Website traffic doesn’t just fall from the sky.

That makes getting a new website off the ground extremely difficult.

You’re desperate for traffic, so you start picking up the latest tactics you keep reading about like Pinterest.

But here’s the thing most people miss.

Not all traffic is created equal.

So who cares if you did actually get 10,000 visitors one day from StumbleUpon or Pinterest. Because this type of traffic bounces immediately and never returns.

Instead you need to build consistent, loyal traffic if you want people to join your mailing list and actually buy something.

So forget about magic potions and secret formulas to flood your site with traffic. Here’s how you can build consistent, high quality traffic by taking proactive steps each day.

First Off: Forget About SEO Traffic

SEO is one of the best sources of consistent traffic to any website.

But if you’re new, then forget about it. When you start a brand new site, you won’t get any traffic from search engines, because you’re too new and lost in the sea of millions of other websites.

Search engine algorithm’s are designed to reward trusted, authoritative websites that people like and recommend. But when you’re new, nobody knows whether you’re an authority or trustworthy.

So if you can’t count on SEO, where will your traffic come from in the beginning?

Referrals.

Your Early Traffic Will Come From Other Websites

In the beginning, you need to spend your time where your audience is, get in front of them, and bring them back to your own site.

If you do it right, this Referral Traffic will be some of the highest converting traffic sources you have. So this is how you’ll get the best marketing ROI from your time and effort.

Influencers with Communities

The most obvious source of referral traffic comes when other sites mention you. Think about traditional PR. When a major site links to your business, you can expect a large amount of high quality, relevant traffic.

Now there’s a few different ways to do this. You could use newsjacking to slide in front of journalists. But that’s hit-or-miss.

For this tactic to really work well, you need to first build relationships with these people. Partner with people who influence communities of your target audience. That could be a journalist, niche blogger, even a complimentary business that serves the same customers.

But this takes time. You need to invest some weeks, months, and even years for the best partnerships to pay off.

So let’s look at some other sources of referral traffic that can give you a quick win today.

Content Syndication

Content syndication basically means getting your content on other websites.

This is a valuable option because media and content-rich sites are always on the lookout for new, good content.

Let’s say you create high quality videos that are informative and entertaining. Video is a tough skill and not everyone is good at it. So reach out to media sites with your same audience and offer your content to them. Give them the embed code, and all you need to ask for is a link or two back to your site. Now you can publish this same material on your site, and others.

Another option is to write guest posts and distribute them on larger sites. This is a great way to include your links on other people’s sites, and get the right kind of traffic coming back to your website.

And the best part is you don’t need to write a thing. Just hire a blog writer who already has the skill and connections.

Besides getting referral traffic, you’re also able to build your brand recognition and SEO link profile at the same time.

Advertising

Online advertising should be an investment, as long as your driving people to a goal. That means you take someone to a relevant, dedicated landing page for your service, product, or mailing list.

Here are some of your options:

• Direct Response: Google AdWords is one of the best ways to advertise directly to people looking for you. But unless you a high margin product, it will probably be too expensive.
• Brand Advertising: You can use a marketplace like BuySellAds to get inexpensive banner ads on different websites in most industries. You can also use this service now to have a website “sponsor” or tweet about your company, website or product.
• Product/Service/Site Reviews: Another affordable option is to pay other people to review your product or service. You can use ReviewMe to pick a blogger to write an “advertorial” that puts your sponsored message directly in front of readers.
• Social Media Advertising: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, each have millions of users and provide easy, inexpensive advertising opportunities. You should try all available options with $20 on each, and then use arbitrage marketing to find the winners.

The key to online advertising is to have a purpose. Get them to sign up, subscribe, or purchase.

Don’t just send them to your home page, a random blog post, or worse – one of your social media profiles.

Long-Tail SEO

Wait… I thought you should forget about SEO traffic?

You should, but you need to start building a foundation. If you use a long-tail strategy, you should start to see consistent SEO traffic in a few short months.

I’ll give you an example of how this works. I have a relatively new site (roughly 6 months old), and organic search was the largest source of traffic – accounting for about 37% of the site’s total.

But the largest keyphrase that sent traffic only accounted for 1.3% of overall traffic. That means all my search traffic is coming from a ton of long tail keyphrases that aren’t difficult to pick up, and aren’t subject to danger from Google changing their algorithm.

Great. How do you do that?

You should target highly-relevant, but less competitive keyphrases using the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

Start by entering relevant phrases that describe your site, and it will also recommend new ones to choose from.

Note: Please understand that these numbers aren’t very accurate. So you’re looking for relative positions, not absolute data. And make sure you switch from “Broad Match” to [Exact Match] so it’s more accurate.

Now search for long-tail keyphrases that usually have 3 – 5 words. Look at the “Local Monthly Search Volume” column for keyphrases with less than 500 Local Monthly Searches.

That’s the great part about creating content. You’re able to add content and hit less-competitive keyphrases on a daily or weekly basis.

Then once you build high-quality links to these posts, you’ll start to see some results.

It will start slow at first.

But in a few short months with consistent effort, SEO will be your main source of traffic.

Conclusion

You need traffic to start getting customers online.

But you don’t just want any traffic.

Getting mentioned on a huge site will net you a huge spike of traffic… but most of them will leave your site immediately and never come back.

Instead, you need consistent, high-quality traffic that actually joins your email marketing list and eventually buys something.

So it’s crucial to understand that you have to make daily, persistent actions to get this type of traffic to your site.

You can’t just hope for the best.

You need to identify what tactics you’re going to use, and figure out what steps you have to take to get reach your sales goals.

Because when you focus on taking these daily actions towards your traffic goals, then the results will take care of themselves.