Traffic Question #2
from your traffic questions
A Noni Mouse asked:
What is the best and cheapest way to get lots of people to your website if you have no people to email your link to and you don’t want to spam?Matthew Bagley asked:
What is the best way of increasing traffic flow to your website free of charge?
10 Free Ways to Drive Traffic To A Brand New Website
Once you create a website, the next step is to get traffic! But how? You dont have an email list yet, so you cant use that method. And you dont have bottomless pockets for paid advertising. Should you just sit there and wait for people to find your new site? Certainly not! Here are 10 free ways that you can drive targeted traffic to your new website...
- Article Marketing
Write 3 articles that are related to the topic of your website. Include a brief bio and link to your website at the end of the article. Submit each of these articles to article directories, and also to webmasters and ezine owners that rank well for your keywords. - Forum Marketing
Do a search on Google for keyword+forum. If you have a pet related site, for example, search "pet forum" (without quotes). Find the top 3 forums in your niche and join each of them. DO NOT SPAM, but do set up a profile (and signature, if allowed) and post an introduction. Get involved in each of these 3 forums by posting at least one thread or response each day. This will help you gain exposure in your target market, and people will naturally be interested in your related website. - Yahoo! Answers
Go to http://answers.yahoo.com and find questions related to your niche or website. If you can provide a legitimate answer to their question, you can include your link as the resource or reference URL. Again, without spamming, if you can contribute to the community you will interest them in your related website. - Viral Marketing
Write a Report that would be of great interest to your target market, and sell it cheap. Include your bio and information about your site within the report (briefly in the Introduction, and fully in the About The Author section at the end). Offer 100% commission to Affiliates, and you will have all of your competitors sending traffic to your website for you. To make this super-easy, you can get the instructions and the script to do this (here) for only $7 - it's well worth it 😉 - Social Networking
Set up profiles at popular social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, Ryze.com etc. Network with people in your niche and get established on these sites with a customized profile. It is very easy to grow your network, and people who are interested in what you offer can find you easily. If you can use "photo marketing" to your advantage (cute pet pictures for a pet site, for example), include Flickr.com in your networking list as well. - Blogging
Blogging can be considered another form of Social Networking, and enough so to be considered a stand-alone marketing technique. You want to set up a blog that is directly related to your website's topic, and post content to it frequently (3-5x/week minimum). If you have a pet store website, for example, you can create a blog on Pet Tips (dog grooming, dog training, etc). - Press Releases
You can write and submit a press release free of charge. While some websites charge to publish your press release (and this may be worth the investment!), many also offer a free submission option. You want your press release to be newsworthy, so you choose your angle carefully. Do a search on Google for press release tips. - Search Engine Marketing
Learn all that you can about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and take the necessary steps to optimize each of your web pages. It is not complicated or impossible, but there is a lot of mis-information out there about search engines. I can help you with this personally if you like (free) at my discussion forum. - Get Links!
Submit your new site to appropriate directories, and get it listed on niche resource pages. Link farms and exchanges on "link pages" are a waste of your time, but do seek out quality linking opportunities. You want a variety of links pointing to your site, not only to your main page but also to internal pages of your site as well. - Funnel Traffic From Other Sites
This strategy may require a little creativity, but you want to consider ways that you can funnel traffic from popular websites such as: craigslist, ebay, youtube, wikipedia, etc. These are very popular websites that are established and bursting at the seems with live visitors. Think of ways that you can add something of value, and (without spamming!) lure these visitors to your website.
Use these 10 strategies as your initial Action Plan. Once you complete all 10 steps, go back to the first and begin again. Consistently marketing your site in a variety of ways is the key to gaining exposure and getting a consistent flow of traffic into your website!
Have a question about Website Traffic?
Post it here: Traffic Questions!
Best,
About Lynn Terry
Traffic to your site is a must. I have really been researching the article submission route. I love to write about real estate so I think it would be a fun way to create more traffic. I am always on the look out for new creative ways to drive traffic as well. I appreciate the yahoo answers tip. That is a new one I have never thought of.
Great post i will be using the hints layed out in your post many thanks
Driving traffic to a new website can really put your SEO skills to the test. But here's what I really love, there are tons of effective marketing tools out there and you will never run out of options. Some of these great tips were discussed here and two of my favorites are article marketing and blogging. Blogging is a great marketing tool. Selecting the right keywords is extremely important for SEO. Some minor tips for bloggers: you have to be interesting and unique so that people will feel their time wasn't wasted while reading your post. Eventually, you'll gain loyal subscribers who may become potential buyers to your online business (if you have one) and before you know it, your business is up and running.
thanks for this... the fact that building your network and establishing takes awhile...it would help if people will actually have the patience to wait... some feels that you get traffic in 24 hrs just because you have a website...i most often encounter this with people who owns a website that i have to keep saying... "we don't have content" to drive traffic... that's just one reason why a blog goes hand in hand with a website
Using Yahoo answers is a good idea, I don't see that recommended often and I haven't thought of using that before. But they are all good tips.
