Today’s topic is something that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere. It’s something that I came up with myself resulting from years of testing and tracking.

There are many “Gurus” out there who “teach” you how to get traffic to your website but none of them considers the difference of the type of website that their students might have.

This is something that took me quite a while to find out: Not every traffic source works well for every type of website. Let me give you an example: If you promote a Sales Page in a Traffic Exchange you will get no or very little results… but if you promote a Squeeze Page or Splash Page in a Traffic Exchange your results can be real good.

There are hundreds of these examples that I could give you. For now let’s just keep in mind that: Not every traffic source works well for every type of website.

Now, let’s have a deeper look into the example with Traffic Exchanges. I’ve told you that a Squeeze Page or Splash Page can produce good results in Traffic Exchanges… but that’s only half the truth. There is something else that you must consider and that is The Topic Of Your Website.

If you promote a Squeeze Page in Traffic Exchanges that gives away a free ebook about how to get website traffic, then your results will most likely be pretty good… but if you promote a Squeeze Page that gives away a free ebook about how to train your cat, then your results might be rather poor.

It’s the same way with hundreds of other traffic sources… so let’s just keep in mind for now that: The Topic and Type Of Your Website must fit to the source of traffic.

To bring some order into this puzzle we’ll form 4 Types Of Websites:

1.) Internet Marketing related Free Signup Pages (Squeeze Pages, Free Membershipsites etc.)

2.) Internet Marketing related Blogs

3.) Niche Content or Free Websites (Blogs, Free Membershipsites etc.)

4.) Sales Pages in any niche (Ebooks, Software, Services etc.)

I think it should be possible to place most websites in one of these 4 categories. So, let’s have a closer look at these categories and the sources of traffic that work best for each category.

1.) Internet Marketing related Free Signup Pages (Squeeze Pages, Free Membershipsites etc.)

Now, I guess most of my readers already know that it’s most important to build up an opt-in list. And I guess most of my readers are operating in the Internet Marketing “niche”. So this first category is most important for us.

My favorite sources of traffic to promote these type of sites are:

- Google Adwords PPC
- Manual Traffic Exchanges
- Credit Based Safelists and Mailers
- Giveaway Events

These 4 sources of traffic work best for Free Signup Websites based on my experience. That doesn’t mean that these are the only 4 sources of traffic that I use but I focus on these 4 sources.

Of course I do Article Marketing, SEO, Web 2.0 Marketing etc. as well… but these “Content Based” strategies are rather long-term strategies that you should only use for your websites that have proven to convert best. If you promote a new website through Article Marketing without knowing your conversions, then you might be wasting your time. With the 4 traffic sources above you can easily track your conversions and optimize these before you start Content Based marketing.

One fact that I’ve discovered through testing and tracking is that Internet Marketing related websites are much harder to promote through Article Marketing, SEO etc. than it is with Niche Websites. That’s due to the fact that there is just way too much competition for the good keywords and even for the long tailed keywords nowadays.

When I look at the numbers inside my Ezinearticles account, then I notice that my Niche Articles received almost always at least 3 times the views and clicks than my Internet Marketing Articles.

The same goes for my SEO efforts… I can easily get 200+ daily organic visitors from Google for my Niche Websites within just 3 months but for my Internet Marketing Websites I’ve only managed that when I launched a new membershipsite with the help of affiliates.

2.) Internet Marketing related Blogs

In the last 3 years I’ve setup several Internet Marketing related Blogs. On some I’ve posted only unique, original articles… on other blogs I’ve published PLR articles, and other blogs I’ve simply automated with RSS Feeds and WP automated posting plugins.

All blogs have been pinged, bookmarked, rss feed submitted and promoted through Web 2.0, Article Marketing and Social Marketing. The results were rather poor, the blogs received between 10 and 30 visitors daily on average.

When I did the same thing with my Niche Blogs I received between 100 and 300 visitors daily.

After alot of testing and tracking I realized why this is so: Too much competition for a too low search volume on internet marketing keywords. There are of course searches for “SEO”, “Search Engine Marketing”, “Internet Marketing”, “Online Business” etc. but try to get a Top 10 or even a Top 30 position on Google for these keywords.

Below are my favorite ways to promote Internet Marketing related Blogs.

- Send out emails to your own opt-in list when you make a new post
- Exchange Links with other Internet Marketing Blogs
- Place a link inside your Membershipsites
- Creating Linkbaits

Now, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use all the other blogging promotion strategies like: Bookmarking, Twitter Integrations, RSS Feed Submission, Article Marketing, Web 2.0 Marketing etc.

Use my favorite 4 strategies as the Traffic Engine and the other strategies as the Traffic Multiplier.

3.) Niche Content or Free Websites (Blogs, Free Membershipsites etc.)

These are really fun to promote because it’s very easy if you have done a good keyword research. There are many niche long-tailed keywords out there that you can target to get free traffic from Google and other search engines.

For promoting Niche Websites or Blogs I usually use certain routines for search engine optimization… Off-Page and On-Page.

But first you must find keywords that you can easily rank for.

Here is what I do for each keyword:

- Write a 500+ words article and post in on the Niche Blog, place links to your Niche Membershipsites in this Blog Post.

- Bookmark the Blog Post with 20 up to 50 bookmarking services

- Write a 500+ words article about the same topic as the first article. Then submit this new article to several article directories, linking to the Blog Post.

- Write a 1000+ words article and place it on a Web 2.0 site like Squidoo, Hubpages, Webpaint, Know etc. linking to the Blog Post

- Bookmark the new Web 2.0 site with 20 up to 50 bookmarking services

- RSS Submit the new Web 2.0 site to 10 up to 50 RSS Feed Directories / Services

This procedure should be spread up over a week. If you’ve targeted some easy keywords then this strategy should be enough to get you a Top 10 position, often the first or second position.

If you’ve targeted some more competitive keywords, then you can do some more linkbuilding on more Web 2.0 sites, submitting more articles or other strategies like Video Submissions, Blog Commenting, Link-Wheels etc.

4.) Sales Pages in any niche (Ebooks, Software, Services etc.)

This last category can be the hardes or easiest to promote, depending on your Marketing Base.

If you have a huge JV-Network or a huge network of your own websites or a huge list, then selling products online can be easy… if you don’t have all that, then I suggest you build that up first.

Selling products online as a beginner is not as easy as some people want you to believe. Fact is that people buy from you if they Know, Like and Trust you. This can’t be achieved from cold traffic… at least the conversion rates from cold traffic will be very low.

So, the best way to sell products online is by:

- Having a Product Launch
- Mailing out to your own opt-in list
- Having Affiliates who promote your offer
- Special Offers on your other websites and blogs
- Integration Marketing
- PPC (only if you know what you are doing)

Alright, I hope this blog post could give you at least some ideas on how to get some more traffic to your websites.

Thanks for reading and feel free to leave your comments.

Guido Nussbaum