Client Case Study – How To Generate Traffic In A Highly Competitive Market
April 5th, 2007 by Mike Reining Read more about Blog Marketing, Popular, SEO, Traffic TacticsIn a hyper competitive market online are there ways to generate traffic that don't cost you an arm and a leg? We are pleased to reveal the answer to this question is YES! This revealing case study shows how to generate traffic to your sites without forking out on unnecessary, extortionate PPC advertising costs.
The following case study comes from a one-on-one site makeover between Vishen Lakhiani and one of our clients who purchased our Ecommerce Strategy Course. (the Site Makeover is included as part of the program)
The Client: A Nutritional Supplements Retailer that Wants to Move Online but is Being Killed by the Highly Competitive Cost of Advertising on Google
The Solution: How We Uncovered a LowCost Way to Gain a Competitive Advantage and Out Do the Competition Using Micro-Sites, Blogs and SEO
The Company - Nutrisite (name changed for confidentiality)
The company we spoke to earlier this week wishes to remain anonymous, so for the sake of this article we'll refer to them as Nutrisite. Nutrisite is a retailer of all kinds of nutritional supplements for medicinal purposes. Tony, the founder of Nutrisite, has been running the company for over four years now and until recently he only had an offline presence.
Using only offline tools he's acquired a database of 39,000 clients of which 13,000 are regular customers. Products are generally bought from them using a catalogue and a newsletter sent out through direct mail. They have a solid profit margin per customer of around 25% on its products.
Getting Online
Tony's goal was to develop an online presence which means the potential to expand the market he could reach out to, WHILE increasing leads and sales on a truly exponential level.
They have already finished their website and the next step is to get it fully operational. Here's what it looks like.
The Website
Nutrisite clearly has a lot to offer - but they are new online - have virtually no natural search rankings and were losing money on PPC.
How could they get affordable traffic while building a competitive edge?
The first thing we told Tony was that to be a success he needed to concentrate on 3 things. . .
3 Things To Optimize For a Successful Web Business
1) Getting Traffic
2) Getting High Conversion rates
3) Getting Great Average Value Per Customer
Vishen suggested that Tony Focus Solely on these metrics so that he keeps his eyes and attention on the key things that can make or break his online presence.
Tony knows how to monetize his value per customer and has a good average value per customer already.
His problem was #1 and #2. He'd studied the MindValley e-commerce labs and had a fair idea about #2 - we'll cover how to get high conversion rates in another case study at a later date anyway.
So. . . #1 ( TRAFFIC ) is where the problem lies - in such a highly competitive market how can a marketer generate traffic without spending a fortune on Google AdWords?
2 Most Common and Usual Ways To Generate Traffic
Google Ads- The competition on Google Adwords is so intense in the industry, for example just for the keyword prostate there are 10 ads there to compete with. And there are 12 advertisers already for keyword phrase digestion disorder. To compete on this playing field there is likely to be a bidding war for the top spots. The only winners in this case will be Google. (I'm still kicking myself for not buying their stock when it was $100 a share , %#$@!)
SEO Optimization- It's possible to find yourself high up google if you find niches in markets and target these keywords. But Tony's site is new - how could he rapidly get good keyword placements?
Multiple Traffic Tactics
Tony had also been introduced to the idea of co-registration as a way of increasing his email list. This has worked for marketers in the past but we do have some concerns over this tactic.
Our Response:
"What we discovered from experimenting with this in the past is while co-registration does build your mailing list, what happens is sometimes these clients don't recognize you - they signed up on site A and they get an email from site B, often you get treated as a spammer and you get extremely low conversion rates. Being seen as a spammer is not a good thing if you're looking to build a long term business"
What we advised Tony to do was this: MICROSITES
Our Tactics To Generate Traffic In A Highly Competitive Market - Use A High Level Microsite Strategy
Build A Microsite
When people type in a keyword in Google, virtually all the time they are looking for information. By building a microsite it's possible for anybody to develop credibility, an air of authority, excellent content and vital information.
In this case if we target a specific niche you'll find sites, such as constipation advice below (sorry for the choice), with information that features highly on google. This example is one of a good site with content, however it doesn't truly fit into the category of a microsite. The site has been over-engineered and would have taken a long time to develop.
The beauty of a microsite is that it can be designed and launched with a lot of content within the space of a day hassle free.
