Traffic is essential for the success of any online business. Without the flow of a steady traffic, there is no way to generate an online income. There are different ways to generate traffic to your website. Some of these methods are free and some are paid.
The following is a discussion about the different free methods of generating traffic to a website :
Write and distribute articles
Writing short articles and distributing those to different reputed article directories is a very effective way to drive good quality targeted traffic to your website. The articles should not be too long (300 to 500 words) and relevant to the topic of your site. Add a ‘Resource Box’ or ‘Bio Box’ at the end of each article. It should contain a short description about yourself with a link to your site. People who read these articles may visit your site through this link.
Blog commenting
Visit different blogs and make useful comments, with a link to your website. The topics of the blogs should be relevant to the topic of your site. Make sure not to spam.
Online communities and forums
Join different online communities and forums which are in the same niche as your site. Actively participate in these forums and make regular and useful posts. At the end of each post, add a link to your site in the signature line.
Exchange links
You can exchange links with other websites having the same niche or topic as your site. This will help to increase the flow of traffic to your site and to achieve a high rank in the search engines.
SEO
SEO or search engine optimization is a technique which helps a website to achieve a high rank in the search engine results. Different on-page and off-page SEO techniques should be used to put your website high in the search engines. This will ensure a steady flow of targeted traffic to your site.
Traffic exchanges
Traffic exchanges are membership sites where you can earn credits by looking at other people’s websites. These credits can be used to show your site to other members of the exchange. Traffic exchanges are particularly useful for promoting lead capture pages and MLM programs.
Classified advertising
Advertising on online classified sites are very effective in driving traffic. The most popular sites are Craigslist, USFreeads etc.
E-Mail signature
You may add the link in your E Mail signature. This is also a great way to advertise your site.
Online directories
Submit your site to different online directories like DMOZ, Yahoo etc.
Social networking sites
Submitting your site to different social networking sites like Digg, Stumble Upon, Reddit, del.cio.us, Facebook, Myspace etc. are very useful in driving traffic to it.
These are the most useful ways to generate free traffic to your website, otherwise you need to pay for the traffic and build reputation through Pay Per Click programs like adwords or just by buying ad spots from high authority websites in your niche.
10 Comments
Davor Gasparevic
December 16, 2009 at 20:39Hmm, lets see
a)Only 2 articles submited to Ezine Articles at the moment, got 150 article visits in 3 weeks, and 8 visits on my blog, so I should definitely work more on that
I must add that title of your article determines its success. Before writing an article, everybody should do some simple keyword research to find keywords with small competition. Those are usually long-tail keywords, and the authority of EzineArticles (PR6) for example, ensures that your article will be in the top positions.
b)I use this method A LOT lately, so much that I seriously deteriorated my SEO efforts
c)This is really a no brainer, I am a member of only 1 forum which is just partly relevant to the content of my blog, and yet that single forum delivered most of the traffic from all my traffic efforts
Will be joining another forums too.
d)I actually never tried this one out, so I can’t say anything about that
e)Long live the SEO, ruler of targeted traffic
f)Totally agree, but traffic exchanges are one of the biggest time consuming methods, and in order to have success with them, tabbed browsing is simply a must. I’ve tried this out in past, and yes it delivered me some referrals, but at that time I was promoting those silly .bux sites which brought me just a few pennies a month.
g)similar to article marketing, classified advertising should be used both to gain traffic from the classified ads sites and search engines.
I’ve seen dozens of usfreeads ads ranking on top 3 positions for long-tail buyer keywords, which surely bring in some profit
Davor Gasparevic
December 16, 2009 at 20:41h)I still don’t use e-mail advertising, seems like a whole new set of unknowns, variables and problems for me 🙂
g)directories mostly help in SEO I think
h)So far FB showed best results in my case, twitter is next in the line!
Zak
December 17, 2009 at 17:06This is great Davor, you are in your way.. just continue working and promoting.. I’m using all these ways to get traffic to my blogs and websites but I personally prefer SEO, because it plays a big role for the long term, you may not notice instant results but it still the best way to get targeted traffic as you said..
You should also consider creating a group or a fan page for your blog on facebook and also don’t forget to tweet your new posts, especially if you have a big number of followers, you’ll get instant traffic!!
For e-mail advertising, you should build a mailing list and start promotiong products as an affiliate to generate commissions from sales or leads..
Meta Jaye
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Henry
February 8, 2010 at 16:40Just want to say congratulations for a outstanding blog! I like reading your posts and articles and recommend it. Well done and a big THANKS for the tips!
Dan Okumoto
February 17, 2010 at 22:57Hi thank you for an perceptive post, I actually found your blog by mistake while searching on Goole for something else nearly related, in any case before i ramble on too much i would just like to state how much I enjoyed your post, I have bookmarked your site and also taken your RSS feed, Once Again thank you very much for the blog post keep up the good work.
Trinity Peaks
February 18, 2010 at 17:37Nice article, i dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading.
Hailey Segel
February 21, 2010 at 18:46Though I would’ve loved it much more if you added a relevant video or at least pictures to back up the explanation, I still thought that your write-up quite helpful. It’s usually hard to make a complicated matter seem very easy. I enjoy your weblog and will sign up to your feed so I will not miss anything. Fantastic content
Grant
March 10, 2010 at 12:31Hey..Traffic is the one thing that makes the real money. I like your post about tackling the main trouble.
John
March 10, 2010 at 12:31Great post. Traffic Ultimatum is good too.