The JEHM Net News

Targeted web site traffic is a very critical aspect for an Internet business. But what exactly is targeted web site traffic? It is simply getting visitors or potential customers who are interested in the kind of product or service that you are offering. For instance, a website selling dog food should target dog owners as their visitors as they are the ones most likely to buy the product being sold.

If you want to boost your online sales, you must get the word out and let potential consumers be aware of the products or services you are offering. There are numerous interesting and effective ways that you can resort to when you want to generate targeted web site traffic for your site. Although you do not have a big advertising budget, you can still get traffic through implementing the right strategies.

When you commence your targeted web site traffic promotion, you should ideally focus on targeted customers because by doing so, you stand a greater chance of being able to sell to them because they have a need for your product or service and were already searching for it in the first place.

If you can successfully get your targeted customers to visit your web site, it will significantly increase your conversions. This strategy facilitates the optimization of sales and likewise presents an opportunity for you to familiarize yourself with your customers. This will in turn result in helping you improve your products in a way that is more appropriate for their needs.

Just as important as driving targeted web site traffic to your sites, the website itself must be easy to use, navigate, and understand. Your web page must also contain information on what you do, how you do it and how customers will benefit from it if they patronize the products or services you are offering.

The chances of targeted customers returning may also increase when you have a newsletter that can help you remain in constant contact with them.

Perseverance and discipline are the two most important values one can have when trying to drive targeted traffic to your site. In contrast to untargeted traffic where you can get a few thousand hits a day, you may get very few hits to your site when you are aiming for targeted web site traffic.

However, the impact will be seen on your conversion rate. Others get easily discouraged and may resort to traffic techniques which may not yield targeted web site traffic.

Increased targeted web site traffic equates to increased online sales of your products or services, which eventually leads to profits for your online business. Web site traffic promotion can be dreary, but with understanding and comprehension of how it affects your business, you will find it a fulfilling task.

About the Author ::

In today’s Internet world, there’s nothing more critical than web site traffic promotion. Once you set up an online business, you need to spread the word of its existence. If you don’t, the chances are your business will go down the drain. The Internet is such a huge marketplace and you may probably want to know how you’re going to get free web site traffic.

For no or little cost, there are a lot of ways you can generate free web site traffic. But for the purpose of this article, we can sift through the number of ways where you can get web site traffic promotion without shelling out some of your precious dollars. While it is a fact that some businesses are not ‘big’ on marketing budget, there are still available ways that they can avail of free web site traffic.

Exchanging links is one type of web site traffic promotion that’s proven effective. All other web site owners want to market their own sites the way you do. Through link exchanges, web site owners can get exposure and put themselves on show for viewers to browse on.

At the same time, it exposes them to the products and services of the others. This is a very helpful tactic in building and generating free web site traffic. It should be noted, though, that one should establish links with associated web sites. Try to establish link exchanges with sites that are related to your online business. You can try getting your web site’s name spread across as widely as possible.

Another stable web site traffic promotion is offering free items. Everybody likes freebies. You can offer guidelines or tips on certain subjects related to your online business. Try to make your giveaways as valuable for visitors as possible.

You can also create a business BLOG for your web site traffic promotion. It is an effective tool that you can use to blow your own horn, let the Internet world become aware of your existence of your new products or services, and let your customers know why they should have something to do with you business-wise.

Probably the most excellent way to accomplish web site traffic promotion is through search engine optimization. Major search engines are places where you want to get high rankings. To help you achieve this, there are several ways that can help increase your web site’s rankings.

First, you have to submit your web site to major search engines so they can send their web crawlers out, pick your site up and go through it. Second, make use of keywords in the text content of your web site. Select unique keywords that would help pull in searches to your web site.

And don’t forget word-of-mouth as another effective technique for your web site traffic promotion. It is considered to be one of the best forms of advertising. Have a brainstorm session and come up with ways to create a buzz about your web site that will keep online visitors coming back.

For the most effective web site traffic promotion, you can use a combination of these methods. If you decide to use more than one technique, chances are you will catch the attention of online visitors and search engines.

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign.

This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you.

