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Drive Targeted Traffic: 3 Surefire Ways For Your Affiliate Business

Written by: Jeff Casmer

Article Overview: Given that the large percentage of people on the internet do not care about your product, it becomes crucial to locate and drive the small handful that does care to your website. An affiliate marketer must be able to weed through the browsers and find the seeds that will grow his business-the buyers. Driving targeted traffic to your website is done in three steps.

Drive Targeted Traffic: 3 Surefire Ways For Your Affiliate Business

Given that the large percentage of people on the internet do not care about your product, it becomes crucial to locate and drive the small handful that does care to your website. An affiliate marketer must be able to weed through the browsers and find the seeds that will grow his business-the buyers. Driving targeted traffic to your website is done in three steps.

1. Find out who your target market is:

Before you can begin to drive targeted traffic to your website you have to learn who would be interested in what you have to offer. Your target market is a select group of consumers whom you are trying to satisfy. Without knowing who they are, it is very easy to miss the mark and continue to serve a large group of browsers as opposed to buyers.

Ask yourself, what age group does my target market fall under? What's their gender? What are their interests? What are their stressors? Online forums make it simpler to find out this information. People will usually give you the exact information you need to reach your target audience.

Join forums related to your niche and ask questions such as what do they look for in a product like yours? And what methods do they use to find it, ie what keywords do they use when searching?

2. Article Marketing

Once you know who your target market is you can begin to write keyword focused articles directed at target market. Where do these keywords come from? Research--by using keyword sites like Wordtracker you can come up with a list of keywords and keyword phrases a consumer in your target market would use to find information about your niche.

Suppose you were an affiliate marketer for a website that sold fine chocolates you could write articles about the benefits of chocolate for your health, how chocolate can improve your mental activity, or even why chocolate is a great aphrodisiac. Search engines will find your articles and your website may receive higher ranking, your website will then be found by those looking for information about chocolate.

A note about using keywords, because keyword stuffing is a form of spam (using the same word a hundred times in an article) you will want to keep a thesaurus handy when writing your articles. Instead of saying "chocolate" over and over again find variations of the word like "cocoa dessert." This way search engines will not flag you for keyword stuffing and your article will come up for more than one keyword.

Keyword searchers are in the browser category. They are not ready to buy. Specific keywords are used by someone who knows what they are looking for and is ready to make a purchase. This is extremely important when using the next method to drive targeted traffic.

3. Pay Per Click

Pay per click is form of advertising that involves bidding on selected keywords to drive potential consumers to your affiliate website. You and other online companies in the same line of business bid against each other for temporary ownership of keywords and keyword phrases. The highest bidder will then receive targeted traffic from people who searched with that keyword or keyword phrase. Google Adwords is an example of PPC.

I can not stress the importance of bidding on relevant, specific keyword phrases. Here's why. Each time someone clicks your ad it will cost you, thus PPC can be very expensive. Therefore, it is important that you have a good understanding of what keywords your target market is likely to search with. If you use keywords that are too broad you risk running your profits into the ground by attracting unserious prospects. To avoid this, learn who is in your target market as well as keyword analysis.

The lifeblood of any online business is traffic and because of this you may feel that you spend countless hours learning, undertaking, and tweaking traffic generating techniques. This however, is not time wasted. Your business will flourish if you take the time to drive targeted traffic to your affiliate website.

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Article Tags: affiliate marketer, age group, article marketing, chocolate, consumers, handful, health, keyword phrases, large group, niche, online forums, search engines, seeds, select group, stressors, target audience, target market, three steps, traffic, wordtracker



Related Forum Posts
Re: Affiliate Marketing - Open for Discussion - Carol, Mary and David - thanks for your great input and insight on Affiliate Marketing! This is the kind of discussion I was hoping for in this thread. There are pros and cons to Affiliate Marketing, just as there are to any business. As has been suggested, he best policy is to proceed with caution and do some research before jumping in. As Carol has recommended, this topic thread in the EvanCarmichael.com forum is the ideal place to ask questions and seek further input on available Affiliate Marketing programs. If a person is serious about building an online business and is interested in Affiliate Marketing plans, they should approach the process as they would any other form of business. Research, ask questions, compare opportunities, participate in forums on online business and Affiliate Marketing. GT :-]
How to Make Management Profile? - Here are some tips to make a management profile which helps to attract lenders to invest in your business: 1- Tile i.e. Name of the Business 2- Legal structure of the company 3- When did it start its operation? i.e. DD/MMM/YYYY 4- Shareholders and Directors detail (if any) i.e. Name of shareholders, No. of shares and its percentage 5- Name of the Board of Directors Name and short brief about them 6- Current Manpower i.e. in numbers 7- Management and their short profile i.e. name, designation, experience and qualification 8- What services you are offering? Write it down. 9- Your Competitors 10- Main clients or Targeted clients
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.
Re: Alexa Ranking Goals - LOL, I spoke too soon. Within a few hours of my post, Alexa updated the Traffic Rank on the toolbar. Note however that the 3 month Traffic Rank on Alexa.com has still not been updated...
Re: Affiliate Marketing - Open for Discussion - You made some very good points here Jeff and I agree with you, Affiliate Marketing should not be something that you concentrate all your efforts into. As i said earlier I have learned a lot with Affiliate Marketing and continue to do so, and it has helped me tremendously to understand what I am going to have to do in my chosen niche(s). I am also being coached by the same group of mentors as GT and we are all moving forward daily to achieve our ultimate goals. Take care, Carol


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