Website traffic is the lifeblood to web owners. It’s what anybody who is serious online wants. I get questions all the time about what simple ways to get traffic to a website are.
Here’s a list of areas you might want to look into. Some of these you can start yourself. (The list is not categorized or organized in any order of importance.)
It certainly is not all-inclusive, and it does not include any special instructions, but please post your questions here and I’ll try to answer you.
More information on JonRognerud.com
It’s impossible to post all the detailed step-by-step actions you must take to do this. But, it should get your thinking started.
Important before starting: When looking at these traffic options, make sure that you do your keyword research first. Find the top performing keywords and phrases for your niche. Find keywords that have less competition at first, and work within your budget. Use inventory.overture.com to start. (sometimes very slow). Use your findings as key phrases in headlines, links and body content, including filenames and www domains.
Top ways to generate relevant website traffic:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – the art & science of bringing your site to the top of search engines, and staying there. Get more information here.
2. Blogs – Create your blog using wordpress and submit to technorati to start. Use blogsearch.google.com to discover more information about your niche and get design ideas from others.
3. Contextual – programs that allow you to place related ads & content on other websites. Search for ‘contextual advertising’ in Google.
4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – Paid search – Google Adwords is a great place to start, get some traffic, analyze the data and see if others like Yahoo, MSN, Miva might work for you.
5. Text Ad Networks – adbrite.com, adster.com.
6. Directory Submissions – see a previous blog entry about this.
7. Social Bookmarking – growing in popularity, and if done right – can get huge elevations of traffic. Get an account with del.icio.us to start.
8. Social Networking – join the growing list of social networks and write your own comments and ideas with a link back to your site. Don’t fish for links, contribute something! A strong linking strategy should be part of your program. Start with digg.com as an example.
9. Article Submissions – look at ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and isnare.com (automates the process).
10. Newsletters – build and promote newsletters. Start with a monthly newsletter, and build your list (important!). Go to elance.com or guru.com and have somebody write them for you.
11. Article Trading – you can trade articles and swap contents on your site and / or blogs, and is a great way to build partnerships if not done in a spammy way.
12. Signature Linking – make sure that you provide a keyword rich link in the signatures of your articles, your emails and any site that allows for this.
13. Forum Posting – related to your field – not spam – add constructive, intelligent posts in forums with back links.
14. Press Releases – use prweb.com to start. Fantastic way to generate traffic, news exposure and claim a little authority a long the way.
15. Video Submissions – pull out your webcam or handy-cam and create a video and upload to youtube and google video to start. Then, search for other video submissions sites and start promoting using existing email lists, purchased lists and other techniques as shown in this blog post.
16. Reciprocal Linking – not completely out of the picture for some of the engines, just tread lightly with Google here.
17. Affiliate Marketing – If I market and sell something for you for $20 dollars, you give me $10 dollars back. That’s affiliate marketing. Sign up with clickbank.com to start for information products where you typically find very good profit margins. Sell somebody else’s product, make money, and generate traffic back to your website.
18. Joint Ventures (JV) – Partner up with a site or company in your space. If you have something to offer, or you are the gatekeeper of lists yourself, expand quickly by creating joint promotions.
19. Viral Campaigns or “Jungle Telegraph� – this is where your humorous or controversial video, audio, blog or website takes a life of it’s own. A good example is the first viral “Narnia� (Saturday Night Live) on YouTube in 2005. (this was a breakthrough moment for them).
20. CPA Networks – generate traffic and leads, but based on performance (when a lead closes or is sold).
21. Hub Sites/links – hubpages.com can be great place to start. Also, there’s linkhounds.com/hub-finder, to compare and research several URL’s and find out where you should be linking to/from – start creating authority in your thinking.
22. Craigslist – can generate traffic quickly, is available in search – and I know some who post regularly to get a boost in traffic on daily & weekly basis, but you have to pay. You can pay to post in different locations throughout the USA.
23. Feedback Groups – answer sites like answers.yahoo.com to find what people are asking, but also providing expertise and links back to your site. Don’t forget groups.google.com and groups.yahoo.com.
24. LinkedIn – create a profile, add text and keywords supporting your theme.
25. Paid Links – Once again, not as spam but used as paid advertising for traffic, not PageRank.
26. Trusted Networks – Try Searchenginetrust.com and build links and comments within a high trust blog network. They charge a monthly subscription, but can move your site and traffic up fairly quickly.
27. EBay – from stores (cost) to posting of your products to ebooks and more. Do your keyword research. Submit to products sites like google.com/products if you are in the ecommerce space.
28. Myspace – create a profile, keep it active and get some help with ‘adder’ software like addnewfriends.com and manage messages with requests for friends. Remember to use ‘viral’ thinking where you can: podcasts, videos, etc.
29. Stumble – Stumbleupon.com generated over 200% increase in traffic in a test that I did. You can get lots of traffic for 5c per ‘impression’. Make sure to create profiles and pages that support your theme + keywords, from TITLE to content.
30. Pay Per Click – (more detail) Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN Ad Center – good places to start using paid advertising. Create segmented groups with your preferred keywords, and watch your server logs in the last 3-6 months for patterns of search terms you may have missed, to be included in your campaigns. Test on the contextual and site targeted networks, including expanding beyond text ads into image ads, video ads as well.
31. Wikipedia – write an entry and see if it sticks! Don’t forget the Wiki’s.
What other ways have you found to work? I am interested to hear from you. I’ll keep updating this list, and provide another level of organization by categories when I have more time….
This entry was posted on Saturday, August 18th, 2007 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Traffic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.9 Responses to “31 Simple Ways To Generate (mostly) FREE Web Traffic”
Leave a Reply
ULTIMATE Guide to Search Engine Optimization
August 19th, 2007 at 5:08 am
[...] 31 Simple Ways To Generate (mostly) FREE Web Traffic [...]
August 19th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Fantastic article, I for one will be going down the line, making this my manual on generating web traffic. I will forward this link to my fellow designers. Thank you.
JNESS
August 20th, 2007 at 4:55 am
[...] 31 Simple Ways To Generate (mostly) FREE Web Traffic [...]
August 20th, 2007 at 10:28 am
Thanks for the awesome tips! I’d like add one to the list. It’s a fairly new concept but solves a universal problem. Now, instead of attempting to drive web traffic “in” to one specific location, merchants can take their full store of products with them “out” into the web. It’s e-commerce with a twist of YouTube named Cartfly.com. Merchants can embed personalized stores in social network profiles, blogs, comments, bulletins, etc. Users can target potential customers and put items for sale directly at the buyer’s fingertips, instead of posting re-direct URL’s. Each store has third party share code for friends, supporters, etc. Anyway, our goal is to truly empower the merchants!
August 21st, 2007 at 12:03 am
Excellent Article. Thank You.
August 22nd, 2007 at 6:20 am
Great article
Have printed it for future reference, and will be using the ideas here to start to generate some traffic to my new blog
http://www.daimonlures.com/bassreview
thanks!
August 23rd, 2007 at 6:47 am
Surprised you missed out delicious. I can certainly account a portion of traffic to them!
September 9th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Thanks for the information. This is extremely helpful to our branch in China because the net is our only real connection to our clients travelling to China.
http://www.fivestarindex.com
September 24th, 2007 at 11:46 am
Again, Another amazing articles - I am a fan of the social bookmarking network tip - it both helps the linking strategy and raises awareness about your site as well.