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How to Grab More Visitors
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Internet,
Part 1 of 3

I assume you already have web hosting, or else you wouldn't be here. (If not, here's what I use: iPower.com. Another one I've used for clients is the top-rated JustHost service - both let you create a WordPress blog, use templates to create your website or code your own, set up an email autoresponder, and much more.) But a pretty website isn't enough: a nice store-front won't do anything unless you advertise for customers and get them to come through your doors. Don't let them just go "window-shopping" past your display windows! You need to "grab" more visitors to your website, that is, attract interested customers, then win and keep them as clients in long-term business relationships. I'd like to show you how to be a "hitchhiker" - how to "catch a ride" using many of the free services you can find on the Internet.

The Internet is a worldwide marketplace with well over one billion potential customers looking for all sorts of things, and you want to get your piece of this huge pie. Getting your share of this enormous worldwide marketplace requires a re-thinking of the way we sell our goods and services. It's a completely new paradigm: it means we must change our focus from just our local town or city, to the whole world: computer specialists in India, Russia and elsewhere are finding clients in North America and Western Europe, so why can't you find clients all over the world?

This new paradigm is called "Inbound Marketing" - this means customers come looking for you instead of you going out looking for them. On average, old-fashioned "Outbound Marketing" costs $70 to aquire a customer by direct mail, or $60 by email. In contrast, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) "Inbound Marketing" can gain a customer for about $8.50, says Google. But I'm going to show you how to do it for much less, even for free!

Yes, you can do it with no cash outlay, but it will take some REAL WORK on your part. Maybe you've checked out a website or two (or more!) that promise mega-bucks rolling in, if you simply pay $47 or $77 or $97 for their series of eBooks - I've been there, done that too: it's a waste of your hard-earned money! But I've come across just a few people who offer more "help" than "hype," and I want to give you a few of their free eBooks. They will take some time to read, so here is my short, "Reader's Digest" condensed version of the process:

  1. Increase your own website's "visibility" on the Web.
  2. Create free local business listings.
  3. Post messages on your own blogs.
  4. Post comments on other blogs to get some free daily traffic.
  5. Use simple graphics to make text-like image ads.
  6. Get your site highly ranked very quickly on the search engines.
  7. Begin a daily schedule for promoting your website.

FIRST: To increase your own website's "visibility" on the Web, download and install the free version of Web CEO and use it to find good keywords to optimize your web pages, then use it to edit your webpages and submit your site to the search engines for in-depth, long-term listings. It will take the search engines anywhere from a couple weeks to a few months to index your website, but you need to have good keywords and optimized web pages before you submit your site to the search engines. Website creation and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) account for only 20% or so of eventual customers, but you absolutely must do this first as a foundation for the following steps.

Here's your first free eBook: how to build a website - 24hrWebpageGuru.pdf. Riley, the author, explains how to use Godaddy.com to set up websites for just $2 each! Note: the free "Nvu" webpage editor he mentions has been updated and renamed as "KompoZer" with the same look-and-feel, only better: http://kompozer.net/ (also free). For the first 4-5 months, though, my website was only getting about 100-150 page views per month: I needed traffic!

SECOND: Create free local business listings with Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines:
http://www.google.com/local/add/businessCenter
https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
http://local.yahoo.com/

You can also list your business locally at Angie's List (www.angieslist.com) for a small annual fee, where customers can find you, use your services, and then provide recommendations. And you should also consider Craig's List. To get even more links to your website, get the free Directory Submitter program to submit your website to hundreds of link directories. In addition, I'm sure your city has local business websites or blogs that you can join to make your business known in town. More about blogs a bit later....

For a great summary of Inbound Marketing, get your second free eBook: State_of_Inbound_Marketing.pdf - you'll see how it describes "SEO," "websites," "article campaigns," "blogs" and "social media" as the most important ways to gain customers. "Email" is low on their list, unless you use email for follow-up of people who have requested an eBook or other free offer: we send out our CNN-News to keep reminding our contacts about our services (it turns one-time customers into long-term clients), but for "cold" leads it's more expensive, time-consuming and not as effective as these other methods for gaining new clients. But you can get a free autoresponder just by registering at LeadsLeap that can help you build your mailing list: if you know a little about Linux website servers, you can install it yourself. But if you'd rather pay to have it set up for you and ready to go, try AWeber Autoresponder Service. Now... let's shift our focus to the whole wide world....

THIRD: Next, create your own blogs, and promote your services by posting your own articles on these blogging sites, like I do. Make at least one keyword bold in your blog articles. You want to post your website address on as many places as possible, to get backlinks to your site. But link some of your blog articles to your other blogs as well, to give them higher page ranking.

You can add a page to your website that lists your blogs, as I've done on my website: Our Blogs - this welcomes new content from visitors and gives you the opportunity to meet other bloggers with similar interests, so you can post comments on their blogs too. Also, Google Blog Search will help you find other blogs related to your website's content.

