How to Reach Qualified Prospects Through your Website

November 21, 2008

HOW TO REACH QUALIFIED PROSPECTS

Without traffic you will never make money, simple as that!!!

There are many ways of driving traffic to your website. Here’s a list of the most popular and effective methods:

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

By all means this is the fastest and most consistent method of driving targeted traffic to your website.

Here’s how it works.

The most common way of searching for a product/services on the internet is by visiting a Search Engine (Eg Google or Yahoo) and typing in a Keyword or Phrase to find more information about that specific product.

As a website owner, you can have a small text ad displayed when a user types a specific keyword into the Search Engine. This is known as a “Sponsored Link”.
You do not pay to have the ad displayed; you only pay when someone clicks on the ad.

Reasons why PPC is the most effective way to drive targeted traffic to your site:

• You can target as many keyword phrases as you want
• It only takes 5 minutes to start receiving traffic
• You can drive as much traffic as you want according to the budget you establish when signing up
• It provides user friendly stats that show which keywords are performing well and which aren’t

It is recommended to only use Googles and Yahoos PPC campaigns as they control almost 80% of the search engines traffic (worldwide).

The trick with using PPC is making sure that you are making more money than what you are spending. In order to do so, we must frequently supervise which key words are working for us and are getting the highest number of clicks at the lowest price possible.

For example, if you set your budget at $50 per week, It is better to receive 1000 clicks at $0.05 each and not 50 clicks at $1 each.

How to maximise your ROI (Return On Investment) when using Pay Per Click:

• It is more likely to get qualified prospects when bidding for keywords phrases with two or more words. For example instead of bidding for the word “computers”, you should bid for the words “buy computer parts”.
• Create the largest list of keyword phrases as possible. This will ensure that you get the highest number of clicks at the lowest price possible
• When you set up your PPC campaign you must ensure that each link takes the user to a relevant page of your site. If the ad is trying to sell computer screens, make sure the link takes the prospect to the page on your site that is about computer screens.

Site Targeted Advertising

Even though Search Engines drive an enormous amount of traffic every single day, it is only a fraction of the number of people at any one time

Another method of advertising is placing ads on websites which offer complementary services to that of your business.

For example, a real estate agent may want to advertise a mortgage broker websites, removalist websites and so on.

Unlike Pay Per Click Campaigns, you must pay for every time your ad banner is displayed. For example, $5 CPM (cost per thousand impressions). This will cost you every time your ad is shown, not clicked on.

Prices may vary depending on the site your ad will be displayed

Don’t forget that the advertising campaign only is effective if it returns more money than you have invested.

Before setting up a Site Targeted Advertising Campaign look for the following:

• Don’t advertise if you will be competing with similar offers on the same page
• Advertise only if the content of the page is related to the product you have to offer
• Make sure you advertise on a site that receives a high number of visits per month

Here are some tips to write effective ads:

• Communicate the benefit of you Products/Services
• Give an incentive for them to click on your Add (eg. Free Offers)

Search Engine Optimisation

SEO is the technique used to increase your rankings in search engines (possibly within the first 10 results) so you can start receiving free targeted traffic to your site.

It is guaranteed that if your business appears within the top 10 results under a specific keyword your site will receive thousands of visits per month. And the best part of SEO is that it’s Free, that’s right!!! You don’t have to pay anyone for this service.

The downside of SEO is that there can only be 10 results on the first page of a search engine at any given time, so that means that you will have to compete with the most experienced businesses in the planet for a place on the podium.

Not only that. Because search engines are continually upgrading their search capabilities, if they modify their search algorithm your site may drop from being in the top 10 to being outside the top 1000.

Here are some tips that will help you reach a top 10 ranking:

• Before selecting what keywords your SEO campaign will focus on, try running a PPC campaign to identify what keywords work for your business
• Have external websites linking to your site
• Make sure your keywords are part of the title of your site
• Start by using a less competitive keyword when you start. Once you get good results with that keyword, move up to a more competitive one

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