Great article Lynn - your article is nearly 2 years old and still relevant to day. Selecting key traffic to your website is the most important. Traffic which converts sales is the most important traffic to me
Yahoo! Answers and forum are best two of mine, they are so easy to do it, no need to write a long story, just answer the questions, thats it, thanks for another way to boost traffic, maybe i will try someday,
Having a great website with rich content helps a lot to. I also use wiki sites to drive traffic to my website and it's free also 🙂
I found a lot of good information regarding get my name out and driving traffic to my web page without spending a lot of money as a newbie. thanks for this great information.
Thanks for the great info! It's not just about having good content, you gotta know how to get people in front of it. Cheers to you.
This is a great list that I was glad to add to an article list of helpful SEO and traffic building links. I also added the http://www.seofaststart.com/ that you recommended. Will be reading this soon. From first glance it looked to be a great source and am looking forward to reading it! Thank you for a wonderfully written article.
have been trying to learn this stuff for years, if i had found your page first it would have saved me allot of trouble. Glad I found you!
It is becoming increasingly difficult for a newcomer to break in and generate traffic and many of the old ways no longer work, particularly Article Marketing.
I would be really grateful to hear of any ways that work today
Lynn it amazes me how many people publish blogs but don't work on even understand the basics of SEO. Having great content is or course very important but if nobody can find it then you will not reap the benefits of your efforts.
Hi Lynn,
Just surfing for SEO info and ran into your site. It's pretty cool!
I appreciate the reminder of using article marketing. I had gotten away from it for a while due to other pressing matters.
I will get back into it and hopefully that will drive more traffic to my site.
Thank you,
Steve
Great tips that over time even a novice can master. The key is to be consistent with your blogging, linking, etc. so it becomes the norm, not the exception.
Nice tips.I searched my niche related forums .but they are with low page rank and low no of visitors.Then is there is any benefit to crating a profile and participating than participating in high traffic forum which are non related niche
I will admit that this list is one of the better lists I've come across. I'm starting to realize that there are so many different ways to send traffic to your site, it's more or less all about how you wish to go about it. There isn't one solid road map to success when it comes to getting traffic. With me trying to get traffic to digimusiclabelz, I can't seem to grab the SEO part of things. It's easy to grab a backlink or start a social networking profile but when it comes to understanding SEO, I become confused. I wonder if I just continue to embrace my keywords and add content, will my site eventually become optimized on it's on? (It's a long shot)
Excellent Article!I foundit by searching for "the best and fastest freee and loegal traffic method."I'm sure you understand why.ie: no 'blackhat.'
I have a website and I've been working hard the last few weeks to get the traffic up and man,it's hard work!On top of all that,after going through 'the list' and doing everything I know(so far)to do,I read your article and found I'd been missing several other traffic tricks!Good article!
One of the things I see so much of is; People tend to forget about their meta tags (keywords)... And, if they do put in their keywords, they tend to scatter different keywords in their content. I get about 10,000 visitors a month and I have left my site alone for 2 years while I finished college courses and I'm just now getting back to it.
Thanks for a great article!
Great advice. Actually doing all of those things certainly does require time and effort, but it is much better to do each method well rather than quickly but poorly.
Hi Lynn, My concern about a blog is that if it relates to my industry aren't I leaving myself open to posts that have links to my competitors? I must be misunderstanding some part of this concept or there wouldn't be so many bloggers out there, right?
Oh, and thanks for this article - great, and useful input.
Thank you for sharing this. It was refreshing to come across as it's easy to follow and the suggestions/sites you mention have been useful. I've bookmarked them and signed up to a couple of them already. 🙂
Thanks Lynn!To-the-point and comprehensive at the same time.
Good article the web is full of paid scams about getting traffic to your website. I like your article because there are a lot of ways to get traffic to your site if you are prepared to put in the hard work.
Re-purposing your existing content and posting to document sharing sites is another easy one to add to the list 🙂
cheers and thanks for the list!
Great tips, will implement all these tips on my new blog, thanks for the share
Great article. Thanks for the info. We have had an on-line presence for many years but are really just starting to develop our own website. We have come to the realization you can have a drop-dead website but if no one visits it really is not going to fly. 🙂
Wow! I have been searching for some tips and your came up! All I have to say is YOU ROCK GIRL! This is probably the easiest methods! Thank you so much for your help! I will subscribe! 😉 Liked Shared and Tweeted!
