Nick's Traffic Tricks

Stop the madness and start getting traffic by selecting the correct keywords

Nick Stewart — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:49:04 +0000

A very common question

I frequently get e-mails from individuals wanting to know how they can get their website to rank high for a highly competitive keyword i.e. forex or real estate.

And the worst part is they don’t have that keyword in their domain, title tags, or anywhere on their page.

And yet they expect me to somehow give them a magic bullet that will make them number one on Google for a supercompetitive keyword.

Sorry folks, but it just doesn’t work that way.

The Secret

The secret to getting traffic is to select the correct keywords. This is the very first step.

If you skip this step then nothing else will work.

Sure, I have lots of posts with creative ways to build back links get your site indexed and to rank high in the search engines. But all of this is built on the assumption that the correct keywords have been selected.

How to select the correct keywords

Selecting the right keywords comes down to two things: relevance and competition.

If you take care of these two things everything else will fall in place.

So what do I mean by relevance?

When selecting a keyword you must make sure that it is super relevant to whatever product you’re selling.

You must know the needs and wants of the visitor you want to attract. You must define exactly what they are looking for. And then choose your keywords based on this.

I recently received an e-mail from someone asking me how to get their site to rank high for the keyword: computers.

The problem is that you know nothing about people that search for computers. They could be looking for computer parts, or computer repairs, or computer software, or computer tutorials, or computer classes, or computer books.

The picture below displays the most common computer related keywords according to the Google wonder wheel. (Learn more about the Google wonder wheel here.)

You can see how it is very difficult to advertise to people that have such diverse wants and needs.

So the solution is simple: choose keywords that are very specific.

A good keyword phrase tells a story about a person and helps you to understand their wants and needs.

For example, the keyword phrase “stop hair breakage” immediately tells you what a person is looking for. Armed with this knowledge you can select highly targeted advertisements and making more money and get better conversions.

Typically good keyword phrases are comprised of 3 to 6 words. “Stop hair breakage” has 3 words and “how to stop smoking” has 4 words.

How to determine the competition

Once you’ve selected a good keyword phrase it is time to evaluate the competition. It is very likely that you have found several potential keyword phrases and you would like to know which one is best.

One thing to remember is that keyword phrases with more words in them typically have less competition.

For each keyword phrase that I am considering I go through the following steps. I have outlined how to do keyword competitive analysis in other posts but I will put it in this one for your convenience.

The process

I use Google’s free tool to determine how many people are searching for a particular keyword phrase. You can check use the tool here.

For my keyword stop hair breakage there are 2,900 monthly searches on average.

Next I will go to Google and search for: stop hair breakage
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=stop+hair+breakage&aq=0&oq=stop+hair+br&aqi=g4g-m6

Looking at the search results I can see that there are 75,300 websites competing for this phrase.

Next I will go to Google and search for: “stop hair breakage”
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=”stop+hair+breakage”&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g2g-m2

Looking at the search results there appear to be over a million competing sites. This seems a little off considering the previous search results. I may choose to ignore this.

Now I’m going to search Google and see how many people have the the words stop hair breakage in their title
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=allintitle:stop+hair+breakage&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

There are only 1,480 sites that have these words in their title. This is a low score and it looks very good.

Now I am going to search Google and see how many people have the words stop hair breakage in their URL
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=allinurl:stop+hair+breakage&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Only 373 websites have these words in their URL. I can definitely compete with that!

I go through this process for each keyword phrase that I’m considering. When I have completed this process there will usually be at least one keyword phrase that stands out having the most searches and the least amount of competition.

The next steps

Once you have identified your keywords it is time to optimize your site for the search engines using those keywords:

After you’ve optimized you need to start creating back links and start getting traffic:

18 VIDEOS: Idiots Guide To Internet Marketing With, SEO, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, RSS Feeds and More….

Nick Stewart — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:00:37 +0000

Introduction

Below are 18 short videos taken from a seminar where Jeff Johnson spoke.

In these videos he gives some incredible content. After watching the videos I had a couple pages of notes on how to get more traffic to my websites.

I hope you enjoy the videos as much as I did!