In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

About the Author :: Vern Black is the owner of Pinnacle Publishing, an internet marketing information firm. Pinnacle Publishing’s hard working staff’s ultimate goal is to work tirelessly to locate legitimate income opportunities that will allow you to escape the rat race and long commutes and open the doors to the life that you have always wanted for you and your family.

To begin your journey to financial freedom, go to http://easypinnaclepublishing.com

Protection Update

As of April 12, 2007, Symantec Security Response is monitoring a massive surge of email spam containing the threat Trojan.Peacomm (also known as the Storm Trojan). This spam campaign is one of the largest identified in recent months. This threat was originally discovered in January 2007 but has been repackaged in this particular spam surge. For more information, click here.

To hear more about what the media are saying about the virus, click here.

Next Steps

To reduce the possibility of being affected by the latest version of Trojan.Peacomm, Symantec Security Response advises users to do the following:

• Keep AntiVirus signatures and antispam updated.
• Never click on attachments or web links from unsolicited emails.
• Regularly apply security patches and updates to all major software installed on the computer.
• Use a security solution that contains AntiVirus and client firewall technologies, such as Norton 360 for home and home office users and Symantec Client Security for Small Businesses and Enterprises, to protect against today’s known and tomorrow’s unknown threats.

Symantec has released the 11th volume of its semiannual Internet Security Threat Report. Over the past six months, Symantec has observed a fundamental shift in Internet security activity with an increase in data theft and data leakage and the creation of malicious code targeting information that can be used for financial gain.

Symantec has observed high levels of malicious activity across the Internet, with increases in phishing, spam, bot networks, Trojans, and zero-day threats. Some of the key findings of the report are below.

Attack Trends Highlights

* The government sector accounted for 25 percent of all identity theft-related data breaches, more than any other sector.
* The United States was the top country of attack origin, accounting for 33 percent of worldwide attack activity.
* Microsoft Internet Explorer was targeted by 77 percent of all attacks specifically targeting Web browsers.
* Home users were the most highly targeted sector, accounting for 93 percent of all targeted attacks.
* Symantec observed an average of 63,912 active bot-infected computers per day, an 11 percent increase from the previous period.

Vulnerability Trends Highlights

* Symantec documented 2,526 vulnerabilities in the second half of 2006, 12 percent higher than the first half of 2006, and a higher volume than in any other previous six-month period.
* Symantec classified four percent of all vulnerabilities disclosed during this period as high severity, 69 percent were medium severity, and 27 percent were low severity.
* Sixty-six percent of vulnerabilities disclosed during this period affected Web applications.
* Seventy-nine percent of all vulnerabilities documented in this reporting period were considered to be easily exploitable.
* Symantec documented 54 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer, 40 in the Mozilla browsers, and four each in Apple Safari and Opera.

Malicious Code Trends Highlights

* Of the top ten new malicious code families detected in the last six months of 2006, five were Trojans, four were worms, and one was a virus.
* The volume of Trojans in the top 50 malicious code samples reported to Symantec increased from 23 percent to 45 percent.
* Trojans accounted for 60 percent of the top 50 malicious code samples when measured by potential infections.
* Polymorphic threats accounted for three percent of the volume
* Threats to confidential information made up 66 percent of the top 50 malicious code reported to Symantec.
* Keystroke logging threats made up 79 percent of confidential information threats by volume of reports, up from 57 percent in the first half of the year and 66 percent in the second half of 2005.

Phishing, Spam, and Security Risks Highlights

* The Symantec Probe Network detected a total of 166,248 unique phishing messages, a six percent increase over the first six months of 2006. This equates to an average of 904 unique phishing messages per day for the second half of 2006.
* Symantec blocked over 1.5 billion phishing messages, an increase of 19 percent over the first half of 2006.
* Throughout 2006, Symantec detected an average of 27 percent fewer unique phishing messages on weekends than the weekday average of 961.
* Organizations in the financial services sector accounted for 84 percent of the unique brands that were phished during this period.
* Forty-six percent of all known phishing Web sites were located in the United States, a much higher proportion than in any other country.
* All of the top ten security risks reported during this period employ self-updating.

View the complete Symantec Internet Security Threat report here.
Source :: Symantec