We suggested that Tony should start using Microsites as the strategy to get better PPC conversions AND over time, build his keyword rankings so he begins to get search traffic.
His competition on PPC was fierce - but none were truly experienced and we think a targeted Microsite strategy might help him dominate his niches.
Take the keyword "constipation". Rather than sending traffic to a simple landing page showing NuriSite's range of constipation products, we suggested Tony directs the traffic to a Microsite focused on NOTHING but constipation advice.
What does a Microsite Look Like?
Here is a sample microsite we created. It's running on a Wordpress blog so it's really easy to update. There are 3 areas to note.
- The Signup Form.
- The Blog Articles
- The Ads
The site was setup on February 1. By the end of the month we were getting 5,000 impressions per week and were showing up on the first or second page of Google for several keywords.
For example - this is one of the keywords we were targeting "John Assaraf" (He's a motivational speaker and entrepreneur). Within 2 weeks, we were on the 2nd page of Google for that keyword. While other advertisers were bidding on the keyword, we were getting free traffic.
So really, the Microsite is pretty much a blog. With one key difference - you add a signup box to capture leads.
Let's take a closer look at all 3 areas.
The Three Most Important Areas of a Microsite.
A Blog
First, we suggeted Tony put up a blog and add around 20 articles related to the search term "constipation". Finding articles with republishing rights is easy. We'll cover these in more details later. We showed Tony how it takes a mere 10 mins to get 1 article up when you use the right free tools. The articles are important for several reasons:
- They will help with Search Engine Marketing - especially if Tony pays attention to keyword optimization within the articles
- Tony's Google Landing Page score will likely improve. Google assigns a "score" to landing pages based on content among other factors. When you're bidding on a keyword like constipation - having a domain with tons of rich content related to the keyword can theoretically boost your Google landing page score and allow you to underbid competitors for the same position.
- The articles help lend an air of credibility to the site - this means that any ads Tony displays on the site will be seen as a trusted recommendation and should have a higher CTR.
A Signup Form
Alongside the articles we recommend Tony adds a signup form requesting people to signup for a special white paper on "Top 10 Ways to Ease Constipation" - or any related topic.
THe signup form should ask for ONLY the firstname and lastname. The second page of the form should then ask for the address. In Tony's case the address is critical as he makes money via catalogue marketing.
Ads for Tony's Products
Along the signup form and articles - he should display ads for his products related to easing constipation. The CTR on these ads will be MUCH higher because to the average browser, they are now on a informational site on constipation - they feel like they're seeing recommended advice rather than blatant ads.
Now we suggested that Tony repeat this process for 10 - 20 of his top selling products. For each, build a targeted Microsite around the niche and push the products via the site.
Is this hard and time consuming? Nope. Takes us 5 hours per Microsite once you learn the right way.
It's SO Easy
Tools such as WordPress and Windows Live Writer make it incredibly easy to develop content and make it stress free to manage your information.
WordPress is a free publishing platform that has great usability. We firmly believe in its mission statement- it delivers:
"WordPress is what you use when you want to work with your blogging software, not fight it."
Windows Live Writer is a free, downloadable program that will help you include rich content in your blog posts and know exactly what your blog will look like before you publish it to the Web. It's one of the easiest programs I have ever used.
I'm a Mac user. Yet I keep a PC next to me - JUST SO I CAN USE WINDOWS LIVE WRITER. Sadly, Microsoft has yet to release the Mac version 
Screenshot below:
Getting Free Quality Content For Your Microsite
This is remarkably easy as well - no surprises there . You can use Google Advanced Search to get free, quality content that you can put up on your site in a flash.
Here's how:
Google Advanced Search is located just to the right of the search bar on the main page. Once you've selected advanced search you can find information on a certain subject, in this case constipation ( sorry once again). You can make sure this material is available to use by selecting information that is 'free to use and share commercially' located on the right hand side.
So there it is, it's really that simple. You can start a microsite today!
The Final result can be a WordPress blog with XXX number of pages and articles. In our tests we have found that when you keep in mind search engine optimization you can very rapidly get the blog top rankings in a short space of time.
BUT IT DOES NOT STOP THERE - THERE'S MORE. . .
OK we've shown you the value of building a microsite, BUT this is not going to conquer a highly competitive market like nutritional supplements on its own.
