What's working for traffic today? (getting back into IM)

It's a broad brush but here's the rundown. Create "beefy" articles around winning keyword phrases (1200 words or more), make it look stunning, pepper it with copy ... rinse and repeat with other blogs that link back to your blog (watch your steps here).

Everything that worked a decade or two ago works today. If you aren't willing to pay for traffic or use social networks, that pretty much leaves email, SEO and relevant forum posting (although if you're not doing social networking, forum posting is probably out, too).

From what I see it's mainly writing highly detailed articles for high volume keywords if you have some website authority or writing for long tail keywords if you don't have much authority. Free e-book offers work great, facebook ads. Everything it still pretty much the same. Only difference that has been over the last few years would be decreased organic reach on Social media websites and maybe the increased importance of high quality content on your website.

Blogging/SEO
Google Ads
Facebook Ads
Forum Marketing at scale
Banner Ads
YouTube Video Marketing

Sponsored ads on social media, with your website as landing page.

It depends on how long you have been away. If it is months, nothing has changed if it is decades, you need to update yourself. But the social media is getting more attention.

for me, after going through many blogs on traffic growth, Content marketing, blogging is the best tactic. I have seen a rapid increase in the traffic of my website after introducing quality content on my website.

What are you selling?

Content marketing or blogging. Nothing has really changed, provide valuable content and the traffic will come. It takes some time to get picked up in Google but you can get a headstart by participating in forums, sub-reddits, facebook groups, twitter, etc.

List building / email marketing still works!

I've been doing it for 19 years now and have no plan to ever stop.

Email is a distribution channel that no one can take away from you because you own the list (which is a real asset). Where most other channels you have no real control of because you're just a user of it.

It's hard to beat being able to drive your own traffic and follow up / promote additional offers at very little cost.

I agree with some other marketers , Email is definitely the way to go. Keep your copy sweet to the point and general. There are some different obstacles today then yesterday but take it with a grain of salt because it will pass.

I'm in the same boat as the OP. I've been away for the past 8 years or so but wanna get back into it. Blogging was my thing and I was mildly successful at it. This was without knowing anything about SEO or any of the other marketing tactics. I simply put out content, Google somehow picked it up, people shared, I posted on forums and my traffic came that way. I had no idea what I was doing outside of writing articles. My goal is to get back into it, creating niche blogs this time, but to do it the right way this time. My only concern is that video content may be a barrier. Someone may reasonably suggest that I create videos too but I don't think that getting in front of a camera is my thing. What do you guys suggest?

My apologies if it seems like I'm trying to hijack the OP's thread. I'm in the same predicament and figured I'd ask here instead of creating a new thread asking the same question.

Hey him77,

Email marketing still works for quite a lot of reasons. It all depends on the server/software that you use for promotion lands your email into spam or inbox. that's the deal-breaker.

You shall observe that even all big companies like amazon, zomato and other aggregator and e-commerce companies use emails for marketing, why do you think that you should not be using it.

Let me know in case you are looking fro further assistance with the same.

Make sure your website is responsive and user friendly. Distribute your most important keywords across all your web pages. Try to use long tail keywords. And pay attention to your website speed as well. Make sure your webpages are optimized for SEO rich content. Internal linking also plays a major role in driving website traffic. Give a shot to guest blogging, and invite others to guest blog on your website.

It depends on what stage you're at with your business and your niche. The most effective in terms of driving and converting traffic is email marketing. If you have a list with previous buyers, then pretty much whatever you market to them will get sold. You control the list, and the people trust you. This really is a HUGE asset to have. But obviously it's not available in the early stages of your business.

If you're just starting out and you have some capital to spend, then sponsored ads on social media (Facebook, Instagram) will get you traffic if you hit the sweetspot. You have to test out different pain-points and different headlines until you get it right, but you know you have it once your CTR reaches 4-5%+.

If you don't have much capital to spend, getting in touch with your target market directly (often on forums for B2C and via cold email / telemarketing for B2B) is the way to go. This has the added advantage that you'll be able to tailor your product/service to the market directly, and you'll get lots of feedback even if your sales don't pick up immediately.

And finally but not least, content remains king and it's the most effective way to gain people's trust. So have highly valuable content on your website - it will make people trust you and get to know your business better. Overtime you can work to get links to your content, and start ranking higher on Google (depending on your niche this can be a quick or slow process), and you can get organic traffic too.

