I know this question has been asked about a 1000 times. But I still don't get it. I do adult sites too, and getting decent traffic is simple. So what I'm asking is, how do I get targeted traffic? Targeted traffic is traffic that is targeted toward your niche. For example, the person coming to your "body building" site is interested in body building, that would be targeted. Let's see what I've tried. I've submitted to directories directories directories. I know this is more for backlinks then traffic, but it's another dead source. Stumbleupon brings traffic, but it's useless untargeted traffic. Submitting articles. What a WASTE OF TIME! You have to go to the site, take an article and edit it enough so spiders don't think it's duplicate content, and when you're done, you end up getting no hits. Yippie. Content is king. I write quality content and yeah, google sends me hits, but I need more then 10 hits a day. Blog carnivals. Probably grossed a lifetime total of 20hits from this. Topsites. I decided to make a doorway page to my site, line it with topsites and see what would happen. Crap as usual. Digg. Digg is probably decent, but most of digg is politics and tech crap, which I don't do. The users are pretty advanced too, so they know how to avoid ads while eating up your bandwidth. Let's see, what else, what else, Technariti - crap. blog commenting on related niche sites, crap. blog commenting on follow sites, crap. signing up at a bunch of related niche forums and putting my site in the sig. Crap. Probably yield a massive 10 hits a month. hmmm, I know I'm forgetting something. Don't read this as a negative bashing or anything. read it as a frustrated guy. Maybe I'm having trouble moving from adult to PG sites. Now I have to work an hour to get a few targeted hits. Before I worked an hour and could get 1k, 5k, 10k(whatever I want) of targeted traffic. Basically it's a question, How the hell do you guys do it?
Oh. In that case from what I've heard and read you gotta go the SEO way. A lot of it is just patience. On top of that you have to think how you can spread the word about your site AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. You say you have some killer content. Then try to 'hang around'(as in post frequently and throw in some links here and there) in blogs of the same niche that are POPULAR. You could also use some tools that are FREE to check out what the popular sites in your niche are doing.
adwords is not a good method, for example i own a affiliate forum and i will advertise it on related affiliate blogs and motivate at dp affiliate forum to get targetd traffic.
Nice looking forum. The lock logos on the side of every line makes it look as if every thread is locked though.
What is your URL? Get your friends, message board members, coworkers...to critique your articles before sending them out. You may think they are good, but they may very well not be. Forget this "duplicate content" crap. Changing articles around to avod getting a penalty is ridiculous. Screw it. Submit your articles to as many worthwhile content sites as you can. Maybe even Yahoo or MSN may take one or two??? "I've submitted to directories directories directories. I know this is more for backlinks then traffic, but it's another dead source." Yup! "Stumbleupon brings traffic, but it's useless untargeted traffic." Maybe they didn't like your site??? Maybe you can weed more of them out with more powerful submissions that do more targetting? "Blog carnivals. Probably grossed a lifetime total of 20hits from this." Yup! "Digg. Digg is probably decent, but most of digg is politics and tech crap, which I don't do. The users are pretty advanced too, so they know how to avoid ads while eating up your bandwidth." The trick is to don't make your submissions out to be ads. For starters, don't make your link live. Have them copy and paste it in the address window. "blog commenting on related niche sites, crap." Definitely! Thank you! "signing up at a bunch of related niche forums and putting my site in the sig. Crap. Probably yield a massive 10 hits a month." Definitely! Thank you! Although many do get much, much more than 10 hits a month, those last two have got to be the dumbest ways to advertise and promote one's site. "Basically it's a question, How the hell do you guys do it?" It is mostly one of the following or a combination of two or three. Articles, submisions, ads, and word of mouth. That's how the big sites did it. For the most part, that is. You HAVE to advertise! Seeing your URL, your articles, submissions and your ads may help us help you.
For me the best way to get targeted traffic is becoming a member in different forums of your niche. That will get people who are interested in your site.
Here's some information how I did it. Check it out as an example thread to get some ideas. I will give comments to your post now. Targeted traffic is traffic that is targeted toward your niche. For example, the person coming to your "body building" site is interested in body building, that would be targeted.[/quote] I'll answer this one last. Okay, directories give some decent backlinks... but it might be waste of time & money, in case you really want targeted traffic. Directories are something you can do once for your site and then forget. Stumbleupon can actually bring quite targeted traffic. Problogger and I believe Shoemoney (not 100% sure) made some posts in the past about these. Problogger mentioned stumbleupon for being the best traffic from social bookmarking sites. There might be people who have "body building" network in social sites, and they might invite their friends to check out their stuff - so it could be good. Also, depending on the social networking site, there can be more or less targeted categories (I believe there's "programming" in stumbleupon, which is pretty good). I have to disagree with this. Yaro Starak and Brian Clark made a very good article marketing guide which I really recommend you to read. With these tips, I'm sure you can improve the way you do article marketing - and get traffic. Be patient. Good things are worth waiting. More on this in the end. Heh, you have not picked the best carnivals. I really recommend you do a REALLY great article, proofread it, ask comments from your collegues - and then publish the article on your website. And then go through some *quality* carnival hosts. Remember to make sure that the carnivals are not just spam blogs, but are targeted to your site and have active visitors. Forget them. Or pick one quality topsite, and that's it. Ah... here's one thing. You aren't after targeted traffic. To me it looks like you are after *people who click a lot*. Targeted traffic could bring sales beyond ad clicks... such as affiliate sales, own products (ebooks etc.) If you just think "how to get people who will click more often" then... you aren't necessarily really after *targeted* traffic. Why? Because you might try to "trick" them to click. It's okay, and requires no work from you. Maybe you have not found the best blogs yet. How about searching more? Follow sites? You haven't found the right forums then. Instead of taking bunch of niche forums, how about taking one big forum where you spend much time in the next 6-9 months. I have been participating in some forums that even today bring a massive amount of traffic to my own site. Not to mention customers too. Don't pick several forums and do little... pick one forum where you really enjoy and go helping out people there (and forget the rewards). That will work. If you can get 1k-10k easily... then why you want to change that in the first place? If something works for you - why change? Here's the thing: help others, provide value, think how to make their lives better. Forget yourself - and concentrate on the customer. Think about your site and see if there's some stuff you could change to make the users benefit? Instead of asking: - how to get more traffic - how to get more clicks - how to get more sales You could ask: - how can I provide more value to my audience? - how can I improve my offering? - how can I help others? I'm sure you get the point.
