Lot of my readers asks me for the Holy Grail for internet marketing. Well actually there is none because it depends from person to person and site to site.

Say for example you have a great product but no traffic, for you the ‘Traffic’ could be the Holy Grail.

If you have excellent traffic to your site but no sales, product development could be your Holy Grail.

So as I said, the role changes from time to time and person to person.

However, I myself consider ‘Targeted Traffic’ as very important in considering one’s online success. So today let’s talk about how to increase targeted web site traffic to your site.

First let me ask you a few questions though.

Is the next Google slap worrying you?

Do you only rely on Search Engine traffic?

Do you know where to start when you need to drive traffic to your sites?

You want to know what Traffic Generation really is all about?

If yes, you will find this article that JP Schoeffel of Niches-In-A-Box has helped me put together, very informative.

Whatever you do on the net, you will always deal with Traffic Generation…the holly grail.

To make it short, you have 2 main types of traffic:

1) Search Engine traffic and
2) Referred Traffic

Search Engine Traffic is also known as organic traffic. Mostly coming from search engines when someone types in a keyword or phrase that, the page on your site is optimized for. Google links to your page as ‘useful source of information’ for that particular keyword or phrase.

Here’s the good part of organic Traffic:
- This traffic is free
- Traffic is highly targeted
- Volume of traffic can be very high

But there are a few shortcomings too. Usually
- You don’t control it
- You rely on robots to analyze your site and deliver some traffic
- You need to get indexed…without being de-indexed (once again, you rely on search engines policy and algorithms)
- The traffic is short term

2) Referred Traffic
(I know Search engine traffic is also a sort of referred traffic, but let’s put SE traffic apart from this category)

What is it?
Traffic coming from third party sites (other than search engines) and is a result of manual / human” action.

Examples: article directories, social bookmarking services, forums, partners, text link ads, banners, directories, RSS etc….

Here’s the good part of Referred Traffic:
- You control it
- You have a lot of means to develop it (almost unlimited; a lot are free)
- It’s highly targeted and can be effectively monetized.
- You can pay to get better targeting and control over your referred traffic
- Long term

And the shortcomings are:
- Time & resources consuming
- Repetitive tasks

Now according to JP Schoeffel of Niches-In-A-Box membership sites, most webmasters mainly rely on search engines traffic, our first category. He goes further in exploring the subject. In this research of his, he has presented us with a new perspective on traffic generation. I have presented his thoughts below which I strongly believe in and should be an integral part of your targeted traffic generation strategy.

The aim of the present article is to throw the light on a different angle of the Traffic Generation big box!

Summary: The right way to get into traffic generation is to forget about search engines.

Focusing on search engine traffic gives a too narrow vision of traffic generation. It does not reveal all the opportunities existing outside of the search engines (understand all the way to generate Referred Traffic).

In addition, as you’ve seen from the cons above, you accept to rely on something you never control, and this is a HUGE risk in your marketing strategy.

Warning: I do not say, you should not care about search engine traffic. I say that it should not be your priority, and the first door you try to open when dealing with traffic generation. It’s a question of point of view.

Now, on the other hand, focusing on developing what we called Referred Traffic is a more positive, constructive and profitable attitude and marketing strategy.

Not only will you build traffic for the long term, but you will also “manually” control your traffic, either by submitting your content, your sites, your feeds, or by exchanging links, content, traffic with partners, being active on forums, blogs…

Doing it this way will give you a lot of power and effectiveness. Those sources of Referred Traffic only vanish…if you decide to let them vanish. Once again, you control everything.

Now, you have some positive side effects :
- By building Referred Traffic, you give a lot of food to search engines to index your site, understand them, and rank them well…
- …thus developing naturally your Search Engine Traffic!

Try to develop Referred Traffic by submitting your sitemap to Google, and you will understand the difference between the 2 approaches

Google and other search engines tend to change their algorithms quite often to produce more relevant content for users of their engines. Sometimes, your site is getting de-indexed in a day just because of this.

Are you lost, is your site dead? It could if you only relied on Search Engine traffic. It has no impact if you focused on building Referred Traffic.

In one case, you feel bad and like if you had wasted your time. In the other case, you don’t even notice it (on the long run; of course, you can see a fall in traffic coming from a given search engine)

But even then, your site has a lot of chances of being re-indexed when you’ve build Referred Traffic, simply because the search engines food is still there! And this is a HUGE difference and one of the most valuable asset you can develop.

If you’re still with me, you should now understand my point: when dealing with bots, you need to act as a human…which means you should not try to talk to them Give them some “bot food” that you build naturally by developing a Referred Traffic Generation Strategy.

Stay with me folks for Part II of ‘How To Increase Targeted Web Site Traffic’ where Mr. JP Schoeffel will explore the ‘ACTION PART’ for you to actually roll up your sleeves and get to work. So stay tuned folks, coming up next is 10 easy “pieces” to do what we described above.

Talk to you soon.

Mark