In this installment of Internet marketing, A-Z, we’re up to the letter T for targeted traffic. One of the most commonly asked questions that I get is this. “How do I get more traffic?” It’s at this point in time that I want to smack the person over the head and say to them, “You don’t want more traffic. You want more TARGETED traffic.” Why do I stress targeted traffic? Well, read this article and you’ll understand. I’d rather have 100 targeted visitors than 10,000 non targeted visitors.

One of the biggest scams circulating the Internet is the traffic package. You know…where you pay $X to some site and they promise you 10,000 visitors to your site in 30 days, or whatever the timeline is. You plunk down your hard earned cash for one of these packages and then 30 days later you find that you haven’t made one sale…not one. You then wonder what the heck went wrong. What went wrong is that you purchased traffic that is non targeted, meaning that these people could have been interested in iPods while you were pitching acne medicine.

Sure, every once in a while, you might get a few people who just happen to be interested in what you have to offer, but when that does happen, it’s just dumb luck. It is not by design and it doesn’t happen often. It’s certainly not the most efficient way to get people to come to your site.

Okay, so how DO you get targeted traffic to your site? Well, right off the top of my head, I can think of two great ways…and one of them is free. Let’s go over the free method as it’s what most beginning marketers are looking for.

If you think about yourself as a consumer and not a marketer, just for a second, think about what YOU do when you need something online. You go to the search engines and look for it. In many cases, what you will find during your search are articles on the subject you’re interested in. These articles are found based on the keyword you use to do your search. In most cases, when reading these articles, they’ll direct you to a web site to get more information, or maybe even another page at their site, or even a sales page.

Now think about it. How much did it cost them to get you to their site? All it cost was the time it took to write the article.

The point is, YOU became a targeted visitor. You were looking for something specific and the article directed you to a solution. With a traffic package, the person is arbitrarily sent to your site with no guarantee that they’re going to be interested in what you have to offer.

So, don’t make the mistake of mixing up getting traffic with getting targeted traffic.

They are NOT the same thing.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

Want to discover the secrets of article marketing, pay per click, forum participation and a lot more? Check out My Secret Articles at http://www.mysecretarticles.com/ and turn yourself into a marketing expert.