Part 1

WPvideo 1.10

Download!

How To Get Traffic 101

Nick Stewart — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:40:36 +0000

I Want To Get Traffic To My Website, But Where Do I Start?

Often I hear people say, “I want to get traffic, but where do I start?”

The purpose of this post is to give a roadmap of where to start.

And if you ever have a question, feel free to ask me. I will do my best to answer your questions.

Know What Google Wants

If you’re going to get traffic from Google and other search engines then you need to know what they are looking for.

In my article What Google Really Cares About I cover what you need to know about the kind of content Google is looking for.

Search Engine Optimization

Before you worry about getting links and trying to get traffic you need to take a few steps and optimize your site for the search engines. It’s not hard and it’s well worth your time:
Search Engine Optimization and Keywords

Also check out:

Keyword Research

Part of search engine optimization is keyword research. Selecting the correct keywords is crucial to getting traffic. I have covered this in detail in several posts:

Get Your Site Crawled & Indexed By The Search Engines

Getting your site crawled & indexed is easy and has nothing to do with submitting your site to 10 gazillion search engines.

For proven ways to do this (and they’re all free!) read:
11 Ways To Get Indexed By Google Super Fast

Build Links To Your Site

One of the best ways to get traffic is to get other websites to link to you. I have covered this in several posts:

Article Marketing

If you are a decent writer then you can quickly build backlinks to your site and get traffic with article marketing. This will work well for people who have a lot of time and little money.

Social Media

You can get quick traffic from social media. This works best if you have unique and quality content.

Google AdSense

Advertising

Affiliate Marketing

Article Marketing

Blogging

Domains & Hosting

Email Marketing

Keywords

Link Building

Making Money

How 2 Hours Of Work Makes Me $100 A Month

Motivational

Question Box

StumbleUpon

How I Got 25 People To Stumble My Site And Give It A Thumbs Up

Traffic

Twitter

YouTube

4 Ways To Get Traffic From YouTube

Writing

2 Winners Of My 84 Traffic Videos – Saturday Nov. 7, 2009

Nick Stewart — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 16:12:50 +0000

Today’s Winners

Today’s winners are:

@Paul_ic7 on Twitter
Marie from my email list: marie.san***@rocketmail.com

Enter to Win My 84 Traffic Videos

Discover 2 ways to win here.

10 Ways To Get More Traffic From Twitter

Nick Stewart — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:58:15 +0000

There has been a lot of buzz about the growth of twitter and many people are looking to use twitter to get traffic to their website.

Here are 10 simple ways to get more traffic from twitter.

1. Tweet about new posts to your blog

Whenever you post something new to your blog or website you should Tweet about it. For me this results in instant traffic to my website.

2. Use great titles to get more clicks

Having a great title will result in more of your followers clicking on your link.

One of the simplest ways to make a good title is to have it start with a number. For example:
3 Ways To…
5 Reasons Why…
7 Strategies For…

Numbered headlines get your attention and give you a preview of the content.

It is also a good idea to have your title promise to solve a problem that the reader has. If it promises real benefit to the reader they are far more likely to click on the link.

For example the title of this blog post promised to show you how to get traffic to your website using twitter. Getting traffic to your website is a difficult task and a common problem that people have. The title promise real value.

Putting these two concepts together (using numbered headlines and solving readers problems) you can create great titles that will get more clicks on twitter.

3. Only tweet about things of value

We live in a age of information overload and one of the ways of coping with this is to ignore stuff. In fact we ignore most of the information out there.

So if you don’t want your tweets should be ignored by your followers and make sure they have real value.

And don’t try to sell something via twitter. A lot of people have lost their followers because they tried to make a quick buck.

Remember that people follow you because of the value you provide to them. The minute you stop doing this is the minute that you lose followers.

4. Tweet about old blog posts

There will be some days when you don’t have any new blog posts to tweet about.

When this happens simply find an old blog post with good value and tweet about that. Chances are that many of your followers have never seen it.

5. Use Google Analytics to track the best days & times to tweet

Some days a week and sometimes the day are better than others for tweeting about your new blog posts and getting traffic.

