So you set up your beautiful site on your expired domain or regular, your site is indexed in Google… and nothing happens.You have put in all this work: a really nice business Facebook page, Twitter account, Pinterest, Google+, your welcome email series is ready to fire for those who sign up for your mailing list…but no one signs up.
The traffic generation strategies you have read about are either not fully explained, unpredictable and/or work with such a long time horizon that they are not very useful to start your site.
SEO
Interestingly, everyone is steering you towards SEO…
While we do want to use basic SEO, at this point we don’t want to rely on Google at all. Google doesn’t care about your site, just like it doesn’t care about the other tens of thousands of sites that get launched every day.
Well, SEO is dead as far as your new site is concerned… Expecting traffic to show up at your door doesn’t work.
There appears to be an algorithm that stops new sites from ranking, they call it the “sandbox”. Therefore it takes a while for your SEO to start biting, around six months, as described by several people. (Hint – use a recently deleted domain to shorten down this time, such domains have a history with Google that goes back years.)
At the same time you need to write your posts with correct SEO, otherwise you will have traffic problems down the line.
So what do you do in the meantime? How do you get traffic?
Get Your Site Ready First
First, make sure your site is ready for traffic.
Do you have enough blog posts so that your visitors will get engaged and your site doesn’t look like it is still under construction?
Take a look at it honestly: If you got 10,000 visitors right now, what would happen?
Probably get wasted…
So first get your site ready for traffic.
Not All Traffic Is Equal
Not all traffic is created equal. There is good traffic and there is useless traffic. Useless traffic is where people aren’t interested in what your site has to offer.
You sell autoresponders and your visitor is looking for WordPress plugins… Slim chance for a sale.
Traffic needs to be targeted.
Even if you make the most awesome site, there will still be a percentage of traffic that is simply useless and uninterested in your site.
When you analyze your conversion percentages and your bounce rates, you tend to assume that the traffic is people who are somewhat interested in your website. But you could also be getting non-targeted traffic.
How To Really Get Traffic
So HOW do you really get traffic to your new website?
I am not trying to be a smart-ass, but there is a really simple answer – so simple that if I don’t explain it in more details, you will not get the the point at all and it will be useless to you. The simple answer is this:
You need to get traffic from someone who already has traffic and is willing to give it to you.
Just think about it, isn’t that too simple?
It is simple to state this, but it takes an entire book to explain how to do it.
Stop wasting your time, the secret is to find the places where there is TONS of traffic and get some. This may take some kind of a bribe, therefore you have to figure out how a website owner will benefit from giving you traffic. It may also take some communication skills.
Starting from zero is the worst. Don’t try to do it all by yourself and invent how to create traffic. You don’t have the resources, the technology. You have no email list. I am sorry to say, you are a nobody at this point, and you need to piggy-back on someone who isn’t.
And don’t wait for Google. There will be no traffic coming from there for a while.
When you start a new site, you have no leverage, therefore the standard traffic techniques won’t work for you yet.
You write the most epic content, but it will do nothing for you because you don’t have leverage yet. It’s like trying to start your car in third gear, not first. You need the correct way to promote your content, in first gear.
You need someone in your niche to give you a jump start.
This is why you need to focus on building personal connections and getting out of your shell.
Starting a new site and writing all the content tends to introvert you.
This is the key in this phase: Find the blogs, forums, Facebook groups where your target audience hangs out and get traffic from there! It doesn’t matter how! That’s the only way you will get traffic other than buying it.
Do not waste your time with anything else.
Don’t build links at this stage. Don’t worry about your autoresponder and email series.
If you are posting on forums or commenting on blogs, your objective is NOT link building. Do it to get targeted traffic.
Paid Traffic
Buying and selling traffic is one of the biggest markets in online business. You can get from extremely cheap “synthetic” traffic to highly targeted, extremely expensive but mega effective human traffic, nearly everything you want.
Paid traffic can be a very dirty and dishonest subject.
On Fiverr, people sell tens of thousands of visitors for $5. The following post explains such traffic fully. I don’t recommend paid traffic at this stage.
Ideally paid traffic should be targeted and it should be traffic that converts.
Many times there is no guarantee to this effect.
Traffic is a commodity. You can buy it.
Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Twitter are selling it.
It only costs $5 to buy traffic from Facebook.
But don’t buy it when you start out.
Only buy traffic later on when you have learned how to identify it and convert it.
Otherwise you are flushing your money down the toilet.
If you really don’t believe me, buy traffic for $5 and try it out, then you will understand why I am saying this.
Social Media
Social media is a great source of traffic. Make your content epic so that people NEED to share it.
Facebook provides about 25 percent of all website traffic. You are losing out big time if you are not using social media, as it is your alternative to Google and SEO.
Build Your Readership
Getting followers, building your e-mail list will greatly help you out in the long run to get traffic.
By building your readership, you are in fact recycling your visitors.
I am not telling your start building your e-mail list from day one, as first you need to write content and learn to get traffic. But as soon as you got those under control, start it.
Conclusion
Jumpstarting traffic for your new site is not easy and can be very disheartening. But I am here to help you. This is why I created the $5K challenge.