Why not create your own advertising network by following a multiple microsite high level strategy?
Here's where it gets extremely interesting. If there's any part of this case study that you should pay attention to it's this. I'm going to reveal how to get more and more traffic without using PPC advertising.
Build Your Own Advertising Network with a Multiple Microsite High Level Strategy
Think Big
An interesting strategy Tony should pursue is not to settle for one of these microsites but to develop his own network of microsites. He could buy 10 to 20 domain names which focus on different niches in the health and vitality industry, say constipation, anti aging, prostate problems, digestion disorders.
These microsites could form a complete blogging network, he could then brand this umbrella of microsites all together into one site and call it something imaginative such as Health and Vitality or Healthy Living. Each microsite would link to the other microsites in kind of a circle and would sell the company's products.
The beauty of this is that you'll see your Google landing page scores rise rapidly within no time. Another plus of this is the way you've built up your email lists from every single microsite. This leads on to our next bright spark. . .
Newsletter
This multiple microsite strategy is guaranteed to improve your mailing list. It makes email marketing such an important tool as it's now so easy to direct so much traffic to your own advertising network selling your own highly profitable products.
Tony could do this my publishing a newsletter featuring the best 5 or 6 articles from the Healthy Living umbrella of networks he has set up. He would feature a brief snippet of each article to entice his readers in, then the readers would have to click on the links to read the rest of the articles that they are so hooked on.
The Newsletter of course will be a digital complement to his catalogue and will allow him to sell more of his health products.
Proven Results
This kind of tactic has delivered proven results time after time for some of our clients.
We like this idea because it helps you establish a long term brand and allows you to break your dependency on Adwords.
Related Articles
Getting Traffic >>
Useful Links
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WordPress >>
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Windows Live Writer Download >>
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Traffic Secrets | Traffic Secrets 2.0 on Marketing Squeeze >>
How to Learn More on Microsites and Traffic Generation:
The concepts of Microsites, Blog Marketing and Content for SEO will be added as new modules to our Conversion Tactics Course. The new course is being released this summer. All current customers will automatically be upgraded. The price will also be going up (to $895) as we'll be adding videos, software and tons more training modules.
However, here's a tip..... if you buy the course today - you can get the current version for less than $300 and you'll automatically get the 2007 version worth $895 this July. That's a massive savings.
And yes - with the current course, you'll still get a ONE HOUR site makeover, such as the one we gave to Tony of Nutrisite. This alone is worth thousands.
Visit this link to make a Smart Decision >>
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About the Author
Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype.
Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.
Check out other posts by Mike Reining
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Vishen Lakhiani
[...] CASE STUDY How To Generate Traffic In A Highly… [...]
could you tell me what are the resources to get traffic on your blog and who can you check the location from where your visitors are coming.
http://herbswholesale.blog-city.com/
You usually have some of the more original and helpful posts out there compared to the rehash of most blogs but I would still say that this was probably one of the better articles you have had. Maybe it's just because it hits very close to home because we do a small flavor of microsites but I really like how you put it all together in a simple strategy. We often spend too much time working on the microsites that it's not an effective use of our time. I knew all the parts that you talked about but hadn't thought of putting them together like you did.
The one question I did have though was around dupe content. With Google stating that they show the higher PR when dealing with dupe content, isn't it a very strong possibility that these sites won't get ranked at all? Do you have any empirical data on these yet to see what happens?
Hi Jim
Google does not seem to punish for dupe content. I know this because I've tested it. We run around 5 blogs and are launching 5 more in the next 2 months. Now for one of my blogs, we gained a position of 31 on Google (1st link on the 3rd page of results). This was for a highly competitive keyword.
To boost rankings we put up a blog and I posted 16 articles related to the keywored. NONE of the articles were original. But what we did do was write a 1 paragraph intro for every article.
Within 5 weeks our Google rank soared to position 25 (2nd page, 5th link).
So the answer is no.
Of course - we were ethical about it. We ALWAYS Linked to the original writer. And we never posted an article in full unless it was allowed. In most cases we'd post 50% of the article and link to the original so the original writer still gained traffic.
