After Panda, will a new market for Short Term targetted traffic middlemen appear?

[Chris Kent]

Article marketing and web 2.0 sites were a great way to get short term targeted traffic with the only cost being your time.

Since Panda, it's almost not worth submitting articles to these sites anymore. Previously I'd gone for long tails which would easily rocket to the top 5 places but now I struggle to get these articles even to page one which means pretty much zilch traffic. Case in point, I submitted 6 700-word long tail articles the other day to EZA and got a grand total of, wait for it, 2 hits!

Though older sites like the above are still ranking on page one, any new content doesn't get anywhere near it. Rankings have essentially been kept for existing content but there is a greater penalty for newer content.

So, how else to get Short Term Targeted Traffic?

• PPC but most people can't be profitable off the bat and don't want to risk it.
• Twitter, but results are nowhere near as good as article marketing was and you need to invest some time in it.
• Forum marketing - doesn't work easily for the big niches but does for smaller ones. Still requires some effort and time to stay under the radar (IM being an exception).
• Video marketing - this does actually work pretty well but most people avoid it for some reason. Perhaps its not suited to all niches, especially those that are "text-heavy", and better suited to those that can be better demonstrated visually?
• Guest blogging - requires negotiation. A type of joint venture, if you will.
• Ezine/List advertising - you must pay unless you have an existing asset i.e. a list.

So for brand new sites for which you want targeted traffic, you basically now have to pay real money for your initial burst of traffic. Guest blogging is an exception and is like article marketing but with added negotiation which may not be possible in all niches.

Google has made the game much harder now. The only other way around this huge barrier to entry for new entrants or for those entering new niches is to backlink.

Google has in one fell swoop made mass backlinking even more sexy and attractive than it ever was. I used to hate this with a vengance and prayed for Google to level the playing field but I've now joined the "grey side" and am experimenting with it myself.

Well done Google!

Going back to the subject of this post - given the new difficulties with generating short term targeted traffic (and you can't deny this, article marketing was something that ANYONE could do), will middlemen spring up offering some way to get this for a fee that is more than your time spent previously on articles but cheaper than other paid methods outlined above?

What do you think? Personally I see even more people getting into the IM niche and making the game even more incestuous than it already is. The typical noob will get frustrated and just think: forget all this effort, I'll just fake it till I make it and pretend to be a "guru". I'm already seeing many more new examples of people faking it, false-bragging and even occasionally getting caught doing it!

How do you think the game will evolve? People will always want short term traffic, will they now have to pay over the odds for it?

[greenowl123]

For quick traffic, it is a good idea to have your own traffic system set up, like a list, or have several twitter accounts, facebook accounts, facebook pages with thousands of fans, etc. You can send out a link to them, use ping.fm, dlvr.it and other methods and get immediate hits to your site and offer, whatever it might be, from adsense sites, clickbank, cpa, etc.

Seo is not quick traffic, but once you get your site on the first page SERP, it is high quality traffic. Backlinks and more backlinks with good on-page seo is crucial to getting good position in SERP.

I would like to try out paid ezine ads, solo ads, and see how it goes. Never had any luck with PPC, and shy away from it personally. YouTube is good for traffic, but most people use it the wrong way.

[BloggingPro]

Originally Posted by Chris Kent

[*]Forum marketing - doesn't work easily for the big niches but does for smaller ones. Still requires some effort and time to stay under the radar (IM being an exception).

I really disagree with this. Forum marketing DOES work for both big and small niches alike. There are very few forms of FREE marketing that can send you targeted traffic left, and this is one of them.

My forum marketing has reached the point where I'm no longer looking at SERP competition because I know if I find four or five active forums I'm going to be able to drive targeted traffic and increase sales.

The "IM" niche is pretty large and look at how many people are driving traffic to related products and services with their signatures in this forum alone.

Originally Posted by Chris Kent

Google has made the game much harder now. The only other way around this huge barrier to entry for new entrants or for those entering new niches is to backlink.

This makes no sense. Just because Google slapped some big time players doesn't mean they made anything harder. When you think about it from a small-time website perspective Google actually helped us!

For example we don't have to really worry about seeing an Ezine article on page one when doing keyword research. We don't have to work harder trying to rank above an absolutely garbage page from Answers.com that was only ranking because of the "trust" factor.

They didn't make **** harder. They made it easier to rank--especially for those with great ORIGINAL content (which includes me)!

Originally Posted by Chris Kent

Google has in one fell swoop made mass backlinking even more sexy and attractive than it ever was. I used to hate this with a vengance and prayed for Google to level the playing field but I've now joined the "grey side" and am experimenting with it myself.

Are you speaking of Xrumer? Those links (with the velocity) still create instability in your website. When using Xrumer you will find you dance more often than not. If your not talking about Xrumer I would be really curious to know what kind of mass backlinking your talking about.

Originally Posted by Chris Kent

How do you think the game will evolve? People will always want short term traffic, will they now have to pay over the odds for it?

I think the web will eventually have to clean up its act. ****ty links, ****ty content and ****ty websites will get pushed out by the big boys.

Maybe as business owners we should stop looking for sources of "short-term" traffic and start building online brands that can be trusted.

I'm not talking about consumer trust here, I'm talking about building a solid foundation so that when the next algo-change hits your prepared to weather the storm instead of falling to the way-side like everyone who was too short-sighted to look at the bigger picture.

[JamesGw]

For new websites, I definitely think that mass backlinking is definitely becoming more feasible. With that said, I don't think anyone should jump onto gimmicks in order to try to make a quick buck. It's better to stick to the basics and create a respectable brand and business.