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Active vs. Passive Website Traffic Generation
By Jack Humphrey (http://power-linking-profits.com)

Many of my clients and list members ask the same questions when 
it comes to generating website traffic. From the questions, I 
can sometimes pick up a thread of misunderstanding about website 
promotion. One of those threads surfaced last week and turned 
into this article.

There are actually two broad types of website promotion: Active 
and Passive.

Things that fall into the category of Passive are:

1)  Search engine optimization
2)  Writing and Growing Website Content (The pages on your site 
whether they be articles, reports, your weblog, or a forum)

Many more website promotion tactics fall into the Active 
Category:

1)  Syndicating your content (like this article for example)
2)  Paid advertising (Banner and test ads, pay-per-click
    advertising, ezine advertising, etc.)
3)  Linking strategies (Reciprocal and non reciprocal linking)
4)  Being active in your "community" (Posting to forums that 
    your customers and associates frequent, for example.)
5)  Doing teleseminars
6)  Offline networking
7)  Joint ventures with businesses who have the attention of 
    your target market.
8)  Free classified advertising (Some people still see benefits 
    from this type of advertising to this day online.)
9)  Offline media advertising (Radio, TV, Newspaper, Trade
    Magazines and other publications, etc.)
10) Reports, software and other viral free tools that point back 
    to your paid services or products.

The two types of promotion are also referred to as "push/pull" 
website promotion. Passive website promotion "pulls" traffic TO 
your site while active promotion goes out on the web and "pushes" 
traffic to your site.

Looking at the two lists above, where do you think, if you HAD 
to choose between them, your time would be best spent?

Now I will never knock search engine marketing. That is a great 
source of sometimes massive free traffic. Sometimes. Unless you 
are in a niche that is very competitive. You see, if you are in 
a competitive niche you will always be out-spent and out-worked 
by companies with endless budgets and staff for the top positions.

Most mom and pop sites in competitive niches are not going to do 
well in the search engines if they don't spend exorbitant sums 
of time, training, and money on getting their sites perfected 
just for search engines.

You should do what you can do with optimization. Do what you can 
afford in time and money. Realize that search engine marketing 
is an ongoing battle to get and keep good rankings. It is a long 
term, ongoing traffic solution.

But also realize there is a lot of active promotion you can do 
today to get people to your site who are interested in your 
product/service whether your site is in the engines or not.

Most people still think you have to wait a long time to make 
ANYTHING happen for your traffic stats to start improving. 
That's not true. You could get a boost in traffic in as little 
as a couple of hours using active website promotion strategies.

The simplest way would be to go to Google and start an adwords 
campaign. Simply meaning, it is easy to start with an account 
and create your first ad. But then more complicated in that you 
need to actively watch your stats and improve conversion rates 
to get the most return for the money you spend to get that 
traffic.

It's a good strategy though, especially if you master the 
science of PPC advertising. I have a bonus in my Power 
Linking Course at http://power-linking-profits.com that was
created by Jonathan Mizel and Adwords guru Perry Marshall that 
breaks down exactly what it takes to win the PPC game.

But there are other techniques listed in the active section 
above that are free and easy to implement which can result in 
traffic immediately.

Each one of the things in both lists above can be broken out 
into much more detailed "plans" for your website marketing 
campaign. It depends on your goals, your product or service, and 
the amount of time you have to promote your site, which tactics 
you use and how much time you allocate to each.

I'll give you a hint on one of the more powerful traffic and 
branding tools. You are reading one right now. I would sell a 
fraction of the number of my courses if people weren't able to 
quickly and easily find several of my articles on hundreds of 
sites in the search engines.

Writing articles and reports and syndicating them is a short 
and long-term traffic and branding solution. I will caution you 
on this though: Don't just write a slew of "words" and submit a 
cruddy article all over the net. You will be branded alright. 
Branded as a hack or a NON-expert in your field.

You have to care about the reader experience enough to give them 
something of value in each article you write. This is the only 
way you should proceed with becoming a writer and syndicating 
your content. The more you give your readers, the more you get 
from them in sales and word-of-mouth advertising.

After awhile, if you are good, people start seeking out your 
articles on your site or elsewhere on the web. This is the 
"sweet spot" of writing for the web. Writer's Mecca. Publisher's 
Valhalla, if you will.

Hate to write? Hire a ghost writer. At http://webfoxmedia.com 
you can get 10 keyword optimized 500+ word articles written for 
you at a very good price. And you own the copyrights and can use 
the articles as content for your site (passively) as well as 
syndicate them globally (active promotion).

The best advice I can give you though is to become more active 
in the things that work. Just get going and set aside a real 
plan for your day-to-day promotion of your website. Don't get 
into "quick-fixes" or let yourself fall for the latest traffic 
scheme.

If you read about a traffic gimmick that leaves you wondering in 
the least about its real efficacy in driving targeted traffic to 
your site, just move on to the things above and don't waste your 
time on such things.

If website promotion was truly easy and effortless, every site 
on the net would have a tons of traffic and you wouldn't be 
reading this article on how to get more of it!

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Jack Humphrey is the author of Power Linking and Power Linking 
2: Evolution. Find out more about driving traffic to your site 
at http://power-linking-profits.com and http://webmastertraffictools.com
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