Easy Formula For Free Traffic

In the real world, I am a farmer. I raise goats, horses, and garlic, to be exact. Looking at how to capture that all elusive free, targeted traffic is a lot like trying to pen up 15 goat kids who are running loose in the barn. You see, in the barn, there are all kinds of obstacles that keep me from being able to simply shoosh them into the pen. There's horizontal bars, support posts, and all kinds of nooks and crannies that give them an easy escape route. There are too many obstacles and turns between me and the kids - so it's hard to catch them just by myself.

Web traffic is a lot like the this. You, the webmaster, can see the traffic out there, but that traffic has got other places to run to that is between you and them. So how do you "pen" that traffic in?

Well, going back to the barn and goat kids analogy, here's how I bring in the kids (traffic). First off, I've got to know how their base thought processes work. In the case of goats, they are herd animals, which means they prefer to move as one. They are also looking for the path of least resistance when they are moving about. In the barn, I am their resistance - in other words, I want them to come towards me, not away, but they don't understand me - so they go towards something that isn't trying to get their attention in such an obvious way.

I need to anticipate this behavior. So I set up some chain link panels in the areas they tend to run towards, which in effect diverts them more towards me. But they won't run up to me like a good ole farm dog does, they just follow the direction of the chain link panels - as far away from me as possible. But that's okay. Because I've set up the fencing points so that they kind of "follow" it towards the pen. While they are skirting me, I'm slowly moving around with, and behind them. Before they know it, they are at the opening of the pen, and since I am now coming up behind them, they run into it, and I follow up to close the gate.

This is how I look at natural, organic, free traffic on the web. If you want free-roaming visitors to come into your "pen" (website), you've got to set up some guide points to help them along.

My next post will talk about the virtual fence panels that can be used to help funnel more web traffic to your site.