Traffic Hacking: How to Find (and Focus on) Your Top Sources of Web Traffic

We all understand the importance of traffic generation.

The problem?

There are so many different sources of traffic that it’s hard to know what’s worth your time and what isn’t.

Fortunately, there is a quick fix to this problem.

All you have to do is use a few tools and apply a specific mindset to your traffic generation efforts. Then you can easily identify the most effective promotional tools for your authority site and/or Kindle books.

It’s been over a year since I started the Authority Internet Business Case Study.  During this time, I’ve experimented with a variety of traffic sources to the site DevelopGoodHabits.com (DGH).  What have I learned?  There are only a handful of tactics that actually work (for me.)

In this post, I’m going to reveal a seven-step plan for finding your top sources of traffic and explain what to do when you identify them.

[title color=”green-vibrant” align=”scmgccenter” font=”verdana” style=”normal” size=”scmgc-2em”]Step #1: Set Up Conversion Tracking[/title]

When I first introduced the “Authority Internet Business” case study, I talked about the importance of identifying your Most Wanted Response (MWR). Although the Kindle books are selling well, the MWR for DGH will always be to build an email list.

The key to measuring the success of your MWR is to track when a visitor takes the specific action you need them to take. This is easy to do if you’re using squeeze pages to collect email addresses (more on this later), but it’s not so simple when you run a blog.

Fortunately, Google Analytics has a tool that makes it easy to track email conversions (the trick is to know where to look). Here’s how you set up conversion tracking for your blog.

First, access the admin inside your Google Analytics account. To be honest, this can be hard to find, so here’s a quick screenshot:

 Next, select the red “New Goal” button:

Third, you’ll choose a type of goal. I recommend the Newsletter sign up option:

After that, name the goal. You could stick with Newsletter sign up or use something else that’s appropriate:

Finally, insert a link to the first page visitors see after they sign up for your email marketing program—either a thank you or confirmation page:

Voila! Now you know how to set up conversion tracking for your website.

To be honest, I forgot to do this for the DGH site until early February. Here’s how conversion tracking looks inside Google Analytics.

After setting up conversion tracking, you’re ready to identify those important sources of traffic.

[title color=”green-vibrant” align=”scmgccenter” font=”verdana” style=”normal” size=”scmgc-2em”]Step #2: Focus on “Big Three” Metrics[/title]

Just like there are countless sources of traffic, there are countless ways to analyze your visitors. A lot of them are important, but overall, it’s best to focus on three key metrics:

• Unique Visitors: How many visitors does this traffic source generate?
• Time on Page: How long do they stick around?
• Conversion: How many visitors turn into email subscribers?

As you build your business, there is a lot of value in taking an in-depth look at your analytics and using the information to maximize the visitor experience. When you’re first getting started, your best bet is to focus on these three key metrics. This will prevent you from getting overwhelmed with data.

[title color=”green-vibrant” align=”scmgccenter” font=”verdana” style=”normal” size=”scmgc-2em”]Step #3: Stick to 80/20 Activities[/title]

If you’ve read any of my previous blog posts or Kindle books, then you know I always talk (sometimes nonstop) about the importance of knowing your 80/20.

Basically, the “80/20 rule” states that 80 percent of your results often come from 20 percent of your activities. Apply this to traffic generation and you’d see that only a few traffic sources produce a measurable return on your time and money.

The key here is to “double down” on what’s working and purposefully ignore the rest.

A great example of this is StumbleUpon. In the first quarter of 2014 (January through March), this site produced the following:

• 5,783 Visitors
• 0:16 Time on Page
• 3 Conversions

Do the math and you’ll see a ridiculously low conversion rate of 0.05 percent.

Based on these numbers, it’s evident that StumbleUpon is a complete waste of my time.

[title color=”green-vibrant” align=”scmgccenter” font=”verdana” style=”normal” size=”scmgc-2em”]Step #4: Drive Traffic to a Squeeze Page[/title]

While a blog is great place to market content, it’s not always the best place to send potential visitors. Instead, I recommend building an email list and driving traffic to a squeeze page. I do this when people have consumed a piece of content and would like more information—like Kindle books, guest posts and SlideShare presentations.

