Ask Business 2.0

My website, which aggregates deals on travel and electronics, isn't getting much traffic from Google AdWords. How do I market my site and generate traffic on a small budget?

Let's start with the most important thing: a good product or service. It sounds obvious, but all the traffic in the world won't convert to paying customers if there's nothing good to buy. Your website needs unique content if it is going to compete with the larger services," says Aaron Wall, who literally wrote the book on search engine optimization (see www.seobook.com). Find a niche - extreme travel, for example - write about it on your site, and offer relevant travel deals. The same goes for electronic goods.

If you clear that first hurdle, Dave Feller, vice president for marketing at StumbleUpon, has a few suggestions for maximizing free traffic. Try joining online communities or creating widgets that are distributed on sites like Facebook. Free content-distribution networks like StumbleUpon and Digg are also good channels. Viral marketing can be extremely effective, so encourage customers who have had a good experience with your site to spread the word through coupons and other incentives.

When you enter the world of paid marketing, hone your search engine campaigns. Your site is in a competitive field, so find out exactly what is and isn't working. "The number of keywords, match type, ad copy, bid amounts, and landing pages all affect marketing ROI," says Ken Li, CEO of Multilytics, an Internet marketing firm. "If you don't know how to track this, hiring a consultant or search-engine marketing company is a good investment."

After you get visitors, you need to turn them into customers. Track how many people are actually doing what you want, Feller says. How are they getting to your site? Where do they get stuck? How can you get users to stick around longer? The answers will help you figure out how to get traffic and make it pay.

Visit www.jackcornish.com for a free report on Search Engine Optimization