How To Get Traffic To Your Website

Introduction 

Yes! So we have your domain name and website built.  We still need to customize your website but at least you have an internet presence. 

You should stand up right now, shoot both arms in the air and shout:  

“Yes! I Did it! I Can Do This!” 

If you did your homework from the last lesson then you should be starting to get comfortable with New Kajabi and the power if offers. 

>> Click here to get a FREE instant download of the PDF version of this post... I'll throw in my audio narration as a free bonus.

Don’t worry if you have questions about details, we still have a lot to cover and my goal is to get you there as we march through our lessons. 

In this lesson we’re going to dig into getting traffic to your website. 

We don’t have content yet (that will come in the form of blog posts which we’ll address in detail in a few lessons) but I still need to dispel any myths you might have about getting traffic to your website. 

The Free Food Dude 

It always surprises me how hard people work to get other people’s attention these days.  From spam emails to telemarketers to the free sample dude in the mall.  You know what I mean right?

He's got chunks of chicken cubes stacked on a toothpick and he's begging you to eat his free sample... people are constantly trying to get other people to take action and look at what they’re offering. 

My goal in this lecture is to show you a different approach. 

Instead of trying tricks and complicated strategies to get people to your website I’m going to list proven age old methods for building traffic up over the long term. 

Your online business is a long term game so we need to keep our perspective right.  We aren’t trying to guest post on blogs or shoot links to social sites to surge traffic.  You need to think of this like a patient game of discipline where you regularly publish high quality content that is so good people actually want to share it without you asking them to do it. 

Google and Bing have a way of rewarding content creators who take the time to publish high quality content.  Since most people don’t do this, if you follow my advice it will instantly set you apart from the pack. 

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The Apple Effect 

Have you ever thought about why so many people hang out in the Apple Store?  

Have you ever seen the NYC store? It’s a glass cube that is completely underground.  You walk down a spiral staircase and emerge in a futuristic tech garden replete with the latest iPads, iPhones and iMacs.  It truly is a thing of beauty. 

But what’s interesting is there aren’t any advertisements driving people to the store.  People just know where to find it and they show up and buy Apple products. 

Why is that? 

It’s because Apple has a reputation of being awesome.  Everyone wants the latest Apple product and when they see everyone else with the white ear buds dangling from their ears it's instant social proof.   

When it comes to your brand, we want to make it that way. 

When I built my first blog, fixedByVonnie.com, my chief focus was on making the design look awesome.  Once I realized it was time consuming I said, “Screw it, I’m just going to focus on posting top content”. 

So I ignored the traffic element of my site, put my head down, and starting banging out high quality content every week.  At first it was discouraging because no one was finding my site, but after about 30 days of slaving away I got my first visitor from outside the US! 

That was enough motivation for me to continue building the website. 

After 90 days I hit 1,000 visitors and I never looked back from there. 

The secret to my success is I treated my blog like a full-time job (not a hobby) and strove to publish the highest quality content possible.  I removed as many typos and grammatical mistakes as I could.  I also included footnotes and links to back my content so people knew the sources of my material.   

This obviously requires more work but it produced a better product and made a website people not only wanted to visit but also wanted to share.   

Why did they want to share it? 

Because it makes them look smart! 

“If you can create content that makes your audience look smart you’re going to win every time.” 

Alright so with that context under way let’s talk about some practical ways you can maximize the traffic arriving at your site after we start building your unique content: 

Avoid These Common Mistakes 

Avoid Micro Hacks 

The first thing I want to accentuate is that you should avoid doing little things to “hack” traffic to your site.  It’s not the color of your webpage, or the name of your website or the shape of your logo or the fact that your face is looking to the left on your homepage. 

These little trivialities are meaningless 

Avoid “Build-First-Research-Later" 

The other mistake people make is they come up with a random idea, dive into the nuts and bolts tactics, quickly build a website, launch it to the world and then after three months wonder why they have no traffic. 

Just because you build a website, and EVEN if it has great content, this does not mean people will just automatically show up and start visiting! 

There is now another stage of work that needs to be done to drive traffic and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. 