So depending on your capital, I would say to focus on social media ads, direct marketing (forums, cold email/calls), and blogging/SEO in the beginning, with the end-goal of building an email list

One of the fastest ways to drive traffic to your eCommerce site is to pay for it. Luckily, even those on a limited budget can afford to pay for some advertising using Google AdWords.

It's the same question i ask myself. But i noticed that social media takes the attention. Create valuable content and post your social media pages and you will get followers. From there your mail list will definitely produce results.

yes email list building still working, but it's now many others methods have been introduce for generating your website traffic. you can create link building and other follow some others ways.

link building (Blog commenting)
Article writing
key word searching (use key word in your Article which often use in google search engine)
Directory submissions (it's rank your blog)
Book Marking
video posting
add posting
there is lots of way to generate your traffic.

The major traffic generators are YouTube, Craigslist and Instagram. For paid traffic I recommend Google Adwords, Quora Ads, Reddit Ads, LinkedIn Ads.

Don't use ads it will bring you fake traffic. the worst company calls propeller

Something hasn't changed and that is original content, blogging and social media.

Only invest in paid media such as Google PPC

Good luck!

Also, forgot to add that with legalisation of cannabis in some states in the US, topics on pot will earn you more bucks.

I think paid traffic is working best. I am cautious to say this because it took time to figure out what worked and what doesn't. Its quick, painless and great ROI when done right. Banner advertising is good as well because its cheap and very targeted. use good tracking if you can, make sure your content or product is highly intriguing and interesting (useful etc) and it should come back hundredfold because the more eyeballs you get the more money you will receive. Of course organic traffic is always good to get into first if you can find the time because your able to figure out your competition and leap frog them with FREE targeted traffic on various keywords. So a nice mix is always good however don't get bogged down with SEO because of the swings that may occur with your rankings. One day your on page 1 Google and the next your on page 50 with no explanation.

Commenting on other youtube videos can send stampedes of targeted traffic.

If your comment gets ranked.

Email lists are still a huge aspect. I think they've only grown over the years.


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I myself would go back in a time machine and kick my own ass for not building a buyers list. Actually for not nurturing the buyers list I had already created.

If you have value to offer it is selfish not to share with a buyers list.

* Not a Freebie Seekers List......yes its cool to offer a freebie incentive then a low cost paid.

Keep it real with yourself and your lists you are here to help and also keep the lights on. Bills got to get paid.

Just go out of your way to separate yourself from the pack and have people actually looking forward to hear from you.

Good contents is still king and my guess is, it will remain so for a long time. Social media also very important but note that people visit say face book not to buy but to link up with friends so you have to know how to position yourself on Social media to enable you get traffic back to your site.

Writing high quality content seems to be the go to strategy now for increasing web traffic and generating more leads that end with more conversions in sales. Four blogs post a month will definitely give you the boost in traffic that you looking for assuming you narrow down what exactly is the user trying to accomplish when they search a particular keyword. How can you solve a real world problem and inform the user in words they understand. Create valuable pages and post that are actionable to the end user. Video marketing is trending now that more people are turning to how to videos to learn more information on a specific topic. Create a google my business page and optimize it for users and search engines. Add your website to major ciatation listings like Yelp, bing, google, angie's list, and merchant circle.

List-building still works. However, as I Gmail user, when I look under my "Promotions" tab, I see that practically every email newsletter that I'm subscribed to ends up there. Since a lot of people, like me, don't check their Promotions tab very frequently, that does cut down on the effectiveness of email.

I generate a lot of traffic via affiliates. I also find using paid traffic is very cost effective since I place a fairly high value on my time.

Some of my most responsive traffic comes from people who tune into podcast that I'm interviewed on, or Facebook livestreams. Those two just allow people to connect with you on what feels like a more personal level, so naturally they are going to respond better.

All of the methods that worked 15 years ago still work, but many are not as efficient.

More and more people are turning to Social Media that they don't even care having a website for their business anymore. Social media is big hit specially Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. YouTube is also on its top form being 2nd to Google in traffic volume.

