Ok, you’ve built your site. You have it all set up, targeting your proper audience. You have a freebie give-away, such as a report, video, or guaranteed offer on their house, and all they need to do to get it is give you their name, email, and phone number.

So you’re ready for the next step…

Now you just need some people to see it.  This is called ‘Traffic.’  It’s the lifeblood of your website. It’s the first step in your marketing funnel – Generate Prospects.  Without eyeballs on your site, you’re done. Might as well not even have a site to begin with!

But you do have a site, so let’s get you some targeted traffic, shall we?

“If You Build It, They Will Come,” says the mysterious voice from the movie “Field of Dreams.” Well, that quote was made well BEFORE the internet was really made available to anyone. If your site isn’t set up properly, no one is gonna come, believe me.

So how do you get the traffic?  Well, that’s the fun part, isn’t it?!  And I’m going to get you started.  So, here we go…

There are essentially TWO types of Traffic: FREE and PAID.  Free traffic is great, but it takes work. And time.  Paid traffic also takes work, but is MUCH faster.

Regardless of free or paid, it all starts with setting up your site with the right KEYWORDS. Keywords are the words that people search for in the search engines to find your site. For example, if your site is about providing solutions for people who want to sell their house, and someone does a Google search for “guitar lessons,” your site shouldn’t come up, right? Of course not! So your site’s content should be set up to give information and provide value to people who are looking to sell their house quickly and easily, not teach them to play guitar, obviously.

So the first thing you need to do is start off with a wonderfully fun exercise called “Keyword Research.”  Yeah, I used to hate it, too. Then I figured it out.

Basically, it goes like this: You need to use a decent keyword tool to gather a list of keywords to target. Then you go to work to set up your site with those keywords.

Google has a FREE keyword research tool that you can use to get started. It’s not the best keyword tool of all time, but it’s really good.

You can find it by going here: https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool

You go to that page, then enter in the keywords you think people will be searching for, such as ‘sell your house,’ ‘sell house in (your city name),’ ‘sell my house,’ etc. When you’re done, simply press ‘enter,’ and you should get a nice, long list of useable keywords to start you off.  Using common sense, choose off as many as you think apply, then click on the ‘Download List’ button, and save them as a CSV file to a spreadsheet.

Still with me?  Ok good. Here’s where the ‘fun’ part begins.  But first, I have to introduce you to a phrase that will be new to some readers. That phrase is: SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. Remember that. Defined simply, it means: “This is what you do to make your website get noticed by the search engines for the content you have on your site.”

There are two main kinds of SEO: On-Page and Off–Page SEO.  Don’t worry, I’ll explain.

ON-PAGE SEO is “what you do on that specific page of your website that gets the search engines to notice and RANK that page, based on the keywords (and a few other related factors).”  For example, if you want to rank your page for a specific keyword (which is the BEST way to get maximum results) such as “Sell my house in Augusta, GA,” you would set up that specific page of your site to be optimized for that keyword.  If you do it properly, search engines such as Google will ‘recognize’ that your page is optimized properly for that keyword, and give you good rankings for it.

Higher Rankings = More Traffic.  More Traffic = More Conversions.
More Conversions = More Money!

Got it?  Good!  Now, to make this work properly, here’s what you need to do:

1. Choose ONE Keyword PER PAGE.
2. If you’re using WordPress (like I advised you to in the last article), set the TITLE of the Page or Post to be that keyword. (Ex.: “Sell My House in Augusta, GA”)
3. Use that keyword in the First Sentence of the First Paragraph of that page/post.
4. Set the first sentence or paragraph containing that keyword as an H1 tag. In WordPress, you’ll be able to do this by clicking on the drop-down menu in one of the editor boxes above the text.
5. Add a picture or image to that page, and set the properties (title, alt-image tag, etc.) of that image to contain your keyword.
6. Write the content of that page as an article style, and it should be between 300-700 words.
7. BOLD that keyword once or twice. Italicize that keyword once or twice. And underline that keyword once or twice in the article.
8. Use that keyword between 3-5% of all the text in your article. In other words, if your article is 500 words, you should use that keyword about 2-3 times in there. This is called “keyword density.”
9. Sprinkle in an H2 and and H3 tag on your page content. Use the editor button, remember?
10. Finally, make sure your keyword is in the LAST sentence of the page content.

If you do all that, congratulations! You should now score highly for your ON-PAGE SEO.  Based on the latest Google algorithms, this is one of the most important, basic things you can do to get your page/site ranked.

Next, we have OFF-PAGE SEO. And I’ll be honest with you… I personally think this part is a BIG pain in the butt.  I’ll explain why in a moment. But let me define what it is first, so that you can understand…

OFF-PAGE SEO is “what you do to get OTHER sites to recognize your site/page as one that provides valuable content for that particular keyword.”  The best way you do that is by getting what are called “Backlinks.”  Backlinks are like getting little ‘votes’ for your page for that keyword. These ‘votes’ are in the form of a link.
For example, have you ever been reading something on a website, and then you see a link to another site for something else that’s probably related to what you’re reading?

Of course you have! So what do you do? You click on that link, and BAM! You’re on a new page.

Well, Google recognizes that link to this other site/page as a ‘vote’ for that other page, and will rank you higher for it, if you have enough backlinks.

There are 2 ways of getting these backlinks. Do them yourself, or get someone else to do it for you.  Here’s my advice: For the love of God, DO NOT do them yourself, or you’ll want to turn off your computer & throw it off the nearest bridge!  No, the BEST way to get backlinks is to find someone else & hire them to do this for you. But only do this AFTER you get your On-Page SEO done, and only IF you really need a competitive boost for your pages/site.  Oh, and by the way, here’s more bad news: EACH page needs to be optimized for each individual keyword. 

Ok, that covers basic keyword research and how to get started with FREE Traffic.  Stay tuned, because in the next article, we’ll talk about how to get some of the fastest, juiciest targeted traffic to your site, AND how to maximize your Return On Investment (ROI) so that you get more money back than you put out, each and every time!  Sound good?  Great!  Then make sure you read next month’s article…

See you then!

Tony Pearl