I recommend trying different times to see what works best. I use Google analytics to help me determine how much traffic I get from different tweets.

Gary McCaffrey has gathered data that suggests that 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Pacific Standard Time) are the best times to tweet and get traffic.

This is probably a good place to start. But you need to test and discover what works best for you.

6. Make it easy for visitors to tweet about your site

If you use WordPress there is a simple plug-in that puts a “ReTweet This” button on every blog post. It allows visitors to retweet your post with a click of button. It also displays how many people have tweeted about it.

It’s called the Tweetcount Plugin and you can download it here for free:
http://www.backtype.com/plugins/tweetcount

7. Use url shorteners

On twitter you only have 140 characters and it would be a shame to waste it with some long and ugly URL. So I recommend using a URL shortening or like tinyurl.com.

This allows you to devote more characters to an eye-catching title and description and fewer characters to your URL.

8. Keep your Tweets less than 120 characters

I want people to be able to easily retweet my stuff and so I try to have all of my tweets be 120 characters or less. Then when someone retweets something of mine there is plenty of room for the “RT @NicksTraffic” which is placed at the front of the retweet.

And having more retweets results in more traffic for me.

9. Get more followers

Obviously if you have more followers then each tweet get more attention and result in more traffic to your website. Here are a couple ways to get more followers:

Place an invitation to follow you on twitter on your homepage. I recommend putting it above the fold where people can see it without having to scroll down.
After your main content block on every page post a link to your twitter account that says something like “Follow @NicksTraffic on twitter and great tips on X”

10. If you tweet with a link to a video or audio make sure you mention it in your tweet

Sometimes I’ll find a great YouTube video that I want to share with my followers. I know that some of them are at work and may not appreciate having a video come onto their screen alerting their boss that they are watching videos and not working.

So whenever I tweet a link to a YouTube video I always begin the tweet with the word Video so that my followers know it’s a video and can choose whether to watch it at that time.

For example: “Video: 11 ways to get more traffic for free”

Doing this builds a level of trust with my followers. They trust that if I tweet about a video they will know before hand and not be caught off guard. And this results in more traffic for me.

How I Got 25 People To Stumble My Site And Give It A Thumbs Up

Nick Stewart — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:46:53 +0000

I did an experiment

A few months ago I decided to try an experiment. I posted a page on my blog offering free stumbles to anyone who placed a comment with the urls they wanted to be stumbled by me.

There were no strings attached to receive the free stumbles. It was just a free gift for visiting my website.

(You can get your free stumbles here.)
I also asked people to stumble the site if they felt this was useful but that wasn’t required.

Since that time 25 people have stumbled the page up and the page has received thousands of hits. It only takes a few stumbles to get traffic.

One of the reasons I was able to get people to stumble up this particular page is that I first gave something away for free. And then I asked for a favor to stumble up the page.

Not everyone was willing to do me a favor but quite a few were.

Rule of reciprocity

This follows the rule of reciprocity which basically says that if you do something kind for someone else and then ask for something small in return, the person is likely to do it.

This concept is covered in depth in the book by Robert Cialdini called: Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. If you haven’t read this book I highly recommend it!

Has anyone else done something like this? Where you give away something of value for free and then ask for a favor?

Giving Away 2 Copies Of My 84 Traffic Videos

Nick Stewart — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:51:10 +0000

I am giving away 2 copies of my 84 Traffic Videos Series on Saturday Nov. 14, 2009

This Saturday I will give away 2 copies of 84 Traffic Videos. These videos were recorded & produced by me and show you step-by-step how to get traffic.

The 84 short videos are broken up into 8 modules:

Module 1: First Things First (8 Videos)
Module 2: Keyword Research and Search Engine Optimization (11 Videos)
Module 3: Link Building (11 Videos)
Module 4: Get indexed fast (12 Videos)
Module 5: Traffic from Twitter (18 Videos)
Module 6: Traffic from YouTube (6 Videos)
Module 7: Traffic from Email Lists (8 Videos)
Module 8: Traffic from Article Marketing (10 Videos)

How to Win

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NicksTraffic. On Saturday I will give a copy of the videos to one of my twitter followers.