FOURTH:

Another extremely valuable free tool is Comment Kahuna that helps you find and post comments to relevant blogs. Think of new keywords to search for (such as different target audiences as well as different subjects), and you'll find literally hundreds of blogs that might be suitable places to post your remarks. Caution: use this tool wisely - choose the blogs where you want to post something, use the "Comments" box in the program only for your signature line, and then make intelligent comments above your signature. Don't just "spam" hundreds of other people's blogs with your website links: once your website and email address get listed as a spam source, you'll wreck your online reputation. Aim at posting 8-10 meaningful comments every day or two on relevant blogs, and in a few weeks you'll begin seeing those big traffic numbers!

FIFTH: If you want to get a little fancier, find a simple graphic like this STOP sign, copy it into Windows Paint, and make yourself a banner ad: simply type your desired text into Paint, save it as a *.jpg or a *.gif file, and place it in your blogs with a link to your website. This ad took me under 30 minutes to make --

CompuNerds.Net - A Worldwide Network of Computer Nerds

You can use it like I've done on my "Stop Clicking" page, which costs nothing except your time, but it adds a professional look to your webpage. Or...

...here's a little-known advertising trick: Content networks are places like blogs and websites ("content") that get paid for letting Google AdSense host other companies' ads. But because most advertisers place their ads on search networks like Google's search page using AdWords, content networks like AdSense are starved for ads. And these content networks are even more starved for banner (image) ads. What does this mean? It's the least expensive form of paid advertising! And if you make your image ad look like a text ad, more people will read it than those old-fashioned flashy, multi-colored, in-your-face banner ads. See how our ad looks like a text ad, but with an eye-catching graphic?

So sign up for Google AdSense (not AdWords!), carefully choose your keywords, your market demographics (such as United States, male, age 20-40), and the amount you want to spend, and you can often place these ads for a few cents per click-through. Google AdWords can cost $4.00 to $8.50 and up (I know - been there, done that!), but AdSense image (banner) ads can have just as high CTR and cost much less. For example, if you spend $100 on AdWords for 25 click-throughs at $4 each to gain one customer for a sale of $75, you have a net loss of $25. But if you spend that same $100 for 250 AdSense ads at $0.40 each to gain 10 customers for 10 sales averaging $75, you've made a profit of $650.

For your third free eBook, here's 24hrWordpressGuru.pdf that describes exactly how to set up a WordPress blog on your own site.

SIXTH: To get your site highly ranked very quickly on the search engines after you've created good keywords and optimized your web pages, here's what you need to do: carefully read and follow the instructions on my Article Marketing webpage. This is central to your success! It's so important, I've set it up as a page by itself.

On that page, I list 12 article directories - I don't want to overload you with the hundreds of article directories that exist, but these 12 are some of the best, and will get you started. Now here's your fourth free eBook: step-by-step instructions on how to write and submit your first articles - 24hrArticleGuru.pdf.

SEVENTH: In conclusion, each of the above steps will take about a day to set up: that's your first week in grabbing visitors. It took me 5-6 months to claw my way past all the scams and hype on the Internet, and finally come up with the above six steps. But when you've got them all set up, it's time to take the seventh step: begin a daily schedule for promoting your website, make it realistic, and then stick to it. Are you willing to work 2 hours a day to generate a full-time income? Here's a suggested schedule --

Monday: a) Use CommentKahuna to find a few relevant blogs and post some meaningful comments for 60 minutes.
    b) Go to a blog or two for local businesses in your city, and reply to some posts (60 min.).

Tuesday: a) Use CommentKahuna to post comments on other blogs (60 min.).
    b) "Spin" an article and submit it to 10-12 article directories, then auto-submit to 100s of others (60 min.).

Wednesday: a) Use CommentKahuna to post comments on other blogs (60 min.).
    b) Go to your own blogs and post some quick updates or "spun" articles (60 min.).

Thursday: a) "Spin" an article, submit it to 10-12 article directories, then auto-submit to 100s of others (60 min.).
    b) Make an "image" ad and rotate it on your "manual traffic" websites, or use AdSense (60 min.).

Friday: a) Use CommentKahuna to post comments on other blogs (60 min.).
    b) Go to your own blogs and post some quick updates or "spun" articles (60 min.).

Saturday: a) Go to a blog or two for local businesses in your city, and reply to some posts (60 min.).
    b) "Spin" an article and submit it to 10-12 article directories, then auto-submit to 100s of others (60 min.).

Perhaps you've heard the old adage, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time!" Simply put in two hours each day to build your website traffic. By the end of the first month you'll have hundreds of visitors, and you'll begin to see some "conversions" - sales of your products or services. At the end of each following month, it will grow more and more, to the thousands of visitors! Track your results: make a simple spreadsheet to see how many page views and new visitors you receive per day, which target pages work best, etc. This way you'll be able to improve your ad text and images, test new webpages, and so forth.

By optimizing your own website for the search engines, submitting your site to these engines, writing articles, listing your business on various networks, blogging about your business, using traffic exchanges, and creating text-like image ads for advertising with Google Adsense and similar networks, you'll be reaping the biggest benefit for yourself but you'll also be helping all the rest of us in Our Network. The more links we make to each other - this can be hundreds or thousands of links - the more website visitors and real customers we'll all get. Now go to...

>> Article Marketing, Part 2 of The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Internet

Phone: 608-692-0439   |   Skype me!   |   E-mail: CompuNerd.007@CompuNerds.Net

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