Drive Targeted Traffic: 3 Surefire Ways For Your Affiliate Business by Jeff Casmer

Given that the large percentage of people on the internet do not care about your product, it becomes crucial to locate and drive the small handful that does care to your website. An affiliate marketer must be able to weed through the browsers and find the seeds that will grow his business-the buyers. Driving targeted traffic to your website is done in three steps.

1. Find out who your target market is:

Before you can begin to drive targeted traffic to your website you have to learn who would be interested in what you have to offer. Your target market is a select group of consumers whom you are trying to satisfy. Without knowing who they are, it is very easy to miss the mark and continue to serve a large group of browsers as opposed to buyers.

Ask yourself, what age group does my target market fall under? What's their gender? What are their interests? What are their stressors? Online forums make it simpler to find out this information. People will usually give you the exact information you need to reach your target audience.

Join forums related to your niche and ask questions such as what do they look for in a product like yours? And what methods do they use to find it, ie what keywords do they use when searching?

2. Article Marketing

Once you know who your target market is you can begin to write keyword focused articles directed at target market. Where do these keywords come from? Research--by using keyword sites like Wordtracker you can come up with a list of keywords and keyword phrases a consumer in your target market would use to find information about your niche.

Suppose you were an affiliate marketer for a website that sold fine chocolates you could write articles about the benefits of chocolate for your health, how chocolate can improve your mental activity, or even why chocolate is a great aphrodisiac. Search engines will find your articles and your website may receive higher ranking, your website will then be found by those looking for information about chocolate.

A note about using keywords, because keyword stuffing is a form of spam (using the same word a hundred times in an article) you will want to keep a thesaurus handy when writing your articles. Instead of saying "chocolate" over and over again find variations of the word like "cocoa dessert." This way search engines will not flag you for keyword stuffing and your article will come up for more than one keyword.

Keyword searchers are in the browser category. They are not ready to buy. Specific keywords are used by someone who knows what they are looking for and is ready to make a purchase. This is extremely important when using the next method to drive targeted traffic.

3. Pay Per Click

Pay per click is form of advertising that involves bidding on selected keywords to drive potential consumers to your affiliate website. You and other online companies in the same line of business bid against each other for temporary ownership of keywords and keyword phrases. The highest bidder will then receive targeted traffic from people who searched with that keyword or keyword phrase. Google Adwords is an example of PPC.

I can not stress the importance of bidding on relevant, specific keyword phrases. Here's why. Each time someone clicks your ad it will cost you, thus PPC can be very expensive. Therefore, it is important that you have a good understanding of what keywords your target market is likely to search with. If you use keywords that are too broad you risk running your profits into the ground by attracting unserious prospects. To avoid this, learn who is in your target market as well as keyword analysis.

The lifeblood of any online business is traffic and because of this you may feel that you spend countless hours learning, undertaking, and tweaking traffic generating techniques. This however, is not time wasted. Your business will flourish if you take the time to drive targeted traffic to your affiliate website.

Jeff Casmer is an internet marketing consultant and work at home business owner. For more information on affiliate programs please visit his "Top Ranked" Best Affiliate Programs Directory gives you all the information you need to Earn Money in the 21st century.

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Jeff Casmer