How to Get Visitors to Your Site
visitors of a market
In this article:
Digital Media Unique Properties
Difference from Conventional Media
How Affiliate Site is Found In Searches (Visitor’s Side)
How Affiliate Site Is Found in Searches (Search Engine Side)
Introduction
To build audience, an affiliate marketer’s site must collect visitors /audience. The audience are Internet users seeking information for solution of their problems using search engines. The search engine then presents list of sites for the user to choose from. So how do you get visitors to your site? To get audience, an affiliate site must ‘pop up’ on the search result to be picked by the internet users to view.
There are unique properties of digital media compared to physical, conventional ones. The way potential customers find the information provider is different. Some unique method must be implemented to ‘show’ the sites to information searchers. Web sites must be optimized using SEO (search engine optimization) method to be effective for search engines to find.
There is also an important aspect called “keywords”. What is a keyword? Keywords are words or phrases used by the Internet users while looking form information. Site administrators can use keywords to match searched information to information in their sites. A good site should include valuable keywords relevant to information searched by Internet users. This can be done with keyword research.
Quality of site content is actually the most important aspect. Temptations to fill sites with useless information is one of things to avoid. Furthermore, some other non-information quality related bit of stuff may also attract visitors and make them see that the site is enticing and has authority.
This article also shows the use of Jaaxy, a simple keyword research tool which is very helpful in building site audience.
The bits will be described in more details below. Keep reading.
Digital Media Unique Properties
The digital media has unique different properties compared to conventional information media, such as:
- 24 hour accessibility. Website are available to be found and viewed 24 hours. This means visitors may interact (demand response) at any time regardless of actual time of the site administrator.
- Global accessibility. As web can be accessed from nearly everywhere in the world, site owners or administrators must be cautious with their geographical location coverage availability.
- Interactive (2‑way communication). Interaction is a good way to build trust and familiarity. A site may provide interaction facility so customers feel close to the business.
- Easily accessible with personal device. Access to websites is already available on-hand. The customers may open communication or complaint light-handedly, without deep consideration or waiting time.
- Short access to product origin (producer). Internet allows a much shorter communication line between consumers and producers. Any party within the marketing channel must align the offered customer value to prevent customer confusion. See about marketing channel here.
- Quick demanded response. With all the easy access to the sellers, distributors, and producers, customers are getting nervous with their questions, demanding quick, instant response. An affiliate marketer must cater to this increasing aspect customer behavior.
There also disadvantageous properties of the digital media for affiliate site owners. The most significant is that there is no assurance the search result will include his affiliate site.
Difference from Conventional Media
Let’s see its contrast with conventional media, such as a newspaper or magazine. A customer can grab a newspaper at a newsstand and will find the ad of a seller. An ad put by a seller on that day will be seen by a potential customer reading that paper. On the digital media, there is not guarantee that ‘the paper’ will present the affiliate marketer’s ‘ad’ to the searching customer. The site must be prepared so it will get better possibility to be selected as the result to display to information seekers.
Another significant point is that there are tons of information that can be found by an Internet user as he searches for solution. There are too many websites that can respond giving answers to an internet search. The bad news is that many of the information are of ‘junk’ quality, created only to get clicks. A quality affiliate site must also compete with these junk sites to provide information and solution for customers.
How Affiliate Site Is Found In Searches (Visitor’s Side)
When an Internet user types information to find on a search engine, the search engine will try to match the searched words with the content of sites. Only the sites that contain the searched words are considered “matched” with demanded information. The list of sites will then be presented to the user on the search result screen.
sample of search result
The search engine, however, has its own algorithm to find the best useful site for the information seeker. It will try to provide results with sites with quality information, the ones with ‘authority’, having the most relevant, engaging content. A site owner must be able to predict how a search engine user will enter information (words) to find, and which information (or words) the user will type to find information related to the affiliate site.
Naturally, search engine users will click on the topmost (or top part) of search results to find information the user needs. Thus a site owner will want his site to be on the top of search results to reach the consumers, or at least on the first page of the search results.
The list of sites displayed for a search depends on site rankings. A good ranking will bring the affiliate site to the top of search result, and thus, greater click possibility.
How Affiliate Site Is Found In Searches (Search Engine Side)
To rank well within search engines, a website must be prepared in the way called search engine optimization (SEO). With SEO, websites are optimized so they are more friendly to and preferred by search engines.
Technically, SEO covers quite a lot of things to understand and implement. This article presents only the very basic SEO implemented through plug ins and how it is done by site administrators. Overall SEO is more complex and is not covered in this article.
On WordPress CMS (content management system) based site, SEO is usually implemented through plug ins. There are many SEO plug ins a site owner can select from. They do basically the same thing, which is helping a website gaining better ranking on search engines.
Each plug in has its own method and settings. The settings are not visual. They are used to make search engines find the site as a good search match. For an example an SEO Plugin, the SEO Framework plugin, click on this link.
Importance of Keywords and Keyword Research Tool
To find information or solution to their problems Internet users will use search engines. They’ll type in questions or phrases related to their questions looking for answers located in websites. The typed in words are called keywords.
The search engines will then look for sites that are relevant with the searched keywords. Therewith, the content of a website must contain keywords relevant to the searches in the particular site subject or area.
So the keywords are the key for websites to gain visitors. Site administrators must find the most suitable keywords for site ranking opportunity using a keyword research tool, such as Jaaxy.
Such tool can tell what keywords will give the best opportunity to land visitors on the site. Among the relevant useful information produced by the keyword research tool are : average number searches per month, amount of traffic (visits) to the site, number of competing websites, keyword quality index, SEO Score, and available domains.
To get a feel on how it works on Jaaxy, just give it a free try-out on a free Jaaxy account.
What to do
So what does an affiliate marketer should do to get visitors to a website? Here are some that might be useful.
- Know and learn the market and niche. Learn about the market you’re after. Find reliable marketing lessons or articles which will allow you to know that the targeted market is looking for (and what questions they will ask)
- Create only good and helpful content. It should be remembered that the first objective of a website is to help people solve their problems, to cater for their questions. It’s quality engaging content that makes a site has authority. Monetization comes later. Avoid filling your site with junk content, contents that have no meaning or are not useful.
- Make sure the site is easy for the visitors. Website should be created with consideration of readers point-of-view. The layout should be simple, easy to navigate and understand. Language style must be easy to comprehend. Make sure that that it is easy for the visitors to quickly find answers to their questions. Use easy-to-understand graphics, icons, or symbols wherever possible (remember, graphics is a universal language).
- Always provide room for interaction and complaint. Another significant property of digital media is interaction and demand for quick response. Remember this when managing your website. Although the response to questions or complaints may not be instant, customers wouldn’t accept it if they feel ignored.
- Consider visitor’s extra requirements. Aside from the main featured product or market niche the site covers, also prepare for demands beyond the product or services, such as payment options, delivery options, warranty coverage, etc).
- Don’t forget to put a ‘Click to Action’ ending on your article (maybe not on all articles). If a visitor is already on the site, don’t let him go without offering to try something.
- Try Jaaxy keyword tool (recommended). This is powerful, easy to understand tool to see how to find relevant keywords. It’s free. Just click here to create a free account.
I hope this article is useful for all of us. Leave a message or question below if you have any. Thank you for visiting.
