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Four Ways To Take Advantage Of Website Traffic Spikes

Guest post by: David Hurley

Article Overview: When a traffic spike occurs you need to be ready to take advantage of it. Unfortunately, when webmasters see a traffic spike, most of them tend to just sit back and watch it happen. So, here's a quick look at four ways that you can get the most out of every traffic spike.

Four Ways To Take Advantage Of Website Traffic Spikes

A traffic spike could be the result of a specific marketing plan or it could just be dumb luck stemming from a piece of content that went viral.

Regardless of why it happened, it is critical that you get the most out of your website traffic spikes. In most cases a traffic spike will happen for a few hours and sometimes a few days, but it definitely won't last forever.

Unfortunately, when webmasters see a traffic spike, most of them tend to just sit back and watch it happen.

While this may make you feel great, it isn't very productive. So, here's a quick look at four ways that you can get the most out of every traffic spike.

1. Make Sure Your Website Can Handle It

The most important thing to do is simply make sure that your website can handle a certain amount of traffic. A traffic spike doesn't do you any good if all it does is cause your server to crash.

Unfortunately, if you haven't had a traffic spike before or suddenly experience a larger than normal one, it can be difficult to tell if you're actually ready for it. At minimum, you need to make sure that you have a website monitor which will let you know if your website crashes. Some of them will even let you know when the traffic spike is happening.

2. Invite Your Visitors to Stay

The easiest way to get more out of traffic spikes is to turn it into consistent traffic. This is why most bloggers will have a lead capture form on every page. Whenever traffic spike happens, a well-placed lead capture form, with a strong incentive for the visitor to sign up, will always capture a certain percentage of traffic.

If you want your visitors to hang around, you'll need to make sure that your website has high-quality content. If it doesn't, then there is no incentive for them to stay on your website, let alone come back at a later date.

3. Try to Bring in the Right People

While it's impossible to be in complete control of who visits your website during a traffic spike, it does help if you can target the right people. Ideally you want a majority of your new visitors to match your basic customer profile. In order to do this you need to know where they are likely to come from. If there are certain forums, blogs, bookmarking websites, or social networking sites that they tend to congregate around, then you need to make sure that your content can be found on those sites. That way, whenever traffic spike does happen you can be sure that your customer base will likely be part of it. This is because a traffic spike, even if it starts out of thin air, will likely originate from the same types of places that your target customer base frequents.

4. Give Them a Preview

Nothing is harder than convincing a cold customer or new visitor to buy into what you're selling. This means that in order to get the most out of the traffic spike, you need to find a way to warm up your visitors. Some Of the most common strategies include creating a brand recognition campaign, guest posting, and syndicating content. Really, anything that can introduce your visitor to who you are BEFORE they show up your website will help give them a preview of who you are, and thus give them an idea of what to expect before they arrive.

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Article Tags: lead capture, targeted traffic, traffic spikes



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