"TARGETED TRAFFIC FOR PENNIES.."
By Jim Daniels
What follows is a proven, step by step formula for driving
highly targeted traffic to any website; for pennies.
Recently, I've been sampling new promotions methods to
drive fresh traffic to my website. I had been reading quite a bit
about goto.com and how other webmasters had been getting
great results with it, so I decided to give it a try.
In a nutshell, goto.com is a "pay for rank" search engine. It
allows website owners to bid on keywords related to their site.
When users search on any term at goto.com they are
presented with a list of sites, with the highest bidders
appearing closest to the top.
Based on my own experience, this site not only offers a great
way to find things on the web, it offers a very inexpensive way
to generate targeted traffic to any site. By following the details
of my own goto advertising campaign, you should be able to
emulate the excellent results I've had.
Just a few weeks into my campaign, I am now generating
between 85 and 100 visitors each day from goto.com. My
costs are averaging about 4 bucks a day. As I continue to
tweak my advertising (I'll teach you how) I expect my numbers
to double and possibly triple. But I'll get to that in a minute.
Let's take things a step at a time...
Step 1: Open your own GoTo account.
The first step is to visit www.goto.com and open an account.
There is a minimum investment of $25 to become a goto
advertiser. The way it works is simple... As an advertiser at
goto.com, you bid on search terms relevant to your site. You
have complete control over how much you pay on a per- click
basis on each of those search terms. The higher your "bid,"
on each search term, the higher in the search results your
site will appear. As GoTo proudly states, "It's targeted,
cost-per-click advertising and you set the cost per click!"
Step 2: Decide how much a visitor is worth to you.
You can do this by checking your current website stats. Add
up your average number of monthly visitors and determine
what percentage of them actually go on to become a
customer. This can be tricky but it is an important step.
Depending upon the average cost of your products or
services, you should be able to come up with a ballpark figure
as to what each visitor is worth.
Example: If I'm converting one sale from every 100 visitors
and my average sale is $100, then each visitor is worth about
a buck. (Keep in mind, this does not take into account the
lifetime value of a site visitor or customer.)
Once you have an idea of how much each visitor is worth to
you, write it down. You will use this number as a "cap" on your
bids. More on this later.
Step 3: Start a file on your computer with keywords
pertaining to your site.
Using any word processor, start typing anything and
everything you can think of that pertains to your site. If you are
selling pet supplies your list would look something like this...
dog
cat
kitten
dog bone
collar
dog food
pet
pet supply
(Don't worry about pluralizing all your words. GoTo's Search
Pluralization feature analyzes your keywords and does this for
you automatically.)
Now before you tackle this step, I must inform you that this
can be the most time-consuming part of your goto campaign.
Why? Well, in order to really get the most from your
campaign you'll be making a list of at least 1000 keywords, or
search terms. That's right, I said one thousand. You don't
"need" that many to get started with goto, but I tried bidding on
a limited number of keywords and the results were nowhere
near the cost- effectiveness of using a large list. A large list
allows you to bid as low as a penny on 90% of your keywords.
Even if 10% of them get a single click each day, you're
generating 100 visitors right there.
Goto offers a "suggested search terms tool" to help you:
http://inventory.go2.com/inventory/searchInventory.mp
When you type in a word there, you get a list of related search
terms that were searched on last month at goto.com. I found
their suggestion tool helpful, although it can still take quite a bit
of time to compile a large list with it.
Actually, I must admit I cheated on generating my own
keyword list... As a registered member of The Challenge, I
have access to a keyword generation script that generated
literally 1200 terms for me in a few minutes. This tool saved
me days of thinking and typing and quite frankly is worth the
price of admission to the private site. (Especially if you are
planning a goto campaign.)
Step 4: Write a title and description to go along with your keywords.
When you place your bids at goto.com you will also be asked
for the title of the URL you are submitting and a short
description. It is important to write something brief, yet
eye-catching. Remember, the main objective is to get people
to click. Use of the words "free" and "you" can be very useful
here. Stick to the tried and true classified advertising axioms
but make an effort to stand out from the crowd. A good idea is
to write something YOU would click on.