Thanks for the replies everyone. Just a few things for game producer. With stumbleupon, people click a stumblebutton and randomly get my page. I call that untargeted. Digg is at least targeted since if the article says, Bodybuilding secrets and they click on it, they actually want to hear about it. And yes there is a degree of how smart users are towards ads. This is very big with adult sites. If I wanted too, I could get a million target hits a day from extremely smart users that don't click a single ad. Targeted traffic is good and all, but there are degrees of the types of users. It's not really change, it's expanding the empire I guess. I'll really try to implement your other points. Especially the one big forum instead of a bunch of them. I stand by my content. Step by Step guides for weightloss are always good. Thanks.
haha GP. You gave the very right answers. The way you looking for traffic my friend even when you say that you get huge traffic on your adult sites it looks like you aren't marketing the right way. Mostly adult sites do not need lots of marketing. Other niche sites do need that. Lets start .. If you think leaving comments on other blogs doesn't brings in traffic then you are wrong! If I leave good comments regularly in some blog than that blogger will get attracted (not physically ) towards me and will visit my blog to know who I am. Now your "good comments" might bring in few readers (that is what you call low traffic..right?) but believe me it is those readers who will subscribe to your feeds. Someone from Google search might not subscribe to your feeds because he came to your blog for something. He got the answer he was happy and he left. But the readers who came from other blogs by reading your valuable comment will subscribe to your feeds as they already are impressed by your writing skills. Who wont want good number of subscribers. And by chance that blogger writes about you (because you have been regular visitor/commenter) than you gonna get traffic plus many feed subscribers too. High amount of traffic isn't always the key. It is the less traffic which comes back in loops. You will love these dedicated readers. I hope I made the point clear. Two examples for you: Caroline once did her stat analysis where she mentioned how problogger was a good source of low but useful traffic for her blog. She received few subscribers from the people who came to her blog after reading her comments on problogger. To add juice to that Darren went on to write about this post indicating how commenting on other blogs could help and Caroline's blog received huge traffic and her feed subscribers jumped like anything. She herself said in another post of hers that she might not be able to repeat that again but she did cherished the moment and learned a lot. So you see commenting helps. And now after all that to leave a proof that I am not talking crap or copying things from other blogs. I am a regular reader of adii.co.za That is the only wp design blog which I read and except for last few posts I used to leave good comments on every post of his. (I was busy with exams in December so could not participate in his blog.) The result was that he liked few of my suggestions so much that he has promised me to give a free copy of his kineda theme (price $100) once its launched! I am a technical blogger and his is the only design blog which I read and I just love it. And you see I never expected any materialistic prizes from him. I wanted to learn from him so started commenting on his blog and here I am owner of a 100 bucks theme. Once again to add juice to that initially adii had once rejected my application to be part of his new wp magazine project as regular poster BUT that didn't upset me! And just to say that again I love his blog today! That was my reply just on your point that leaving comment might not help. Success wont come overnight. Wait for it. You will cherish these "less traffic" days in the time to come. I can go on to write and write as to what will bring in traffic but the last line will be what game producer wrote. Give give give and Google's punch line ... "Do No Evil" and remember The Genius Inside You Is Still Sleeping (That was my blog's punch line!) If after all this if you think I am little good at what I said than you might like to read the recent post of mine Is Anyone Reading Your “Quality†Blog Articles? It is summary of all what I learned in last one year of my blogging experience. Word hard dude. You are the best blogger on planet Internet. It is just that sun rises after dark. Wait for it. It will come because...you are the best Cheers..
hmm? Well, could be true. I suppose it depends from where exactly they came. True, and I cannot argue what works best. I simply heard that some bloggers got "better" traffic from other places than digg. Then why not offer them something else than ads? Products? Yeh, that's good thing. Perhaps you still might consider expanding inside your own playground? I'm sure there must be ways to monetize that traffic of yours - instead of need to learn new tricks. Glad to hear you got something out of this. Remember to report back how things go. Very well said - and good examples. Nice article by the way, good tips. Exactly.
One of the best ways to get extremely targeted traffic is to start with a direct navigation domain name. ie: pedalcars.com (not my domain) This may not be in everyone budget, but it brings traffic from sources that want to bypass search engines and simply "type the keyword/s/phrase directly into their browser. Also naming your site pages with keywords relevant to the content on that page. ie: wagons.html helps in bringing relevant search engine traffic. Robert