How to Get Traffic - My System

How do I get traffic to my blog or website?

This is easily the most asked question I get. Today I am going to reveal my system and if you're serious about marketing online you will go get a cup of coffee, turn off your cell phone and take a few notes.

Before I start I want you to read a letter I got yesterday from one of my readers who wants to know how I get an insane amount of articles downloaded on the article directories I use. I'm posting the letter because it relates directly to how I get traffic.

Hi Grizzly,

I have noticed that you are one of the most downloaded authors on several article directories I use. I have been posting articles for ages and I usually get 50 - 100 downloads per article and usually a lot less. You get 1000's of downloads and if you don't mind me asking, how do you do this? I promise to keep this to myself and only ask because you seem genuine about helping people online. If I can do anything in return just ask. Thanks in advance.

Jeff N.
New Zealand

Jeff is not the first person to ask and I have held off answering this until now because let's face it - this is one of those things that internet marketers tend to keep quite about. Traffic is the most important part of an online business - no traffic = no sales.

Quite frankly I have kept quiet because I don't want competition and until a few months ago I wouldn't have dreamed of telling others how I do things. I now have a secret weapon that has made the point moot because I know most people who read this will not do what I do. You will do half of my system (the free part) which does work on it's own but not the half that costs a few bucks and sends me traffic in hordes.

Before we go any farther I want you to check out one of the article directories I use just to see my results so that you know I'm not blowing smoke up your kiester.

Here is my home page at GoArticles. (It opens in a new tab or window as do all the links on this page)

You will notice a steady increase in downloads since I started using the site. I have several homepages all under different names each corresponding to different niches I'm involved in. I use several different article directories and the results are similar in all of them. I won't show you the niche articles because they are my bread and butter and I have enough competition in them already.

How to Get Traffic

Step One.

This costs nothing and will bring you a decent amount of traffic on its own.

I have said this before and I will say this again... Write an article. Optimize the article for the keyword you want targeted. Now write a second article - different content but with the same subject and same keywords. Post one article on your blog or website. Post the second article on any of the following sites with a link back to your main article on your site;

Yahoo Answers.

Squidoo.

Netscape.

Article Directories like GoArticles or Ezine Articles.

If you are really ambitious then write several different articles and post one to each of the sites listed above. This will only increase your traffic.

OK, I have left out a few steps.

You have to sign up to these sites. They are all free to join.

Yahoo Answers

With Yahoo Answers you need two accounts under different names. The first account you use to post questions if you can't find one already posted that applies to your keyword.

Example - "Has Anyone heard about Project Payday?"

The second account is used to answer your own question. This is where you post your second article (with the link to your site ). This article shouldn't look like an article so modify it to look like an answer to someone's question and give just enough info to get the reader to click your link in order to find out more.

Note: I have simplified this greatly and I recommend that you download this free report. How To Make Money With Yahoo Answers This will explain what to do and how to do it.

Yahoo answers has a lot of readers and if you give the best answer to a question you will get a fair amount of traffic. Better yet - Google loves Yahoo Answers and tends to rank it high in the search engine results pages (SERP's), usually on the first page which will get you more traffic when people are searching for your keyword.

In effect you aren't trying to get your site listed high in the SERP's but rather you use a site that does get high listings by placing your link on it for all to see.

Like this: What do you think about "Project Payday"?

Google Project Payday and look at who sits in the third position on page 1. That's right - Yahoo Answers.

If you go down to the ninth position you will see my blog and the second spot is occupied by a forum "whydowork.com" which also has a link to my site in the thread on Project Payday. Ultimately anyone looking for info on this program has a 3 in 10 chance of finding my blog on page 1 of the Google results. This is how you get traffic.

Some additional benefits.

Yahoo Answers has a PageRank of 9. That's huge. The page your answer is on won't have a PR but it is linked to the PR9 homepage which means that the search engine bots will find your page instantly. This is because they crawl the home page hundreds of times daily and follow all the links on it thereby indexing everything daily - including your page which links to your site. This is how you can get a new blog or website indexed immediately. (Write that down)

Squidoo

Join up and start a lens (your page) optimized for your keyword or in simple terms post your second article (with a link pointing to your blog or website) on your Squidoo page. Squidoo has a PageRank of 6 and is also highly ranked by the search engines. Once again you will find the Squidoo page ranked high for your keyword in the SERP's and anyone clicking on it will be directed back to your site. This will also get you indexed fast.

I won't show you my Squidoo pages as they point to my niche sites but you have no doubt seen lots of high ranking Squidoo pages in the SERP's and know how effective they are at ranking high.