What’s important is to create a squeeze page for each type of traffic. That way you know if it’s worth continuing. As an example, here is a screenshot of the conversion rates on a few squeeze pages for DGH:

As you can see, I get the bulk of my subscribers from Kindle books, plus they convert the best. Guest posts also do pretty well. And while SlideShare presentations don’t convert that well, they don’t require too much of my personal time (more on this in a bit).

Overall, you should experiment with how you generate traffic. Try sending some people to squeeze pages and others to specific pages on your blog. Do it this way to get a good understanding of how each type of visitor behaves. Experimenting will help you determine the best way to increase conversion rates.

IMPORTANT:  In my 10+ years of Internet marketing, I’ve tried a variety of programs to design squeeze pages. Without a doubt, my favorite is Lead Pages {affiliate link}. Not only do they make it easy to set up and test different squeeze pages, they also provide easy-to-understand reports that help you identify what traffic sites actually convert. This kind of information is super important if you want to grow your authority business.

[title color=”green-vibrant” align=”scmgccenter” font=”verdana” style=”normal” size=”scmgc-2em”]Step #5: Test Different Traffic Sources[/title]

You won’t know what works for your site unless you experiment with different traffic sources. The best way to do this is track how much time and/or money you spend on each website. Basically your goal is to identify the sites that convert visitors into email subscribers with the least amount of time and/or money.

As an experiment, I tested a whole bunch of traffic sources in the first quarter of 2014:

Sidebar: If you’re interested, feel free to check out the different content I’ve tested on these platforms:

• Twitter
• SlideShare
• Facebook
• Pinterest

From the above image, you probably noticed that the traffic sources vary in quantity, quality and conversion rates. Some (like Facebook and StumbleUpon) drive lots of traffic, but don’t convert as many visitors into email subscribers. Others (like a guest post on DumbLittleMan.com) generate a small amount of traffic, but produce higher conversion rates.

I recommend studying these numbers at least once a month. You’ll discover this simple analysis provides a lot of insight into the traffic sources that actually work.

[title color=”green-vibrant” align=”scmgccenter” font=”verdana” style=”normal” size=”scmgc-2em”]Step #6: Target “80 Percent Results” Activities[/title]

Think back to our discussion of the 80/20 rule. Only a handful of activities will generate a measurable result for your traffic generation efforts. Your job is to focus more of your time on them and look for ways to scale what’s proven to already work.

I recently looked at the numbers for the first quarter of 2014 (see step #5) and determined that only a few traffic sources are currently working:

• Kindle books
• Organic search
• Guest posts
• SlideShare
• Pinterest

Now, it would be a mistake to focus all of my energy on these sources. Instead it would be smarter to leverage existing content and hire talented people to create more of it.

So moving forward, I’m doing the following to grow traffic (without requiring too much additional work on my part):

Strategy 1 – Write More Kindle Books: Obviously, this has been my most successful traffic and income strategy as of today (check out my latest income report for more information).  It makes sense to focus on improving the quantity and quality of my existing catalog. That’s why I’m focusing so much time on building a team around Kindle books.

Strategy 2 – Publish More Guest Posts: Between this site, DGH and publishing Kindle books, I don’t have a lot of extra time for guest posting. However, I’ve recently made the decision that DGH will become a multi-author site. As a result, this gives me free reign to hire other people to write guest posts that promote the site, build quality backlinks and generate leads for the email newsletter.

Strategy 3 – Hire Blog Writers:  Quality content is important for any type of authority site. But like I said, I don’t have a lot of time to post regular updates to DGH. That’s why I’ve started to hire writers to create three to four quality blog posts per month.

The key with this strategy is to find a compelling hook for each article idea. This will help your site in a number of ways:

1. It’ll generate more backlinks, which could improve search rankings.
2. It will have more “shareability” over social media.
3. Each post can easily be turned into a catchy SlideShare presentation.
4. Each post can be broken down into attractive Pinterest images.