On Saturday I will also give a copy of the videos to one of my Nick’s Traffic Tricks Newsletter subscribers..

Join my Nick’s Traffic Tricks Newsletter and get a free copy of my 68 Page Traffic Guide here:

Email Marketing Case Study: Should you put the person’s name in the email subject line?

Nick Stewart — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 13:03:53 +0000

Email Marketing Case Study

I have heard that you should put someone’s name in the email subject line when sending an email to your list.

Example Subject line: Jim, here is the latest blah blah

I have been doing that for a while now and today I decided to actually test this idea.

So I sent out an email today and half of my list had their name in the subject and the other half didn’t have their name in the subject.

In the email there was a link to my blog and I tracked how many people clicked on the link.

Here are the results

Subject with name: 30 clicks on the link
Subject without name: 32 clicks on the link

The email without a name actually did a little better! But statistically there is no discernible difference; they’re effectively the same.

The important lesson I learned is that there is no substitution for testing.

Whenever I send out an email from now on I am going to split test some element of my campaign. I have made a list of 5 things to split test and will think of more.

12 Steps To Setup An Email Newsletter, Get Traffic, And Make Money

Nick Stewart — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:10:14 +0000

Introduction

Creating an email newsletter is one of the best ways to get long-term traffic to your website and make money online. Any guru will tell you this.

Unfortunately what they don’t tell you is the exact process to use. It’s not as simple as “go make an email list”.

There are many steps involved in correctly setting up an email newsletter. Below I have outlined the steps I’ve used to set one up.

To start with I want to show you a simple flowchart:

This simple flowchart gives you a high-level view of what goes on when someone signs up for your email list.

Now let’s jump into the nitty-gritty details.

1. Need an autoresponder

You are going to need an autoresponder. I highly recommend Aweber. It’s what I use and it’s affordable.

Whatever autoresponder you choose make sure you use double optin for your email list. When you use double optin someone will sign up for your email list and then they are sent an email asking them to confirm their subscription to your email list. This ensures that you have fewer spam complaints.

2. Use an email address that you check

Whenever you send out a message to your email list there is a “reply to” email address that is sent along with the message. This way if any of your subscribers have a question they can simply hit the reply button and send a message to you.

You must make sure that this reply to email address is one that you check on a regular basis.

There been a few times when I sent out a message with a link to my website that didn’t work. I didn’t know about it until one of my subscribers hit the reply button and notified me of this. If I didn’t check the email address on a regular basis I would’ve never known.

3. Create a free short report

Identify a common problem that your readers have and write a report showing people how to fix this problem. The report doesn’t have to be very long; three to five pages should do the trick.

Just make sure that it solves a specific problem that your readers have.

Once you have it written you need to save it in PDF format. If you’re not sure how to do this are a lot of free tutorials on the Internet that will show you exactly how.

4. Packaging your report

If you link to the report in pdf format then when people click on the link to the pdf it will automatically load the pdf in the browser.

If instead you link to a zipped file (which contains the pdf) they will be forced to download it to their computer, making it easier for them to read anytime.

In the zip file also include a file that links to your website.

To do this open a new file in NotePad and save it.

An example filename might be Traffic_Tricks_Blog.htm

Be sure that the filename contains no spaces, is something that gets the viewers attention, and ends with .htm

Inside the file type the following:

What this chunk of HTML code does is tell the browser to immediately redirect to:
http://www.nickstraffictricks.com

Simply replace http://www.nickstraffictricks.com with your own url and then save.

Be sure to test your redirect!

Now everyone unzipping the file will see a the htm file and when they open it they will be sent to your site.

You can do this for affiliates stuff too.

In fact you could have two of these files inside the zip. One would redirect to your website and another would be an affiliate offer. This is a great way to make a little extra money on the backend.

Just don’t abuse it.

5. Create a “thank you” page

After a person enters their name and email to subscribe to your list they will be sent to a thank you page.

The purpose of this page is to thank the person for signing up and inform them that they need to check their email and click on the confirmation link that has been sent to them.

You may also put an advertisement on this page.

