Traffic is the most important thing when marketing on the Internet… and I am not saying just any traffic, but TARGETED TRAFFIC. So what is targeted traffic? You need to find people who are hungry for what you are offering and willing to buy for you if they are presented with more relevant information to help them solve their problems.

Especially in affiliate marketing, you need to know how to drive to right traffic. If not, you are just wasting opportunity. I have seen many people using PPC to promote affiliate products, without doing a research on what keywords to bid on… so in the end they end up wasting their money driving the wrong crowd their websites.

Relevancy is very important if you want to increase your conversion. For example, if you are an online florist who intend to apply some SEO to your website, you should target keywords like “online florists”, “online florists singapore”, “online florists delivery” etc. This set of keyword bring you traffic who have the intention to buy flowers online. However, if you optimize keywords like “singapore flowers”, it may seems relevant at the beginning. But if you think deeper, these people may be students or researchers who just want to find out what is the nation flower that is representing Singapore. So… hope you understand the importance of relevancy.

Now, let me share with you are whole list of traffic generation methods that you can apply in IM. For each method, you need to know what is it best for. For example, social bookmarking methods are good for blogs where you do soft sell and provide useful information for your readers. It may not work so well for a squeeze page in affiliate marketing. So here’s the list:

1. Search engine optimization (SEO). Optimizing relevant keywords to make them appear on organic result listings of Google and Yahoo!. Good for websites which are selling products and services online.
2. PPC advertising (Pay-Per-Click). The best form of PPC advertising is Google Adwords where you can create an account and start advertising on Google within the next half an hour. When the right keywords are chosen, you can yield fantastic conversions. Yahoo! has recently turn thier advertising model to ppc advertising. You can now create your own account and start advertising on Yahoo!. Find out more about Yahoo! advertising here.
3. Social bookmarking. Good for blog marketing and information site. Submit your bookmark to platforms like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Hubpages. You should also create an OnlyWire account to auto-submit your site to social bookmarking platforms.
4. Social networking. Create profiles on social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, and Linkedin. Then increase your friend network and share with them your site’s URLs.
5. Article Marketing. Yea, this is my favourite way to drive traffic. Know how to write articles fast with useful information for your readers. You can use articles to promote any thing: blog, ebooks, information site, squeeze page, sales page, etc. At the end of your article, you should NOT WRITE A CONCLUSION. This will subconsciously make people not to click on the link in your Author’s Resource Box to visit your website.
6. Blog. Set up your own blog and provide useful information to your target readers regularly. If your readers like your posts and trust you, they will visit sites that you recommend.
7. Email marketing. If you have lists, you can blast out a broadcast to promote a particular product or service on your site. If your do not own any list, start build one.
8. Video. Create instructional or informative videos and post them on YouTube. Remember to include the URL of the site you wish to promote in your video.
9. Banners. Buying banner space on high trafficked website to drive traffic to the site you wish to promote. Before you buy any banner or ad space, make sure that the readers/visitors of that particular site are your target audience.
10. Affiliate programs. If you own your own products and is selling them online, you should set up affiliate programs to recruit affiliates. Affiliates are your greatest allies and friends to help promote your products to the world.
11. Forum posting. Include your website’s link in your signature and contribute to the community. When people trust you, they will check out your link in your signature.
12. Blog comment posting. Comment on other people blogs and include a link back to your site.
13. Squidoo. Squidoo lens are just like web pages. With well-written lens, your lens can get into high organic search engine result page which will bring you targeted traffic to your site.

I believe I will have leave out some other great traffic generation methods. Do post a comment and share with us if you have any other effective method that is not listed here.

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