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A question about traffic generation

by Mr. Enthusiastic
10 replies
I'm writing to ask about experiences Warriors have had driving traffic through promotional content items, such as:
Videos on Youtube and Video
Audio podcasts on iTunes and BlogTalkRadio
Documents on Scribd
Blogs
Articles on article directories

These items are intended to:
* be easily found in search engines and other popular, high-PR sites
* attract attention of people interested in the subject
* demonstrate expertise or coolness
* get visitors to click over to a target site

The most recent statistics I've seen about these types of promotions comes from a year ago. At that time, people were finding that if they picked reasonably active keywords, and had reasonably good material, they got an average of a visitor a day from each of these items.

Is that still current?
Is the average now better than a visitor a day per item, because more people are spending more time on the Internet?
Is the average now worse than that, because the competition is more intense?

What's the current word about this, early in 2010?

Thanks!
Chris
#generation #question #traffic
  • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
    I've only done a few youtube videos (nothing to do with IM) but what I find is that articles will bring some traffic but it's short lived, they quickly dissappear into the wilderness unless you keep backlinking them. The difference with youtube I have found is that over time the traffic actually increases and is still growing after a year or more.

    I guess if you are in an evergreen niche and you put out a decent video that grabs some 5 star votes then it will keep getting better. I haven't done enough to say that's guaranteed but it's looking that way for me. the hard part is finding the time to make quality informative videos.
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  • Profile picture of the author rajput441
    well I think, the traffic from search engines are evergreen traffic no matter how the demo-graphs of internet changes u can bring targeted visitors to ur page and make some money.
    As far as my experience youtube traffic is also useful but the conversion ratio for some of campaigns was nt good.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mr. Enthusiastic
    Thanks folks.

    Wilson, do you find that the "visitor a day" rule works for your videos? Or does it take a while to build up to that level of traffic?

    Raj, did you find the same thing as Wilson: things other than videos just dropped off after a while?

    Anyone else?
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    • Profile picture of the author Lee Wilson
      Not sure if this is exactly what you're asking but here's my stats for two videos, most of the traffic is coming from just one of them.

      Visits to my site:
      sep - 10
      oct - 14
      nov - 30
      dec - 53
      jan - 87
      feb - 134
      mar - 145
      apr - 173
      may - 206
      jun - 115
      jul - 158
      aug - 168
      sep - 125
      oct - 227
      nov - 219
      dec - 216
      jan - 228
      feb so far - 101

      I haven't done any backlinking for the videos, just threw them up and forgot them. My guess is most of the traffic to those videos are coming directly from youtube search, they are both five star rated and I think that pushes them up in the search a bit. Ive had a total of 47.726 views on the two videos combined. Neither of them are sales pitches of any kind, just two five minute lessons for the guitar niche so that might make a difference.
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      • Profile picture of the author Joe118
        I find that doing backlinking of all the promotional stuff I put out is critical. That way e.g. my articles do not disappear into oblivion, rather they stay on page 1 on google.

        Videos do tend to bring more traffic than articles, as mentioned above. Especially youtube. Youtube is not the #2 search engine on the net after Google.
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  • Profile picture of the author mlord10
    In all reality it is impossible to put a concrete figure on traffic generation. I use article marketing as one of the main pillars for my marketing campaigns, and it is impossible to put a number on how many website visitors an article will bring you on average per month.

    My suggestion is to pick one of the above methods and test it. Just make sure to find some keywords that are highly targeted, yet do not have a lot of strong competition on the first page of Google. If you are seeing a lot of articles or inner pages ranking high, then chances are you can rank for that term with a quality article and some backlinking.

    A good article will bring much more than one visitor per day to your website, that I can assure you.
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  • Profile picture of the author Mr. Enthusiastic
    Wilson, that's very helpful. I imagine it's encouraging to see all the growth over time without your having to do anything more!

    Joe and Matthew, thanks for the strategy suggestions. Yes, I do plan to test, of course! Just wanted to get a feel for what is working well for other folks these days. Obviously the niche and the quality of my presentation are critical factors.

    I see several threads about backlinking, but I don't know if there's an all in one guide to backlinking strategies ... other than lists of article directories to use.
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    • Profile picture of the author wolverine1971
      When I start a site I write a lot of Ezines to get several quick hits to my site to see if it is converting. I've been able to generate as many as 100+ hits in a single day off of 5 fresh Ezines and then that traffic drops so I have really been a fan of getting ranked in the top 3 on a few keywords really quickly because that traffic is consistent and sticks everyday.

      The method I have been using now is simply writing 2 Ezines, spinning them and submitting to Free Traffic System. The Ezines generate immediate hits and the blog submittals through FTS are what make my keyword rankings skyrocket. Do that for 30 days and you will then see consistent Google traffic. It's nice to be able to take a week off of article writing and still see nice traffic.

      Backlinking the articles does help them have more longevity for traffic and if you do it right you can get your own site in the top 3 and a couple articles on page 1 also which push your competition off of page 1 ensuring you get more of the traffic overall.
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      • Profile picture of the author vicone
        I see several threads about backlinking, but I don't know if there's an all in one guide to backlinking strategies ... other than lists of article directories to use.
        There are some excellent works around that go into backlinking strategies in depth.

        I find that a simple technique using articles is to submit each article to about 30 directories. This can be done very quickly. However, I make sure that the article which is submitted to these directories is different from the one which appears on my website. The article the directories receive contains useful information but is designed to 'whet the appetite' and arouse curiosity for more, which is contained in the version of the article on my website.

        The article sent to directories can also be re-purposed and converted into a video, again sending visitors to the more complete article (or a sales page) on my website.

        As well, since the article the directories receive contains two links in the resource box, one of them goes to my website and the other backlinks the article lodged with EA.

        By submitting to about 30 article directories, I can quickly get 30 backlinks to the article on my website as well as the article on EA, boosting both with the search engines.

        The article on the website also receives backlinks from the videos and other promotions, to strengthen the ranking and authority of the website.

        Ivan
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  • Profile picture of the author Mr. Enthusiastic
    I'm off to bed soon so I'll respond to any further posts tomorrow. I guess it would help if I asked the question behind the question, which is:

    What's a great strategy to do a massive one-week free promotional push, to see if a site concept is likely to work?

    My current plan is to post about 20 items a day, about 100 in the course of the week. With the "visit a day per item" rule of thumb, that should give me a few hundred visitors in the second week. If I don't get at least a few responses, then the idea's a dud and has to be reworked or scrapped. For those posts, my plan is to use 350 to 500 word articles. I can record myself reading them, add Powerpoint slides and there's the Youtube version off the same article that goes to the directory.

    Thanks again guys and I'll check back tomorrow.
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