that 400,000 searches per month beats 600... begin again at the top of this page.
The above example is a true story
A past client of mine had this very thing happen to her Internet business (industry was changed to protect her confidentiality).
When she came to me it was almost too late for her to recover financially, as she had invested most of her savings in product development and web design.
Some changes to her web site's keywords, together with a re-write of the sales copy, lowered her site's traffic to about forty visitors per day. BUT, her sales increased to around twenty-five packages a month.
ALL BECAUSE, those 40 visitors per day were "qualified." In just a couple of months her site began averaging around $14,000 per month in net income.
Do NOT waste your money on this
"We will submit your site to 1000 search engines! Build traffic to your site fast and easy - just $29.95 a month! Get millions of visitors a day!"
If you've read these claims before and wonder what you may be missing by not submitting to thousands of engines, I'll tell you, you are missing out on losing your money and lots of spam.
Site submission services are completely worthless, no matter who offers it to you... your ISP... your web hosting company... your best friend!
Why incoming links are so important.
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