Moving forward, I think it’s better to focus on quality over quantity. By hiring outside writers, I can manage the process and make sure that I’m getting the maximum return on each article.

Strategy 4 – Ramp up SlideShare: A few weeks back, I started playing around with SlideShare. So far, it’s paid off, generating 581 subscribers.

The final strategy I’m implementing is tweaking and improving what’s proven to be a legitimate source of traffic. Here are a few things I’m currently testing:

• Improving the call-to-action (CTA) at the end of every deck.
• Turning each new blog post into a presentation, then embedding it into the article as a “Cliff’s Notes” version of the post.
• Sending broadcast messages to my email list to engage subscribers and increase the number of views on each deck.
• Taking existing content (like parts of Kindle books and old blog posts) and turning them into presentations.

What I like best about SlideShare is it’s a great way of driving traffic without requiring too much personal time. I simply tell my VA what I need (I found my VA on Virtual Staff Finder), and she does the majority of the work. In total, I’d say my average time investment is about 30 to 45 minutes per deck.

To be honest, I’m not doing anything revolutionary with SlideShare. Basically, I’m following the advice that’s laid out in these awesome blog posts:

• SlideShare Moo’ Traffic Case Study (Ana Hoffman’s Traffic Generation Café)
• How to Milk SlideShare Homepage for All the Traffic You Can Handle (Guest post on Ana’s site by Mauro D’Andrea)
• How to Dominate the Homepage of SlideShare (Chris Ducker’s blog)
• Hacking SlideShare (Nick Loper’s Side Hustle Nation)

Strategy 5 – Leverage Images: Another thing I like about SlideShare is you can easily turn each slide into an image. This gives you that extra mileage from your existing content, and it doesn’t take that much time to add each image to your Pinterest account.

Overall, I’m still not convinced that Pinterest is a great source of traffic, but I enjoy posting images there as a hobby. It’s not that big of a deal to add the pictures that my VA supplies after completing each SlideShare presentation.

[title color=”green-vibrant” align=”scmgccenter” font=”verdana” style=”normal” size=”scmgc-2em”]Step #7: Experiment with New Traffic Sources[/title]

In the beginning of this article, I mentioned that there are countless ways to generate traffic. And while it’s important to focus on high-leverage, 80 percent activities, it’s equally important to experiment with new traffic sources.

My recommendation?

Test one new source of traffic every month. The cool thing about having an authority site is you already have an existing platform. It’s not too hard to create a few pieces of content and use your established audience to gain traction on this new platform.

Furthermore, most of the time, you don’t need to create new content. If you’ve written a few Kindle books and/or blog posts, it’s not too hard to turn them into consumable content that will get the attention of a whole new audience.

For instance, last month I barely knew a thing about SlideShare and now I have a channel that has 250+ followers and 70,000+ views. This was done entirely by repurposing existing content and putting it into a different format.

Even better, I can now easily take these presentations, add royalty-free music and turn them into simple videos that I post on YouTube.

My point?

There is a lot of potential traffic out there. Make the most of each source by taking your existing content and converting it to slides, tweets, images and other formats. Doing this will put your content in front of a whole new audience, making it easier to drive traffic to your site and turn visitors into subscribers.

[title color=”green-vibrant” align=”scmgccenter” font=”verdana” style=”normal” size=”scmgc-2em”]How to Find Your 80 Percent Traffic Sources[/title]

What I love most about traffic generation is there isn’t a right answer. What works for some people won’t work for others. This gives you the opportunity to test different things for your authority business and then find the handful of sources that work for you.

Kindle books, blogging and SlideShare are my most effective strategies, and Facebook is a complete disaster. Yet, I know lots of people are making a killing with social media. The point here is you don’t have to be good at everything. Instead, all you need to do is find those few sites that generate the best results…for you.

It’s not hard to identify your 80 percent traffic strategies. Simply set up conversion tracking through Google Analytics and experiment with sending visitors to a squeeze page. Then focus on the three big metrics (visitors, time on page and conversions) to see what method is producing a measurable result. Finally, keep testing different strategies until you discover what works best for your business.

Take Action. Get Results.