Yes, it is important to build a website but this should only happen AFTER you’ve spent a great deal of time understanding your audience and there needs.   

“We talked about this in the niche lesson earlier, but it is imperative that you become more obsessed with what your target market needs than you are about your website.” 

So when do you start building your product? After you know what your audience needs. 

When do you start pricing that product? After you know what your audience is willing to spend to satisfy that need. 

What is your competition? Have you researched other sites in your niche to see what they’re doing to meet your target market’s needs? Do you know what’s going to set you apart from everyone else? 

Don’t get me wrong, the fact that you have competition is validation that you are in a market with demand but you also need to know how to distinguish yourself from everyone else. 

We’ll get into some practical ways of doing that as we get into the meat of this course.  For now let’s talk about how we can drive traffic to your website. 

Write Awesome Content 

The central premise behind driving traffic is you want to stop and take a step back and think about the big picture. 

You Need A Deep Understanding Of Your Market 

On the one hand, you could create quality content that’s fun to read, solves real problems, improves the lives of your readers and is written in a professional, clear tone that leaks your personality and sets you apart from everyone else. 

I mean, that’s pretty good. 

But try to think about this a little differently. 

“What can you make, what you can write about, that would be so good it would literally be irresistible to your readers?” 

The only way you can answer this is by spending time with your readers.  And the best way to do that is to hang out where they hang out.  For more details on that look at the “Super Validation Secret” in the “Finding Your Great Idea” section of this guide. 

Focus On Content That Produces Quick Results 

“Write for the thanks” 

If you’re content doesn’t solve a problem why would anyone thank you for it?  You need to write in such way that your readers will get quick results and be prompted to send you an email thanking you for what you wrote. 

Write for the thanks. 

Think about writing not just to dump more information but to get results.  Once way to do this would be to include recipes, blueprints, checklists, cheat sheets, scripts, whatever – you want to provide content that is easy to digest and leaves your readers happy after spending time with you. 

Let Your Personality Bleed Into EVERYTHING 

This last point is perhaps the most important.  It’s the way you can create content that keeps your visitor's coming back for more. 

“Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken. -Oscar Wilde” 

This is perhaps the most liberating point I can make.  The world is dying for you to be yourself.  The world doesn’t want a clone of someone else or someone who is fake, guarded and boring.   

If you’re pissed about something let it leak liberally into your content.  If you think something is stupid SAY IT!  If you’re frustrated about something (even if it’s an everyday annoyance like your commute being reduced to one lane because of construction) shout it out! Don’t hide yourself on your blog.   

“The more transparent you become the more people will feel they relate to you.  The more people feel they relate to you the more they will trust you.  The more they trust you the more amenable they will be to checking out your product offer when you present it down the road.  Do you see how this works?” 

Great Guest Posting 

This is a classic, advanced strategy for getting a huge surge of traffic into your website.  It involves identifying the leading websites in your niche and writing awesome content for them.  In other words, you want to submit awesome content to websites in your niche with more traffic than your site so when visitors on the bigger site get results from your content their curiosity leads them back to your site. 

Here’s how this breaks down: 

• Monday and Tuesday (Research) 

• Spend 30 minutes each day researching bigger sites in your niche.  The only thing you’re doing is seeing what’s out there at this point. 

• Wednesday and Thursday (Content Creation) 

• Spend an hour on Wednesday and an hour on Thursday crafting awesome content that your guest’s website’s audience would love.  The goal is to do everything we talked about in this guide.  Creating content that generates quick results, leaks your personality and shows you understand your market. 

• Friday and Saturday (Content Promotion) 

• Devote an hour on Friday and an hour on Saturday promoting your content.  Do the research to make sure you’re submitting the content to your guest websites. 

So how exactly do you submit the guest post content? 

It starts with two emails. The Opener and the Closer. 

The Opener 

In the Opener email you are simply providing a quick introduction and jumping into why you love this persons topic.  You then move into soliciting their help.  Since most people like to help other people this approach usually works and is often hard for your recipient to ignore.  There’s no spam here.  No trickery.  Just a genuine appreciation of this persons work and a desire to have them help a newbie like yourself. 

Here’s an example: 

Subject: can you give me advice about this? 