Vishen,
I'm actually surprised to hear you say that. It is fairly well known and Google even talks about this in their webmaster blog (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2006/12/deftly-dealing-with-duplicate-content.html) that they look down upon duplicate content because they want to have unique content. They will just take the site with the higher rank. We had a client who's utility domain kicked off the regular site because google thought they were separate domains with the same content, so it kicked the one site off the rankings.
Have you had any long-term data with this? Because if you saw some difference, I'm not sure it will last. Did the other site show up ahead in the rankings at all? What about the client that you referred to in the blog - has he seen significant amounts of traffic?
It's definitely the ethical way to do it but unless your page has a higher PR, I'm surprised if Google puts it up there.
Hi Jim,
Google does indeed not like duplicate content but there are ways around it. I have found the following tips to work extremly well:
1) Customize the title
2) Customize the first paragraph
3) Customize the last paragraph
That is usually all that is required. The more competitive the space, the more unique content that is required. Also, I would like to add and say that the main article / post / page that you want to get on Google should ideally be unique content but the supporting content that links to this can use the strategy we mentioned above. That way you get highly related content and articles link back to the posts / pages you are really trying to optimize for SEO
[...] Build Your Own Advertising Network with a Multiple Microsite High Level Strategy >> [...]
Like I said, I definitely like the strategy and will probably try out a variation of it soon. Have you gotten any results back for the client in the article yet or is still too early to tell?
Hi Jim - we've gotten results back on two sites that adopted this strategy. So we do know it works. In fact I've hired two full time content writers to my team just to help us boost traffic.
But It's not a short term strategy. Nutrisite will only be getting back to us in a few months.
I really liked reading your article.
I've been trying to convince a customer of mine to adopt a similar strategy and your article is exactly what I want to show him.
Are you focused on the USA market only or other markets as well?
The site in the case study above might do a bit better in the SERPS if their home page title was changed from 'Untitled Document'
[...] Traffic Secrets | Traffic Secrets in a highly competitive market >> Powered by BlinkList [...]
I agree that using microsites works great, especially in the health market as there's a ton of different ailments/diseases etc.
One thing I would be careful of is how you link them (if at all).
As for dupe content, it is an issue, but if you're careful and at least add some originality, I find in most cases you can get past it. If you just copy and paste articles though you will definitely run into problems (I have a few sites like that, they are all in the supplemental results index).
To avoid the duplicate content filter, I'll typically write an intro, as well as an outro, and also make sure that there is other content on the same page. That seems to do the trick for now.
Hmmm
So you are saying that it is better to split the incomming links to a lot of sites instead of laserfocussing all the links to 1 site?
If we talt link popularity, all sites just gets a few links from outside compared to if you only have 1 site to link to.
Here in Denmark, we are arguing a lot about this concept. I believe, that Google can see, what you are doing and will deem you as at new kind of link farm.... and penalize you for it in the near future?
Best regards, Christian
Just happened to stumble on this blog - never knew there was such a company in Malaysia.
Microsites are a great idea if you can convert well. That IS the really difficult part isn't it?! All the SEO, PPC, etc. tricks for getting traffic is just a means to achieve your marketing goals.
Search engines are tightening their algo to detect duplicate content, in an effort to fight spam, e.g. more webpages are falling into Google's Supplemental Index. I have a 1 year old PR6 website that only recently got dropped from the main index.
I'd agree with AffiliateMax - there is absolutely no optimization at all done on the client's mainsite. IMO, SEO should be the long-term plan for every website.
Larry
Malaysia
[...] Case Study on getting Traffic Powered by BlinkList [...]
[...] Generating Traffic in Highly Competitive Markets - Case Study Powered by BlinkList [...]
I'd second Christian.
It is much better to have all links point to one domain, even if you have other related sites in subfolders.
For instance, I fail to see how simply having various content, in topics similar to the topics of microsites, on the main site wouldn't get you much better results. In fact, all the knowledge of how search engines rank pages speak in favor of putting all content for the same target audience on a similar website.
You know, your posts about PPC were good. But this one is just below the grade, really.
Btw, G doesn't punish for duplicate content, but it tries not to show non-original copies of the articles. And if you are writing the title, the first and the last paragraph, you only have two paragraphs of unoriginal content. Why spoil the article with this and why not write a fully original article on the same topic?
Ah well. I guess you are not into SEM as you are in PPC, eh?
