Internet Marketing Secrets – Podcast #135 – Transcript #2
Prefer to listen instead? Get the Traffic Generation Podcast Part 1
Michael Campbell: With me now is Dr. Neil Shearing, a product creation specialist who has been creating digital products and selling them with an affiliate sales force through his Scam Free Zone affiliate program, since 1997.
Michael: Hi Neil. Thank you for being on the call with me today.
Dr. Neil Shearing: Hi Michael, it’s delightful to be here.
Michael: Let’s have a little chat about website traffic. What are your three favorite methods for generating traffic and why?
Neil: I would say my ultimate favorite traffic generation method would be to use joint venture partners such as, yourself when I’ve got a product coming up for launch and to leverage the power of other people’s lists.
So if say marketer A endorses my product and sends traffic across, that can result in a decent volume of traffic coming through to my sales letter and there will also be very high conversions because usually the marketer will be recommending and endorsing the product.
So you get large volumes of traffic almost immediately. You don’t have to pay for it up front because it’s usually on an affiliate basis. And the traffic that comes across results in high conversions.
So joint ventures would be the number one method. Of traffic generation that I would rely on. Yeah.
Michael: So having that relationship with other people is a very important part of it. What would you say is your second favorite?
Neil: Well, for second favorite I’d probably expand on the joint venture theme and talk about my affiliate program in general because obviously joint venture partners are just another way of saying you are super affiliates – people that have large listings and large volumes of traffic.
But on a day-to-day basis, all the affiliates in my affiliate program will be sending bits and bobs of traffic, and when there’s a launch they’ll send more traffic that amounts to more minor lists or put mentions on their blogs, which is all good traffic, good recommendations, good links into my website. It makes some sales and pays some commissions.
So I would say in general, the affiliate program I run, would be second on my list for the traffic generation method.
Michael: That’s a really good idea, having people do the work for you to sell the product, that way both parties benefit.
Neil: It is.
Michael: What would you say would be your third favorite method?
Neil: For third I would go with something different. I would say search engine optimization.
Michael: OK.
Neil: Because I just love free traffic. So if you can put something on the blog, slap up a blog post with your keywords in the title, which would also then appear in the URL for the blog post, mention the keywords a couple of times in the blog post itself.
Maybe someone has brought out a new e-book and I’ve just reviewed it. I’ll write the title of the e-book and I’ll write the author’s name, do a review of the actual product, the ebook, and that gets picked up by the search engines quite rapidly, and could well result in a first or first page place at least for the name of that new product.
So there I am generating free traffic to my blog and I’m generating a free commission. So I like search engine optimization and free traffic that comes from the search engines.
Michael: Excellent. So that’s joint ventures number one, and the affiliate program number two, and SEO number three.
Now what about advertising? Do you do any kind of pay per click or advertise on other websites or publications?
Neil: I really don’t actually. I tried pay per click and I just couldn’t get my head round it. I think you need to have some kind of higher-level brain function in order to be able to track enough pay per click ads to pay off handsomely.
I know Gauher Chaudhry’s has got his course on pay per click marketing, and I know Gauher was an accountant beforehand.
Michael: Ah.
Neil: So I think I would make a very bad accountant. And I also make a very bad pay per click marketer. So I don’t do that.
I don’t actually buy ads in ezines. I did once or twice when I first started out and I found that to be quite profitable. But it’s also quite tricky to keep track of the various ezines that you’re advertising in – when the ad is going to run, track the actual sales and commissions that result from it.
And then a problem I found was if you put the same ad multiple times, that readership in that ezine starts to get ad burnout and they don’t take any notice if your ad is running at the same time. So you think to yourself, "Well, I’ll find an ezine that is profitable and then I’ll just keep running my ad."
And I found it didn’t work like that. So, what I tend to do is rely more on my affiliate program such that affiliates who have newsletters can put an ad in and promote the actual product with their own affiliate link and look at it from that kind of angle instead.
So I don’t go out of my way to do lots of advertising for my own products, no.
Michael: Now what about SEO? You had mentioned it. Do you optimize your pages on the fly as you create them or do you not really pay any attention at all to SEO and just write for the reader?
Neil: Well I try to do both. Obviously the reader is most important. There’s no point in writing a page full of keywords that whoever lands on the page just thinks it’s machine gobbledygook.
So when I gave you my blog example just a few moments ago, I will rank the actual blog header, title – the blog post title – and the blog content for the reader, with the reader in mind. But I will also put in the appropriate keywords that I’m trying to tackle.
So in the case of an e-book, like I said I’ll put in the e-book name and I’ll put in the author name and I’ll try and pick up the things that I think that people might be searching for to find out information about that product or that author.
So I try to blend the two.
Michael: Excellent. Now are there any traffic generation schemes that you’ve found that don’t work? Or in other words, what traffic generation tactic could backfire in your opinion and end up being a big mistake?
Neil: I think basically, just in general if you bring in the wrong traffic because it just wastes everyone’s time. So what I mean by that is that you put an ad for your – I don’t know, Internet marketing e-book – into a newsletter that has to do with, say handbags and clothing accessories.
You’re wasting your money on an ad in that position, in that newsletter and anyone who clicks through is not going to be ultimately interested in what you’re offering. So it’s kind of pointless.
So bringing in traffic that’s untargeted is a waste of everyone’s time and resources. So I think that would kind of qualify for backfiring.
Michael: Excellent. Now is there one, traffic secret you could share with the listeners? Like a method that you use that’s powerful but yet few people don’t – few people use it or they don’t realize how powerful it is?
Neil: Yeah, there was one thing I was thinking about when I saw that you were going to ask me this question. And people seem to be downplaying PageRank at the moment, maybe focusing a bit more on the social marketing Web 2.0 stuff.
But I’m still a strong believer in PageRank. I think it’s very important. I try to focus my PageRank in the right places so that the pages that are optimized to certain keywords will rank higher in the search engine.
One of the things I heard Leslie Rohde saying in one of his interviews was that if you want more PageRank just go and create more pages.
Michael: Right.
Neil: Because every page that is created, once it’s indexed, has a certain PageRank value.
Michael: That’s correct, yeah.
Neil: And so I think that’s been kind of overlooked or not picked up on because if you have an article of 800 words, you can split that up into two pages and instead of just having one page created for the search engine purposes you’ve got two.
And I’ll give you an example. I built a site that had lots of lots of private-label articles on it. And I linked from every page to my terms and conditions page. And I thought I was using a nofollow link. And in actual fact they got the code wrong and the search engine did follow the link to this terms and conditions page.
And presumably no one out on the Internet linked to it. You know, CNN didn’t link to it or anything.
Michael: Right.
Neil: It was just pages that were on this site linked through to the terms and conditions page. And that page ended up as PageRank three all because of the pages that were on the site, all linking to that one page even though I hadn’t intended it.
I was like, "Oh, OK, so I have enough power in that site targeted to one page to generate a PageRank three page?" The fact that you can generate your own PageRank – people don’t think about that. They think, "How can I get a link from CNN? How can I get a link from Harvard, you know?"
But there’s another way to generate it, which is to create your own pages and hosting yourself and link to whichever site you want to link to give them a PageRank boost.
Michael: Excellent tip, definitely. Thank you for sharing your traffic generation tips with the listeners.
(If you’d like to sell Dr. Neil Shearing’s line up of products, you can join his Scam Free Zone affiliate program, or you can download his Blog Commenting Software, both are absolutely free of charge.)
Download the Podcasts: Traffic Generation Part 1
Get the Show Notes: IMS Podcast #135 Show Notes
Read More Interviews: #135 Directory
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