Traffic Tips For Beginners
One of the most popular topics that comes up time and time again when I talk to people at workshops and networking events is traffic. In many instances I find that the person asking me about
traffic doesn’t have anywhere to send that traffic to if they had it, but that’s a topic for another time.
When we talk about traffic we’re referring to visitors. We need to get as many people looking at our offers as possible to maximum the number of them that decide to buy what we have to offer.
Only a small percentage of the people that see our offers will buy from us so it makes sense that the more people we can show our offers to the more sales we will make.
Most people starting out online have little or no funds to invest in their online venture and so when it comes to driving traffic it’s free methods that are the first choice.
Although paid methods provide a much quicker result there are lots of free ways to get visitors to our websites and offers that work very well.
Implementing a few of these, proven techniques can definitely help you get more visitors to your website and most of them won’t take you very long either.
Valuable, unique content is at the core of everything online and using content is one of the best ways to boost traffic to our websites.
That is why the first tip I am going to share with you is to write articles closely related to the topic of the website or offer that you want to send traffic to and publish them everywhere. Let people know that they have permission to share them with others so that they publish them on their own websites as long as they include a link back to yours.
There are lots of places on the web that publish content from guest authors like Ezinearticles.com. Ezinearticles.com is the most well know article directory but there are lots more article directory sites that you could try out. Here a link to a useful resource that list 50 more to try out.
http://www.vretoolbar.com/articles/directories.php
If you don’t have a blog, set one up and add content to it on a regular basis. There is a very good reason why so many people use blogging platforms like WordPress to publish content and that is because it is very beneficial for getting good search engine rankings. Every time you add new content to your blog, it will ping the search engine robots to come and index your site, which leads to better listings and ultimately more traffic.
Your blog will get found and indexed by the search engines in time but you can speed up the process a lot by submitting it to the main search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) manually.
Here’s a link to a list of 23 more places where you can also submit your blog to.
Even if you have your own main blog you can also set up a blog on platforms like Blogger or Tumblr just to publish your articles on.
Whenever you publish, make sure that you include the URL to your main blog or offer in the author’s resource or bio box of your articles, so that when you article gets published people who like the information you’ve provided will be inclined to visit your website.
This same technique works well for short reports and ebooks. Create something of value to give away and most people will be glad to share it, carrying a link to back to your site with it everywhere it goes.
Include your URL in your business correspondence. When it comes to getting traffic, you can’t be shy. Anyone you communicate with can be a potential customer. People are curious by nature so why not take advantage of it by giving them the opportunity to find out what you have to offer.
This also works well for all of your online correspondence as well. Be sure to include your URL in any emails, social profiles, forum signatures and any blog comments you make. This way when people read what you have written they will be exposed to your URL.
Joint Ventures
Doing joint ventures with other online marketers is a great way to get more exposure. Arrange a joint venture with other website and list owners. Make a deal with them to advertise your website in exchange for a commission or some other form of joint benefit. This won’t cost you anything and it can be one of the fastest ways to generate traffic and increase profits.
Blog Commenting
Blog commenting is a time tested method for getting more exposure to your website or offers and still works well today. However, it can be very time-consuming and is a task that is often outsourced. Outsourcing is possible not something that you would want to do when first starting out but I highly recommend getting some outside help as your business grows and you build the funds to pay someone.
Those are just a few of the most effective free traffic methods. In a future post I’ll cover some paid methods for you to add to your regular traffic generation tasks.
Until then,
Kindest regards,
Trevor