I'm happy to see you guys pushing all of this quality content out on your blog. Definitely love the fact that you're pushing the john reese ts1 pack (purchased mine before I saw your link, otherwise I definitely would've contributed to the cause)
Also very happy to see that you are a Mac User... my powerbook wants to leap out and kiss you! Sorry to hear, though, that you keep a windoze box around simply for blogging... have you checked out ecto or iblog?
I keep an old dell around for a couple of IM offerings (tend to think skypecasting is a bit less headache free on a gates machine)
so, i'm an sgr fan and I definitely love the package and the affiliate program... what do you offer here that isn't offered there? i'd definitely be interested, as I do the research for a couple of other marketers. hope to speak to you soon. !
Won't all the separate blogs in the blogging network have the same c-address in the ISP address and so will be recognised by Google as being owned by the same person?
Isn't that detrimental to rankings?
[...] Source of Competitive Advantage>> Powered by BlinkList [...]
thanks for the great information. i would try to make some kind of network around my health related sites. i haven't used blog yet just used my own very simple programming css html website. it is lots of work but still has the desired to play around it. still can figure it out how to get good google pr rank even if it is just PR 1.
http://full-body-massage.50webs.com
You said "However, here’s a tip….. if you buy the course today - you can get the current version for less than $300"
When I went to the page to make the purchase, the price was $497, which by my calculations is not les than $300.
What am I missing?
Thanks.
I have a health website and sell a lot of products. This was a fun case study for me. I am at a conference and heard Joel Comm speak. His content was excellent on AdSense but i didn't buy his product. I have to get through my Mind Valley course first.
Great post. You can also get indexed in google within 24 hours by submitting press releases to high PR rand news media websites. It even works in hours sometimes and you don't have to wait a whole day. There is a trick to it, though. You have to use a niche keyword or keyphrase in the Press Release title and not one of those broad competitive keyword phrases. After you have submitted your press release, use the press release link and submit to digg, propeller, dropjack, and other similar bookmark websites.
Hi Cheryline,
What PR press release software do you use? Also, do you continue to maintain the high ranking in Google or is it just a short temporary placement that you get?
I stopped working with press releases years ago so if they are still working for you, that's great! I would love to learn more.
HI,
Thank you for the interesting case study! However, how are all these micro-sites connected to the main site, exactly?
What is the advantage of them each having their own domain name vs. being a subdomain such as "constipation.nutraire.com" ?
Doesn't this also mean they each have their own opt-in list, which means a separate auto-responder or newsletter for each site?
Also, Google loves blogs because of the ongoing fresh content. You don't suggest continuing to blog regularly on each of these sites? Of course you can outsource this task, but that can get tricky.
Please respond - Thanks very much!
<<<An interesting strategy Tony should pursue is not to settle for one of these microsites but to develop his own network of microsites. He could buy 10 to 20 domain names which focus on different niches in the health and vitality industry, say constipation, anti aging, prostate problems, digestion disorders.
These microsites could form a complete blogging network, he could then brand this umbrella of microsites all together into one site and call it something imaginative such as Health and Vitality or Healthy Living. Each microsite would link to the other microsites in kind of a circle and would sell the company’s products.
The beauty of this is that you’ll see your Google landing page scores rise rapidly within no time. Another plus of this is the way you’ve built up your email lists from every single microsite. This leads on to our next bright spark. . .
Hi There,
Thanks for introducing this blog network methods here. I got some questions for you. hope you can help to answer. THX
They can set up a blog on their e-commerce site which selling their products and put all the content on one blog. What's the difference between the above method and the micro sites method you mentioned?
They also can set up blog on different free blog services online. What's the difference between this method with the one u mentioned?
If they set up 10 micro sites, do they need to write 10 different newsletter to communicate with their clients.
Hi Mike
Very interesting info, but on the part of shared contents I have my reservations. It will better to rewrite at least 70% of the contents. Btw, how is Nutrisite doing as at now?
Hi, Mike
This is a nice article. But I have one problem with your strategy....
All people talking about Twitter the best micro- blogging to bring traffic to your site...
And you didn't mentioned it why?
Also you say you have to make 10 micro sites, do you need to write 10 different new articles too...
Thanks for the answers!
Again good stuff Mike and Vishen
I have come to your site before. It's Outstanding! Wanted to tell you, you have a visually appealing blog