The form of this page is relatively simple and if you want you can just copy one that I have used in the past:
http://free–web-traffic.com/thank_you.php

6. Create a “sign-up is complete” page

After a person has confirmed their email address their sign-up is complete and they are sent to a “sign-up is complete” page.

In addition to page tells them that their free report has been emailed to them.

I recommend putting an advertisement on this page.

If you would like you can copy the one I use:
http://free–web-traffic.com/thank_you_after_email.php

7. Create the first message

After someone confirms their email the first follow-up message will automatically be sent to them. In this message you need to have a link to the free report for them to download.

In a message you can also introduce yourself to the reader and invite them to follow you on twitter or subscribe to your RSS feed.

8. Get an ecover

Your free report is not really complete until it has some sort of ecover which is just a graphic cover for your report.

Here’s an example of the cover that I frequently use for my Nick’s Traffic Tricks ebook:

There are some ways the you can create them for free and you can find free tutorials on the Internet. But if you have a little extra cash and time is short then I recommend finding someone to create one for you.

Simply go to Google and search for: ecover design

9. Place the signup immediately after content on your website

You want to place your sign-up form in a prominent location where people can see it.

For me this works best by placing my sign-up form immediately after my main content block all my blog.

10. Experiment with popups and lightboxes available with Aweber

One way to increase the conversion rate and get more people to sign up is to experiment with different types of pop-ups and light boxes.

Some website owners have reported a fivefold increase in the number sign ups.

With Aweber trying different types is easy.

11. Whenever you post to blog or website you send an email to you email list and get guaranteed traffic

To get instant traffic simply send a message out to your email list every time you post new content on your blog. This will be dramatically more effective if the content that you post is always high quality. Read 6 Reasons Quality Content Receives More Traffic And Makes More Money

12. Don’t forget to test

Lastly you need to make sure that you test this entire process. There are a lot of steps and you want to make sure that each piece is set up correctly.

I recommend going through the following checklist to ensure that everything is set up.

Go to the page with the sign-up form and sign up with your name and email.
Were you taken to the “thank you” page and asked to confirm your email?
Did you receive the email asking you to confirm it?
Now click on the confirmation link.
Were you taken to the “signup is complete” page?
Did your advertisement display correctly on that page?
Do you receive the email with the link to your download?
If you hit reply to the email does it send to you?
Does the link to the download actually work?
Can you unzip the file and open up the PDF?
Do the other files that you may have included work correctly?

6 Reasons Quality Content Receives More Traffic And Makes More Money

Nick Stewart — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:16:19 +0000

To say that quality content receives more traffic is an understatement. The truth is that quality content generates way more traffic. Some of my best blog posts have received a thousand times the amount of traffic as my average ones.

Here is why quality content gets so much more traffic.

1. Quality Is Rare

Believe it or not quality is rare. For every fantastic blog post you may read there are a hundred average ones published. It may not seem like it because you never hear about those average ones. In fact no one hears about them and they receive little or no traffic.

Even though there are millions of blogs out there I only visit 10 on a regular basis. I visit only the ones that consistently provide quality in the areas I am interested.

People have a tendency to find blogs that have high quality content and ignore everything else.

2. People will bookmark and retweet your stuff

Quality content is bookmarked by others and tweeted about on Twitter. It is submitted to Digg & StumbleUpon. All of these things generate massive amounts of traffic.

But the real magic is that quality content turns readers into people into spreaders. If I come across a great blog post I will often Stumble it and tweet a link to it. This results in more readers which in turn means more people are spreading the word.

It is this snowball effect, sometimes called ‘going viral’, that creates large amounts of traffic.

A few weeks ago I wrote a high-quality post called “How To Build Back Links Super Fast” and I submitted it to StumbleUpon. I was absolutely amazed at the amount of traffic the post received from StumbleUpon. It received 3 times as much traffic as any other post I had written.

If your content is average or mediocre none of this will happen.

3. People will subscribe to your RSS

Consistent quality can help you build up your RSS readership. And the more traffic you get the faster your RSS readership will grow.

Looking at the readership of Problogger we can see that there are well over 120,000 readers!

This readership rivals many newspapers in the United States. But unlike many newspapers Problogger has only been around a few years. This was accomplished with quality content.