Thank you for the much needed information. I will be using these today!
Very important topic, Lynn.
You see so many variations in results as far as the traffic numbers people are getting, and the various methods they have put in place to achieve this.......
With low traffic sites I can see where the difficulties may arise, what really surprised me is when I have come across people who claim to have huge traffic numbers, yet, they still struggle....
Either way, there is no denying the need for healthy website traffic numbers....
I love the idea of creating an affiliate program to have your competitors drive traffic to your websites.
I just launch my website on 11/10/2012 and have been trying to find ways to get traffic to my site. I will be trying your suggestions immediately.
Thanks
I will be following these steps word for word:) I have a new website and these steps are easy to follow and written in laymans terms which I really appreciate - lol!
Looking forward to all my extra traffic
These are awesome tips! Although many of your tips are very time consuming. We find that the best way to drive traffic is having a balance of advertising, free and paid. Most of your tips are free, while paid banner advertising and search advertising can usually become more profitable for your business.
Thanks Lynn,
Some great ideas there. Will be trying them all.
Thanks again.
I am doing seo of my website from 2 months but only 10-15 visitors come daily. what should I?
You really want some variation to your marketing strategy, in addition to SEO. See this post for an outline: http://www.clicknewz.com/3229/free-targeted-web-traffic/ That should get you moving in the right direction, and increasing traffic to your site. 😉
It takes time to build up traffic however the methods mentioned above are spot on!
Very helpful article. I recently started a hiphop blog and I was looking for other ways to drive traffic to the site. I did have a question about meta tags. Should I use my tags only in the subject line or in the content as well?
Awesome post! Very informative. I love coming across free traffic generating idea's for new marketers. Keep up the good posts, I look forward to reading more posts like this one!
Hi Lynn,
I was searching for "how to drive traffic to you website" and landed on your page. I have read your traffic-tips-for-new-sites and it was very good reading. I will go through your list and my site, to se which kind of optimisation i can do for SEO to my site for driving more traffic. Thanks for nice reading!
Some powerful tips for new site start ups, Lynne.
I think it can be a bit disheartening for some sites, if they have been plugging away for the initial 3 to 6 months without seeing any concrete results...that's probably where many site owners may start to entertain the thought of just quitting....
If they can pull through that thought, hang in there and try to build up some extra momentum, they can in time achieve some great results
writing good content and submiting to sites like stumbleupon have worked well for myself.
A lot of these are good tips and I already have tried most of them. My site is less than month new. I guess it takes a lot of patience to get going. I hope my site picks up soon.
Hi Eric,
It really does take time. A few weeks in you should still be focusing on content and engagement. It's well worth the time invested though, if you really want to do well with your online business! 😉
Hi. I just came across this page and find it very informative. Just a question though. One person mentioned that this info is some 2 years old. Should it not be updated as the net and everything on it is constantly changing. I have just set up my web page and am trying to figure out how to drive traffic to it. I know there are free avenues, and also the paid avenues. I am not totally against paid advertising, if it generates me income to actually pay for itself. Any suggestions as to low cost paid advertising companies or real easy to use free sites ?
Thanks Tom
Hi Tom,
You'll want to subscribe by email to get the latest tutorials every week. But to answer your question, I have been working online since the 90's, for 16 years now, and I am currently still using these same marketing strategies. That said, here is an updated and more detailed post on driving traffic to a new website: http://www.clicknewz.com/3229/free-targeted-web-traffic/
I hope you'll join us by email. Glad you stopped by, and thanks for the comment!
I left an earlier comment but the page went blank. I will try again. Do you have any type of step-by-step of where to find and initiate free traffic to a new website?
Since this is all new to me, I would have to start with basic information. Something designed for "online marketers 101" training.
Is this something that you can offer?
These are some great tips for beginners.I found that commenting on the first 3 page results in google that are related to my topic gives good traffic. Adding value to your comment is key, not just spamming trying to leave a link. Not only does this work short term, but it gets you in front of a much wider audience.
Those were good ways to drive traffic to your site. But I do feel overwhelmed by the number of things to keep in mind while doing all the traffic thing. I would rather spend time concentrating on blogging than doing all the complicated link building. But yes it wouldn't help in increasing the number of visitors to the site and even if I product great content in my niche there would be no visitors to read and digest the information.
Thanks for the post.
Is buying links considered acceptable as a form of advertising, or is that banned?
Also, what is it that gives some sites high ranking when they are breaking all the rules (bad website design, no backlinks, no keyword SEO, etc.), but have done business a long time?