Driving Traffic To Your Site

Once you have a good converting site live – one that utilizes all the strategies that we’ve discussed so far – it’s time to start driving traffic to it. The primary ways of driving traffic are:

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• Pay Per Click (PPC)
• Social Media Marketing
• Press Relations (PR)
• Affiliate Marketing
• Strategic Partnerships
• Email Marketing
• Viral/Referral

We’ll cover each of these as an upcoming article of their own. For now, I’ll just give definitions of each in case you aren’t familiar with one or more of these approaches.

SEO is the art and science of getting better rankings on the search engines. Why do some sites come up higher than others in a search?

PPC means the world of banner ads and search engine ads. You can buy traffic by paying Google or others for “sponsored” listings or banner ads.

Social Media Marketing is the world of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other popular Social Media sites.

PR has been around for a long time – it’s simply about getting articles in newspapers and interviews on radio or television. The online version of PR is pretty much the same except the articles are in blogs or online newspapers and you substitute podcasts and online video for radio and television.

Strategic Partnerships are key to the growth of many businesses. A strategic partner is usually a larger company that provides co-marketing opportunities or distribution opportunities for your product or service at a much larger scale than your company is currently able to provide.

Email Marketing is all about writing great enewsletters that engage your readers. Viral/Referral marketing is anything that makes people want to pass the word about your product or service. Any other categories that you think I missed?