Netscape

You'll notice that there is a "Submit to Netscape" ( OK some genius has changed the name to "propeller"... sheesh.) link at the bottom of this post. I regularly submit my posts to it. Like Yahoo Answers and Squidoo, Netscape gets high rankings in the SERP's. After posting your article in your blog submit it to netscape and see what happens. Don't be surprised if you start receiving traffic from the search engines from people who click on the Netscape post.

This also works for lots of the social bookmarking sites as well (digg, delicious, facebook etc) but Netscape is by far the best ranking site of the bunch. Keep in mind that you should avoid spammy articles or sales pitches when submitting to Netscape. Write your posts as news or information pieces to get the results you want.

Article Submission Directories.

There are a lot of article submission sites but stick with GoArticles or Ezine Articles as they rank best in the search engines.

Google Instant Money Vault

Google ranks the GoArticles post number 2 on page one. Click on it and it takes you to my article. How much traffic has this brought me? Go back to the top of this page and check out my GoArticles homepage - I'll save you time - it's been downloaded (viewed) over 4800 times as of this writing. I posted the article in May and it still brings me 20 - 30 visitors a day.

Notice as well the there is an Ezine Article post in the number 7 spot on Google's page 1. My blog isn't anywhere to be seen for this term and yet I get lots of traffic for it.

As I said earlier - it's easier to get a link on high ranking sites for your keywords than it is to get your own site or blog ranked high.

You don't need a high PR or lots of backlinks to get traffic. You just need to get a few well placed links on those sites that always rank high in the SERP's. While there are lots of sites like the ones I have mentioned I have found that these 5 tend to produce the best results. Keep in mind that the examples I have shown are for highly competitive keywords in a highly competitive niche ie. Internet Marketing and I have managed to do quite well.

Now if I could show you the results of my less competitive niche sites you would be astounded. In almost every case I have the top spot on Google for my primary keywords using these third party sites. I don't have to spend time getting backlinks, working on SEO or even creating lots of pages on my sites. I simply write a few articles and get them on the right pages and let the third party sites do all the work and wait for the traffic.

The best part is that if you pick popular topics you will keep getting traffic for something you did months ago. The Project Payday post on Yahoo Answers took me 10 minutes to do over 7 months ago and I still get 50 or more visitors a day from it.

Yes... it is that easy.

One last thing before I move on to Part Two. I didn't give an example for Netscape above as I wanted to save that for last.

Google Backlink Solutions

As of this writing this blog occupies positions 3 and 4 while Netscape holds down spots 6 and 8, GoArticles has position 9 and another third party site - Google Groups - holds down the 7th spot. This means that 6 of the 10 spots on page 1 all point directly or indirectly back to my blog. How sweet is that?

I wanted to leave this example for last because I used Backlink Solutions to accomplish this 6 out of 10 listing. This is the secret weapon I mentioned above.

Part Two

Backlink Solutions

(Note: This is an affiliate link - you can either give me a commission or give all the money to the site - unlike clickbank you can't get an affiliate ID until after you join. Since you can't save any money I have no problem adding my link. The choice is yours if you would rather give all your money to the owners. The program has added new High PR blogs to the system as of Jan 2008 and I am recommending them again.)

OK, before reading any farther I want to mention that this will cost you a monthly membership to Backlink Solutions. If you don't have the money don't panic. You can achieve everything I have shown you above just by doing what I showed you and it costs nothing. The one exception is the results for the keyword search for Backlink Solutions. To get so many links on the first page of Google I submitted my articles as outlined above and then took things a bit farther - I posted several links to all of those pages listed (My Blog, Netscape, Google Groups and GoArticles) from my PR5 and PR4 blogs at Backlink Solutions.

Let me explain this. ( If you are not familiar with Backlink Solutions see my previous posts here)

Basically I added juice to these already high PR third party sites by giving their low PR page (containing my article and link) a boost by linking to them from several high PR blogs that contained the proper anchor text ie. "Backlink Solutions". In essence I made sure that Google would rank all these third party sites high because several other high ranking sites had backlinks to the articles contained on their pages.

How effective is this technique. Well aside from all the page 1 spots on Google go back and check how many times my article has been downloaded on GoArticles (over 30,000 times). A huge increase to say the least.

This my friends is how to get serious traffic.

I can't stress this enough - if you are serious about making some real money on the net then do what I have outlined in Part 1 and when you are ready to move to the next step sign up with Backlink Solutions and start collecting the most useful links.

I wanted to mention another technique I use but as this post is getting epic I think I will wait till next time. You have enough to get started with at the moment so take my advice - start writing articles.

Till next time,

Grizzly