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Part 2: Driving Traffic to Your New Website for Pennies a Day

June 23rd, 2010

Obsolete Book - 5/365

photo credit: Jamiesrabbits - "Hello? Operator? I'm looking for someone who can point me towards the 21st century..."

By Matt Cook
Point.Click Media

Last week, in the first half of this 2 part series, we offered a few ways to help you get your website off the ground by providing free methods of driving traffic to your website to help your organic search engine rankings. This includes updating your website with regular content and link building with your closest business partners and associations, among other things.

All of our provided free methods work great, however they can take a significant amount of time to produce results. Now, we’re not all perfect – often, when we don’t see results right away we’re bound to fall off the wagon eventually. There’s no real reason to fret over it though, because unlike those 10 unsightly pounds you have circled in red permanent marker on the top of your New Years Resolution list every January, your immediate problems can be resolved with only a pocket full of change. We’re not talking thousands of dollars or even hundreds. You can essentially purchase extra traffic for the cost of a ham sandwich.

Ok, I’m slobbering like a pitbull in a post office. Tell me how.

Your first option is to purchase search engine keywords via Pay-Per-Click advertising. Google AdWords is currently the most popular keyword tool on the market that you may have heard of. The way AdWords and other keyword tools work is you purchase a keyword is that you’d like to be found with by bidding on it with other competitors. Let’s say for example you own a dry cleaning business in Edmonton. You have the ability to bid on a variety of keywords, but you really want to be found when someone types in the words “dry cleaning in Edmonton”. By purchasing this keyword phrase, when someone types this into Google, they’ll see your business ad located at the top of the organic search results. When someone clicks on your ad and visits your website, you’re charged for the click.

cpc

Depending how competitive your search term is, it can cost anywhere from pennies per click to hundreds of dollars per click.

SWEET GEORGIA BROWN! WHAT HAPPENED TO PENNIES A DAY?

Relax. Only the really competitive industries with extremely broad keywords generate that kind of cost. For example the companies bidding on the terms “pharmaceuticals” or “real estate” are the ones shelling out the big bucks. For a small business, targeting your keywords is key to not only being more cost effective, but acquiring legitimate targeted traffic. For a bit more in depth look at CPC advertising, see our previous blog post on this topic.

Google AdWords and other similar keyword bidding tools work great for search engines, but there are even further steps you can take to get the traffic coming to you. Many social media networks like Facebook also have similar CPC programs in place that allow you to purchase keywords on their own websites to target customers and drive people to your website.

Another method for pulling in some eyeballs is by purchasing listings on the websites of key business directories. For example, the Yellow Pages website is indexed by search engines everywhere and is a very popular website. When someone is searching Google for a location that can’t yet be found on the web, you’ll notice that a Yellow Pages listing is often the first to pop up. Although the phone book itself is earning its spot on the dusty museum wall next to homo erectus and the Model T, the Yellow Pages website is still a very handy method for finding a business, and they allow you to link your business listing to your website for a small fee.

These are just a few options that one can take to ensure that their website is being utilized to the fullest. It’s extremely important to remember though, that purchasing advertising of any kind is only a temporary solution, and your organic search results are not to be ignored. By ensuring your website is being populated with quality content that is useful to your visitors, you ensure that they have reason to return, and your traffic will begin to take care of itself.

This concludes our 2 part series. If you’re looking to expand further into search engine marketing and advertising, contact Point.Click Media.

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Posted in Branding Tips, General News, Tips and Tricks on June 23rd, 2010

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