You may want to write two or three of these titles and
descriptions, especially if you plan to bid on keywords that
cannot be directed to the exact same URL at your site. Ex:
One of my bids was on the keywords "free downloads" so I
wrote a separate title and description for the software area of
my site
http://bizweb2000.com/software.htm and submitted that specific URL.
You can save time if you can write a description that covers
your entire site and then link all your bids to your main URL.
Although your traffic may not be as targeted when you do this,
it is less time consuming than trying to break your site into
specific areas. It all depends on your individual site and how
much time you have to spend. (Remember, you can always
adjust links once your account is online and drawing traffic.)
Step 5: Place your bids.
Okay, you have a nice long list of keywords, along with titles
and descriptions. Now it's time to get your bids in! You do this
at goto's DirecTraffic Center. This is their account
management tool, where you can add, modify, or delete your
search listings, 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. You can also
check your account balance, add money to your GoTo
account, change your bids in real-time and view your activity
reports. Once you've opened an account you just click
https://secure.goto.com/s/dtc/center/ to log in.
As far as actually placing your bids, there are basically two
methods to utilize --manually (by hand) or by using the Excel
spreadsheet they offer. This is a no-brainer. Go for the faster
and more accurate spreadsheet option. It allows you to
complete one form and email it to chgorder@goto.com for
their review.
Microsoft's Excel is part of the Office Suite and many PC
users have it, even though they may never use it. Although I
had never opened Microsoft's Excel program before, I was
able to learn enough in about a half hour to get me through.
Basic skills like repeating text and drag and drop of my
keyword list were simple enough to figure out. Within an hour
of downloading the spreadsheet they offer, I had a completed
form ready with over 1200 keyword bids.
An important topic to touch on here is the pricing of your bids.
I suggest you price all your bids a one cent. (0.01) Since you
will undoubtedly be submitting some keywords that are not
currently being bid on at goto, why pay more per click than
you have to. A penny bid will put you at the top on these
keywords! Once your spreadsheet has been accepted and
put online, you can then start adjusting for more traffic. (More
on this in the next step.)
Note: Make sure your spreadsheet does not contain off-topic
keywords. Submissions are spot-checked and routinely
refused if they contain keywords unrelated to your site.
Step 6: Adjust your bids.
This is where knowing what a click is worth to you comes into
play. At Goto.com's DirecTraffic Center you can now adjust
your bids in real-time. This area shows you your current
ranking on each of the terms you've bid on and also tells you
how much you need to bid to get to the #1 spot. What a tool!
While I don't recommend you go for number one with every
bid I do recommend you try for a top 50 spot. As of the writing
of this, each page returned on goto searches returns 40 sites.
Getting your keywords on the first page or even the very top of
the second can generate traffic.
What has been working for me is this: As I go through my
bids I adjust only the ones that I feel are highly likely to get
searched on. If I can squeeze into the top ten on any of these
by adding a few cents to the bid, I do it. Then, I make sure that
the real common and super-busy keywords appear at least in
the top 50.
Example: The word "business" was very popular and my
penny bid had me at #153. I had received zero hits from that
low position. So I bid just enough to move it up to the top 50
spot and bingo- six hits the next day. While you may be
thinking that six hits is nothing, remember that I'm bidding on
1200 keywords. I've had time to adjust about 35% of them so
far and I'm up to 100 visitors a day from goto.com. That's over
3000 visitors a month and I'm far from done.
As I mentioned, knowing what a click is worth to you comes in
handy here. If each visitor to your site is worth say, .65, then
set that as your limit, or cap. Bid up to that amount on any
keyword, but not over it. This will ensure that your campaign
remains profitable.
As you make adjustments to your bids, you should visit the
"view stats" area of the DirecTraffic Center frequently.
Checking your stats at least once each week will allow you to
keep on top of your adjustments and maximize your traffic.
That's it! An effective new traffic source for your site!
In closing...
While I'm not much for spending money on advertising, this
new method is cheap and effective. Anytime you can get
targeted traffic to your site for pennies, you need to take action.
I've managed to get some excellent results with goto.com,
even with the huge amount of competition in my industry. For
other webmasters who are focused on less crowded niches,
goto.com could be a goldmine of targeted business.
Take this lesson plan and Goto it!
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* Article by Jim Daniels of JDD Publishing. Jim's site has helped
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Thank You!