Body: hey {their name}, my name is {first name} and I’m a huge fan of what you’ve been doing.  I really like what you wrote about in your article on {topic} because it {insert your heart felt reason here} 

I’m thinking about starting my own website and was hoping I could get some advice here.  My site is going to be about helping {target market} get {result} without {common objections, excuses or complaints your audience offers as to why they can’t get result}. 

I already wrote my first article here {share link to your article} but I’m struggling to find ways to improve it so it can produce the greatest impact in my reader’s lives. 

You have more a lot more experience than me.  If you were in my position, what do you think I could do to make this better? 

1. Talk more about {list your first point you think could benefit their audience}
   
2. Share more stories about {list the second point you think could benefit their audience}
   
3. Provide more details about {list your last point you think would help their audience} 

What do you think? Is this something that could resonate with your readers if done right? 

Respectfully, 

-Vonnie 

This opener email only works if you really are a fan of what they are doing and you really have been reading their work.  So make sure everything you say in the email is true otherwise, make it true by reading up on their work and spending time to understand the guest websites audience and the value the site owner has been providing. 

I would give the email five days before following up. 

If you don’t hear anything back from your first email in about five days send a very unobtrusive floater email saying you know they are busy but you’re just floating this message back to the top of their inbox to see if they have a moment to give you some advice. 

I didn’t provide a template for this email because I want it to be in your own voice.  It will make it more authentic and increase the chances of it getting opened. 

So let’s say after a week or two they respond to your initial request for advice.  This is how you could reply in the closer. 

The Closer 

In the closer email you can write back: 

{recipients name} 

Hey, thanks so much for the thoughtful feedback.  I’ve already made those changes but I’m just going over it again to make sure it’s perfect! 

If it’s okay with you, I’ll send you an update when it’s finished. 

One more thing: this is a bit farther down the line, but would you be interested in having me contribute a guest post to your website once I have everything up and running?   

I think your readers would love it.  Heck, you can even use the post we just reviewed if you like it! 

Let me know and thanks again. 

Respectfully, 

-Vonnie 

There you go! That’s your strategy for making this work. 

Ultimately the key to nailing the guest posting puzzle is to make sure the article you’re posting is: 

• Relevant 
• Popular 
• Unique 

If your content is relevant to the guest sites audience... and it’s based on a popular topic and it’s unique... bam! You’re going to get their attention. 

By “Relevant” I mean whatever you want to write about is timely and kind of cool. 

By “Unique” I mean whatever you want to write about wasn’t already covered by the site you want to guest post on.  Before you pitch your idea, just Google the topic and the site name to see if it was already published.  If it was already published, all you need to do is wrap it in your own personal story... and BAM! It's unique. 

>> Click here to get a FREE instant download of the PDF version of this post... I'll throw in my audio narration as a free bonus.

By “Popular” I mean the topic will attract more readers to your guest’s website.  If you Google the topic you’ll see tons of hits on the first page of Google results, tons of comments on those sites and tons of social shares on Facebook and Twitter.   

So there you have it.  You now have the formula for getting traffic to your website. 

Now It’s Your Turn 

Okay so here’s your homework for this week: 

1. Make a list of 5 ways you can avoid doing the “Build-First-Research-Later" approach but without getting stuck in “Researchville”.  In other words, I want you to list out 5 practical places you can go to learn about your audience but without getting sucked into a never-ending loop of doing research (while never building your website).  I hope that makes sense. 
2. When you’re talking to a friend, family member or co-worker and you’re relaxed... your personally seems to effortlessly blend into the conversation, right?  How do you think you can let this happen in your written content?  What are some things that might be holding you back from “letting loose”?   

Alright, so we’re going to come up with your guest posting schedule.  Remember we want to make sure your website is getting lots of traffic when you start writing content so we’re charting your path BEFORE we customize your site. 

Make a chart that shows all the days of the week.  You have three options to assign: 

• Research 
• Content Creation 
• Content Promotion 

Write which days you will do which action and how much time you plan to devote to each task.  Use the example provided in this guide to give you some momentum! 

Next week we’re going to talk about building your email list!  See you soon.