"How do I get more traffic to your site?" That's the eternal
question. Or to be more precise, "How do I get more targetted
traffic to my pages, people who are going to be interested in
what I have to offer?"
Afterall, there's no point, or rather little point in getting a
steady stream of boxing fans over to your site, if its main
theme is bread making. I said little point because I'm pretty
sure that there are some boxing enthusiasts who are also avid
bread makers, but what would be likelihood of getting that many
over to your bread making site at any given time?
One method of getting targetted traffic to your site is through
the hit exchanges. Now despite what you may have heard about
them, I urge you to give me a chance to explain, why, if hit
exchanges are used in a certain way, they can be a great souce
of targetted visitors. Warm responsive prospects who want to
know more about your site and/or business.
Put simply, a hit exchange is a facility that you can use to get
hits to your site in exchange for viewing other people's sites.
Not all exchanges are created equal and two of the main things
to look out for when picking which ones to join are:
A) anti cheat controls: the top hit exchanges have tight anti
cheat security which prevents the use of auto surf software.
Whilst the use of such programs is very tempting and attractive,
it kind of defeats the point of the hit exchanges. There'll be
more on this later on!
B) the exchange ratio: just how many sites will you need to view
in order to get one visitor to your site? The smaller the amount
of pages you have to visit in order to get a hit back to your
own site, the more productive your surfing time will be. The
traffic that comes from hit exchanges has been called a number
of things, none of which are particularly savoury - cheese
burger traffic (well, I guess that's pretty savoury in one sense
of the word!), a waste of bandwith, a cheap gimmick.
Well, inspired by another internet marketer's experience with
them, I decided to advertise an ebay auction on one of the top
hit exchanges and ended up getting a much higher winning bid
than I would have done otherwise.
The thing with hit exchanges is that you've got to know how to
use them, otherwise your results will be disappointing. But if
you apply the three tips that I personally use when advertising
on them, you may be pleasantly surprised.
So let's go straight to....
No1: Create a special page for the traffic exchanges.
The maximum amount of time that your site will be given to load
is 30 seconds and the last thing you want is a slow loading
page. It needs to: a) load quickly which will mean being very
sparing with the graphics and animation. b) put across the
greatest benefit for visiting you site very clearly. c) have a
quick and easy way for surfers to bookmark your page. This is
very important. When surfing for hits, you get into a kind of
flow, one you don't really want to interrupt. Having a
favourites button will ensure that people who are pushed for
time can always come back and view your page later. If you have
links to other sites on your special page,it's best if they open
in new windows. That way your visitor doesn't have to leave the
hit exchange. It's also a good idea to have some form of email
capture facility on your page. Offer surfers something free in
exchange for their email address or use a subscription box to
get sign ups for your newsletter. No2: Choose hit exchanges that
allow you to select which category your site falls into. This
way, it will be viewed by surfers who've also chosen this
category or similar categories. So your search optimization site
won't get shown to surfers interested in action/adventure games!
Some exchanges also let you pick the type of sites you want to
see. No3: Use hit exchanges that don't allow cheating
Remember I touched on this earlier? It's so important that I
thought I'd talk a bit more about it here. Put bluntly, hit
exchanges that allow cheating aren't worth too much of your
time. Why? Because whilst you're faithfully clicking away, and
viewing other people's sites, yours never gets seen because X
amount of surfers in that exchange aren't really surfing at all.
In fact they're using some form of surf automation software
that's busy doing the "clicking" for them! As I mentioned
earlier, this really does defeat the point of traffic exchanges
which is to give some of your time to view other people's sites
to receive the time of fellow hit exchange members. Anti
cheating controls can take the form of having to click on a
certain number or shape before you can proceed on to the next
page and earn a hit to your site.
Other types include acknowledging receipt of bonus credits and
some even offer cash prizes that you need to claim!
You may have heard a lot of bad things about hit exchanges but
don't be put off by them.
As with most forms of advertising, starting off with free offers
and then marketing your main product(s) and service(s) will
always work better than trying to sell something straight away.
This is especially true of hit exchanges were people's main
focus is surfing for credits.
Apply the three tips above for better results, and whilst
surfing, take an interest in other people's pages. Learn from
their mistakes and try and emulate their sucesses. And you never
know, whilst looking through other people's sites, you might
very well come across that elusive product, service or bit of
information that you've been searching for.
About the author:
Ofa Morgan is the owner of Blue Moon Offers, a site where you
can submit your articles, get free content and win a great prize
for your "rant 'n' rave". Find out how at:
http://www.bluemoonoffers.com. She's also a hit exchange
enthusiast and for more details on one of the top traffic
exchanges, visit: http://www.bluemoonoffers.com/wmq.html
