Getting traffic is one of the most important tasks for any web
master. What is more, you can't get traffic once and then just reap
the benefits. Getting traffic is an ongoing task and you must be
constantly doing it, if you want to get traffic and keep it. Here are
some of the ways to get traffic for free:
1 Optimize your site for search engines.
Search engines
have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why
you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks
well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way
to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and
efforts in the optimization of your site. SEO is not that difficult
and if you want to get familiar with it in a nutshell, check our SEO
Tutorial. If you are too busy for that, you can start with the
15 Minute SEO
article.
2 Frequently update the contents of your site. .
If you
expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit
disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is
trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update
it. In terms of SEO, content
is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will
not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will
often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love
your site.
3 Take advantage of social bookmarking sites.
Social
bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are
another powerful way to get traffic for free. If you want to learn
how to do it, check the How
to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites article, where we
have explained what to do if you want to get free traffic from sites
such as Digg, Delicious, etc.
4 Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts.
Social networks
are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on
networks, such as Twitter
or Facebook,
the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from
Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a
large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on
Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is
worth.
5 Get links with other sites in your niche.
Another way to
get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting
links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO,
especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow
attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless
for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage
to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of
traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you
need list of sites within your niche where you could get backlinks
from, check the Backlink
Builder tool. However, be careful if you exchange links because
linking
to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.
6
Use any chance to promote your site for free.
Free
promotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many
ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones
include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion
in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to
promote your site work well but if you select the right places to
promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic.
7 Create a free product or service.
Content drives most
traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of
useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche
of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short
tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a
free product or service. When this product or service gets popular
and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will
visit the other sections of the site as well.
8 Use viral content.
Free products and services are great
for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties
in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because
it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your
content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites,
and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content
distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit
it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and
distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a
presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.
9 Use offline promotion.
Offline promotion is frequently
forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes,
computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than
offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline
promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this
can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline
ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's
business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company
vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise
with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.
10 Include your URL in your signature.
URLs in forum
signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums,
which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user
on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When
you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click
the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In
rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an
internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and
this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page.
Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.
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