Most of the things are covered by Warriors here, and if I could add few points, then these are related to high quality blogging platforms. Guest posting, blogging have increased these days and you should make use of them to generate traffic fast. Sponsored ads, email lists etc are shortcuts and would lead to more rejections than acceptance. It's better to let clients come to you instead of going to them and see your profile in spam.

It's all the same... Same old Google ads, FB ads, etc. but we need to be aware of few updates and some new tools and regulations.

In addition to old school methods, I can mention Reddit and Quora

Ranking your website on the first page of Google for 10-20 low-medium competition keywords that have a healthy monthly search volume will bring in targeted traffic quickly. If your website is relatively new and you are targeting very competitive keywords, the process will take much longer. However, a nice strategy is to target a bunch of "low hanging fruit" to have a cumulative traffic flow into your site.

Another great source of traffic is Quora. If you have a passion about a certain area and like to answer questions, then you can get a good amount of highly targeted traffic from there as well.

Some top affiliates do build their list and are doing really well and for other top affiliates, list building does not work.

The key here is to test all things yourself and see what works for you and what doesn't.

Almost everything works great , just you need to adopt new trends .
SEO
Social media
Paid Traffic
Product Creation
Email marketing

all of above works well if you execute them properly.

Now its more about value and less about spamming
I think evrything works if you help people .In my case youtube marketing works very well ,but now its not working the short low quality videos that were made only to put an affiliate link ,you need to deliver long quality videos who bring a lot of value .The same its with the blog ,the only thing its you need to have patience work hard .Email marketing its not dead just as time pass you cannot make people to buy so easy you have a lot of competition you you need to be the best as you can and to make people trust you .

Fresh and relevant content from time-to-time.
No unnecessary clutter on the website.
Call to action to take a step towards coming back to your website.
These three things are more than enough.

Mostly SEO-rich content. Social Media use too is relevant, but mostly SEO.

I've found that the biggest factor of all is TRUST. Customers still prefer to buy to whom they know even if it is more expensive or has lesser quality. Constant engagement is one of the best moves to gain their trust. Same is true with email marketing, they only open emails from the sources they know or have past engagement with.

Was about to ask similar question.
I will lose my offline job soon, but will get severance payment.
I was doing IM about 10 years ago (SEO, paid ads on some ad networks other than Google etc).

How much do I need to start out again let's say on FB Ads, promoting offers from aff network like MaxBounty?

Will $1000 enough to get started again (testing, etc)?

Thank you.

I prefer SEO for long run..there's nothing good for short run.

thing changed, But I highly recommend you start a blog in just 3 months blogging and Pinterest you can get a crazy amount of views and good backlinks, email marketing still work properly.
I use ahrefs or ubersuggest to find a low competitive keyword with more than 1000 searches a month and I write good 1500-2000 words article based on 3 keywords and in just 7 days I rank easily on google, how you can do this

step 1
goo to google search for ex: how lose weight in a week

step 2
copy the first 5 sites that appear on first 1 to 5 position on page 1(note do not copy promotional ads copy organic rank sites)

step 3

post the site URL on ubersuggest or ahrefs and look or organic keywords that these sites rank for
step 4
filter the keywords to
search: 500+
competition: low than 7

and finally find these keywords write a good and best article with 1500-2000 words
thanks

Social media is a required platform and must in increasing huge amounts of traffic to your website.
Other than that concentrate on OFF page Seo for decent traffic.

I recommend SEO. By getting your website ranked on the first page of Google for buyer keywords (for example: Your Product Keyword + Review, or "Buy + Your Product Keyword), your site will receive highly targeted traffic (as compared to social media), because people are ready to buy and actively searching for the product. With highly targeted traffic, coversions are likely.

Youtube is a big thing, so is facebook. I'm just talking about using each platform for free. Go where people are, and they're on these two sites.

I know marketers that just use these two platforms alone for almost all their traffic, and they're not paying a dime. So it does work, if you eventually build up an audience. It takes time. I'm not really into video marketing, I don't really care for facebook very much.

I just enjoy blogging and still believe in SEO.

It's probably best to start a blog, be on youtube and facebook promoting your blog so you get a lot of organic traffic.

SEO still works great, it just requires better quality and less stuffing on random terms. Search engines get smarter and more human-like so tricks that used to make you bank will make you bust.

I would get into doing reviews on Youtube or upload value-based videos and include in the description your website links. Email marketing will ALWAYS work when it's done right.