And here's why...
I. Traffic is "The Thing"
During the 1990s, the Internet was reported to be growing at 100% a year. And, the early online marketers figured out that traffic is VERY valuable...If a site's traffic increases by 30%, its earnings should increase by 30% too because:
Traffic means visitors & visitors mean potential customers & customers mean money.
In fact, traffic is SO valuable that Google has built a $20+BILLION company around selling PPC traffic to businesses around the world...
So, the real issue is how to generate some FREE traffic for yourself.
Well, THOUSANDS of traffic generation & search engine optimization (SEO) techniques exist & here are just 3 of them...Let's begin:
II. Strategy #1: Linking "By The Pound":
Some SEO professionals claim that thousands of inbound links are all a site needs to generate visitors. While they won't let it slip out publicly, they believe in a fairly simple formula:
Inbound link VOLUME = Traffic = Money.
They trace a causation chain between:
1)The sheer NUMBER of inbound links your site has pointing toward it.
2)The amount of traffic your site gets.
3)And your site's eventual CASH earnings.
The theory is that as a site gains a "critical mass" of inbound links, its traffic level increases, & its CASH earnings increase too...
They theorize that link VOLUME drives traffic 2 separate ways:
1) The traffic from higher search engine rankings &
2) More importantly, the traffic from the 1000s of links themselves.
Barring a major PPC or offline media campaign, you'll find that 95% of the really high traffic sites you encounter have TENS of THOUSANDS of inbound links pointing toward them...For evidence of this, next time you stumble over a high traffic site, try checking its inbound links in one of the free backlink tools like Yahoo Site Explorer ("siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com").
Look at what you see. I bet you see THOUSANDS of inbound links…with each link theoretically contributing a little sliver of traffic every day...some obviously more so than others...
While this is a VERY persuasive theory, it may be slightly incomplete. Let's look at 2 other schools of thought:
III. Strategy #2: Link QUALITY Is EVERYTHING:
If you've been marketing online for more than a few years, you probably remember the "Page Rank" mania that seemed to sweep the SEO world during 2004-2005.
Professional SEOs were convinced that getting 2 or 3 authority links from high Page Rank sites would lead to better search engine rankings & a lot more traffic. The Page Rank hysteria quickly subsided…But, the strategy still remains VERY valid:
Links from prominent sites often ARE incredible sources of free traffic...
Once placed, some links will send a continual stream of 5-100 targeted visitors to your site every day, seemingly forever...And the new visitors will start appearing in your log files within hours of the link going live...If they were physical items, links like these would be worth their weight in gold...
For example, imagine my site has 10,000 inbound links from tons of different websites all over the internet. But, your site has only 3 inbound links: links on the homepages of Google, Yahoo, & MSN. All of which get MILLIONS of visitors a day...
Who would get more traffic? YOU WOULD, definitely...For the same 2 reasons stated above:
1) Your site would see a MASSIVE boost in its search engine rankings given how much "authority" Yahoo, MSN, & Google give each other &
2) The traffic coming off those 3 links by themselves would be HUGE too...
Clearly, link quality is very important.
Contributor: Richard Martin writes for SeoRankingMachine.com. Quit Missing Out On 100% FREE Traffic! Click Here For Cutting Edge Search Engine Optimization Techniques To Drive Free SEO Traffic To YOUR Site Today: http://www.seorankingmachine.com!
