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 Case In Point: Designing A Site That Demands High Traffic
by: Karon Thackston
Marnie
Pehrson may not be well known for driving traffic to Web sites, but she
should be! Her ability to get literally hundreds of thousands of page
views a month is simply astounding! (NOTE: I said "page views," not
"hits." BIG difference!) I had to ask her to reveal her secrets so that
we all could learn how to create a Web site that simply demands high
traffic.
KARON: Hi Marnie. I really appreciate you taking the time to
give us your insights on traffic building. You seem to have the Midas
touch in this area : )
MARNIE: Oh sure, Karon. Anything for a friend.
KARON: I know from our email conversations that most of your
Web sites get anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 page views a month. How
do you do it? Search engines? Ezine ads? What?
MARNIE: Well, those things do help, but normally the site
itself drives the visitors to return over and over. It also encourages
viral marketing with lots of referrals.
KARON: So tell me about your two biggest sites (in terms of
traffic). Those would be
and
, right?
MARNIE: Right. Both of these sites give the visitor a chance to
shine - to contribute and be in the spotlight. They both accept article
contributions; they both allow profiles of visitors; and they both have
a place for me to give extra attention to visitors (the masthead).
KARON: So, because visitors are in the spotlight on these two
sights, they recommend them to others, return repeatedly, and link back
to you. Excellent!
MARNIE: Yes, I've built in automatic ways for visitors to
forward pages to friends, which brings even more traffic. Basically,
rather than having the focus on selling, I put it on the visitor. They
are the primary focus with the products/services I sell taking a back
seat (so to speak).
KARON: But you still make sales, right?
MARNIE: Oh yes! The sites wouldn't have been able to stay
online since 1998 and 2000 if they weren't making money : )
KARON: Good point! What else can you tell us about your "magic
formula?"
MARNIE: Well, both sites have *LOTS* of pages people can visit.
As you know, more pages = more doors for visitors to enter = more
listings in search engines = more traffic!
KARON: Keep going... I'm all ears.
MARNIE: The masthead I told you about earlier helps drive
traffic from my heavy-hitter sites to my newer sites. Among other
things, it features articles and tips from site contributors. Then, in
my newsletters, I encourage people to go to the site to read further. In
other words, everything's not there in the email, they have to go to the
site to get some of the content.
KARON: Well, you just have all kinds of tricks up your sleeve,
don't you? Anything else?
MARNIE: Yes, actually : ) IdeaMarketers is also a "newsworthy"
site that is used as a resource for many people. It tends to get a lot
of mentions in articles simply because of its nature. And because of the
quality of the site, IdeaMarketers has been recommended in a lot of
high-traffic ezines.
KARON: So the combination of all these elements creates a Web
site that people WANT to visit time and again, right? Marketing sites
such as these is left more to the visitors than to your efforts, huh?
MARNIE: In a way. The visitors most certainly are the reason
for my success. As I said before, search engines are not to be ignored,
and I'm a firm believer in ezine advertising, but when you build a site
designed around visitor interaction, traffic usually comes without a
struggle.
KARON: Thanks so much, Marnie. This gives us some serious
issues to think about.
MARNIE: My pleasure!
The two
sites of Marnie's we mentioned in this interview are her article
promotion site , and her women's spiritual growth site
. Visit them today to see Marnie's traffic
pulling designs in action.
Most buying decisions
are emotional. Your ad copy should be, too! Karon is President & CEO of
Marketing Words, Inc. who offers targeted copywriting, search engine
copywriting, and ezine article writing. Subscribe to Karon's free ezine
at http://www.marketingwords.com/ezine.html or visit her site at http://www.marketingwords.com.
You can also learn to write you own powerful copy at http://www.copywritingcourse.com.
About The Author
Copy not getting
results? Let Karon provide search engine copywriting, catalog
copywriting, or other types for you. Just visit
. You can also learn to write your
own SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors at
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