And every time a new post appears over 120,000 people are notified. This results in tons of traffic!

4. Quality Means More Page Views & More Money

The average person will visit many more pages on a blog with quality content. And they will be more likely to revisit it later.

If you make money off of Google AdSense or other advertising then more page views means more money in your pocket.

In my experience quality content can generate 10 to 20 times as many page views.

5. Product Recommendations Have Credibility

Many people try to make money on the Internet by promoting different products. Some have gone as far as to actually buy the product and write a review of it.

But all of these people have trouble with credibility. How is someone going to trust what you have to say?

If you have a blog with quality content then you’ve already built a relationship of trust with your readers. If readers are impressed by what you give away for free then they are more likely to trust you and purchase recommended products.

This means more money in your pocket.

6. Building An Email List Is Easy

I believe the best way to build long-term traffic is to create an email newsletter that you send out periodically to your subscribers. Inside of each newsletter are links to different blog posts on your website.

But how do you get people to give you their email address and join your newsletter?

If you have a lot of quality content then this is easy.

Simply take some of your best work and create a short PDF that solves a common problem your readers have. 3-10 pages is all you need. The PDF should have a good title that promises the reader to solve a problem they have.

And anyone can get a free copy of the PDF when they join your email newsletter.

If you have quality content then your readers will trust you with their email address and join your newsletter.

Name:
Email:

	We will NOT rent, spam, share, sell, or distribute your e-mail address under any circumstances. We take your privacy VERY seriously.

Nick's Traffic Tricks

Stop the madness and start getting traffic by selecting the correct keywords

A very common question

The Secret

How to select the correct keywords

So what do I mean by relevance?

How to determine the competition

The process

The next steps

18 VIDEOS: Idiots Guide To Internet Marketing With, SEO, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, RSS Feeds and More….

Introduction

Part 1

How To Get Traffic 101

I Want To Get Traffic To My Website, But Where Do I Start?

Know What Google Wants

Search Engine Optimization

Keyword Research

Get Your Site Crawled & Indexed By The Search Engines

Build Links To Your Site

Article Marketing

Social Media

Google AdSense

Advertising

Affiliate Marketing

Article Marketing

Blogging

Domains & Hosting

Email Marketing

Keywords

Link Building

Making Money

Motivational

Question Box

StumbleUpon

Traffic

Twitter

YouTube

Writing

2 Winners Of My 84 Traffic Videos – Saturday Nov. 7, 2009

Today’s Winners

Enter to Win My 84 Traffic Videos

10 Ways To Get More Traffic From Twitter

1. Tweet about new posts to your blog

2. Use great titles to get more clicks

3. Only tweet about things of value

4. Tweet about old blog posts

5. Use Google Analytics to track the best days & times to tweet

6. Make it easy for visitors to tweet about your site

7. Use url shorteners

8. Keep your Tweets less than 120 characters

9. Get more followers

10. If you tweet with a link to a video or audio make sure you mention it in your tweet

How I Got 25 People To Stumble My Site And Give It A Thumbs Up

I did an experiment

Rule of reciprocity

Giving Away 2 Copies Of My 84 Traffic Videos

I am giving away 2 copies of my 84 Traffic Videos Series on Saturday Nov. 14, 2009

How to Win

Or You Can Buy The 84 Videos Right Now

Email Marketing Case Study: Should you put the person’s name in the email subject line?

Email Marketing Case Study

Here are the results

12 Steps To Setup An Email Newsletter, Get Traffic, And Make Money

Introduction

1. Need an autoresponder

2. Use an email address that you check

3. Create a free short report

4. Packaging your report

5. Create a “thank you” page

6. Create a “sign-up is complete” page

7. Create the first message

8. Get an ecover

9. Place the signup immediately after content on your website

10. Experiment with popups and lightboxes available with Aweber

11. Whenever you post to blog or website you send an email to you email list and get guaranteed traffic

12. Don’t forget to test

6 Reasons Quality Content Receives More Traffic And Makes More Money

1. Quality Is Rare

2. People will bookmark and retweet your stuff

3. People will subscribe to your RSS