The first thing I’d like to point out is that the word “FREE” doesn’t exist in the internet marketing game. Either you give up your time or money…sometimes you give up both. You get both in spades when you succeed, and you WILL succeed if you dedicate yourself and persevere through the tough times we all inevitably face along the way.
If others have made this work in the past and continue to do so in the future, it makes sense for you to do it too, unless you’re incredibly lazy or just plain dumb. I’m not trying to offend, but the only reason people fail at anything in life is because they give up too easily or don’t put in enough effort to get started.
Well, let’s take a look at the best (in my opinion) free ways to increase your website traffic… the lifeblood of any business.
Guest Post:
If you’re not guest posting on popular blogs within your niche right now, you’re making a very costly mistake. Guest posting is a very rewarding strategy for driving traffic to your website. I’ve been writing for popular blogs for years, and even though I pay for a lot of my traffic through other advertising methods, guest posting is still one of the most effective…and it’s free.
Imagine having 2 or 3 articles published every week on high traffic blogs within your niche? I would expect to receive between 500 and 1000 visitors. That’s a lot of traffic with just one free traffic generation method. I honestly can’t think of an easier way to make sales or build an email list than guest posting. Apart from paying for traffic, in my opinion this is hands down the best free strategy.
However, burst publishing is not just about posting articles on high-traffic websites. You also have the added benefit of being able to communicate with your potential prospects by engaging and answering questions in the posts you write. This is powerful stuff. If you write a quality post that highlights your expertise in a particular area, you will inevitably have people willing to follow you to your blog where they can learn more about you.
Guest post traffic can be the most targeted traffic there is (depending on the blog you post to) and the relationships you can build can benefit you for months and years to come. I have had people follow me reading my posts on different blogs and leaving great comments about my work. At one point, my girlfriend thought she had stalkers.
Regardless, this is a powerful strategy and now you have no excuse when it comes to attracting visitors to your website. However, the trick is to be consistent. Two guest posts each week will do wonders for your business. After a couple of weeks, you’ll have no problem publishing a guest post in an hour.
Merchandising of articles:
I have to admit that article marketing is not as popular as it used to be. If you’re looking to get backlinks from this strategy, I honestly wouldn’t. What I like about article marketing is that you don’t have to write any additional content to post to directories if you don’t want to. I personally write for my blog often so all I do is wait for Google to index my posts and then submit them to the top 5 directories with a link to my landing page and website.
I have noticed that in order to get consistent traffic from article directories, you need to submit a good amount of content. Just throwing a couple of items isn’t going to cut it. As a long term strategy this may be good, but in the short term it is not. I have over a hundred articles published in some of the major directories and gaining quite a bit of traffic.
Another thing to keep in mind about article submissions is that if your articles are quality, other webmasters can select them and place them on their own website with all their links to your website intact. This is good for backlinks, but more importantly for more direct traffic.
Side notes: After publishing your articles to directories, you can convert them to PDF and publish them to the document sharing website as well, therefore more traffic is inevitable over time. The idea is to have your content everywhere.
Forum Post:
This strategy is one of my favorites to get direct targeted traffic to my website. I won’t go into too much detail here because I have written an article on how this strategy is very effective for website promotion. You can find that article here… Using Forum Marketing to Advertise Your Business.
Suffice it to say that I have been using forum marketing to generate free traffic for quite some time and the results are brilliant. That may sound like a stretch, but let me tell you that forum posting, if done right, can drive the most targeted traffic to your website today. In the forums there are many people who are looking for answers to problems that you can solve for them. This is very, VERY powerful and a method you MUST implement as soon as possible.
blog comment:
Another strategy here that used to be used solely for backlinking purposes. I know how effective blog comments can be for generating one-way backlinks because I’ve used them a lot in the past for that very reason. But that’s not how I use blog comments anymore. I think the direct traffic and relationship building aspect of this method is much more valuable than getting backlinks.
If your comments are valuable to the readers of that blog, people will click on your “name – link” and go directly to your website. However, this is another one you need to be consistent with. Making a few comments here and there is not going to give you much results. Leaving low-quality comments won’t do you much good either.
Think of blog comments as a way to communicate your experience to the blog owner and their loyal readers. If you are an active participant in many blogs, you can build great relationships and get your name out there in many ways. Not only that, but this strategy is a great way to gain exposure so you can offer your services as a guest post on those particular blogs. Again, it’s about building relationships and getting your name out there.
So, there you have 4 great ways to get free traffic back to your website. Of course, there are many more, but these are more than enough to get you started. If you are consistent with these and seek to provide value above all else, you will definitely get great results. Why not set up a 30-day plan to implement all of these strategies? After 30 days, you’ll see which ones work best for you and make adjustments here and there to get the most out of each method.
for your success