Here are 7 methods that we use to gain traffic to our sites time after time.
I never believe in buying traffic. How do you think visitors come to know me? Did they pay to know me? Most probably they subscribed because of a free download in the first place. You may not remember how but YOU are the traffic. You are targeted because I hit your hot button correctly :)
There are enough free resources out there on the Net to keep one busy with getting traffic,
but here are the only 7 most effective methods: search engine optimization (SEO), link exchange, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, article submissions, blogging, viral marketing and massive giveaway events.
Search engine optimization is the practice of optimizing your pages for the search engines so that your pages are optimized for the search engines to be searched with the most optimized keywords. You get the idea? SEO English is a bit like tongue twister. If you know the exact keywords your business or industry is famous for, you increase the density of those keywords in your page.
Actually, I don't understand why some folks make SEO sound so complicated. On the other hand, other folks say SE spiders are so smart at discerning quality of content such that SEO is really much ado about nothing. Moreover, SEO English is just so unnatural sometimes and abuse may constitute as keyword spamming, unless you know the secret to writing it 'fluently'. SEO is absolutely crucial in niche markets where competition in SE listings is not hot.
Exchanging links with like-minded webmasters create a network for increased traffic distribution. Interested visitors are free to visit your site when they see your link on other people's sites. SEO targeted towards Google is only half the battle. Its PageRank tool measures your page's link popularity and ranks it higher according to scale. The more links pointing into your site as opposed to pointing out, the merrier.
* PageRank looks at pages, not sites.
Pay-per-click advertising is all about how much you are willing to pay the PPC program for a high listing so that visitors take notice of your link and visit it. You incur the bid price you set for yourself for every visit (click). Considering ROI, this is particularly useful when you are selling a product. Security features are in place so there's no point being trigger-happy if you don't like some sites. ;)
Article submissions can give you an amazing amount of traffic, but only if you use the method right. You should make sure the content you're submitting is easily understandable, and only covers one or two points, leading the people back to your site with your resource box. Most importantly, you need to make sure that your article is interesting, compelling, and of course, informative. Once you've submitted these articles to several article directories, you'll probably see a marked rise in link backs, traffic and more.
Blogging is a free way to make sure that you're reaching traffic in all regions of your niche. It has come up in stature from its days of being simply a place to 'share' with your friends and is now a valid, and often well used promotional structure for a site—or even a basis for the site itself. Using WordPress especially can mean that you've got an easy-to-promote, amazingly simple to update site structure that allows you to build and maintain effortlessly. As a traffic generation tool, it is also a good way to create, maintain and direct traffic to your site. The more you blog using popular search terms related to your niche, the more intensive you're practicing SEO as the archiving system of the WordPress blog script is absolutely well suited for Google indexing. Try to post on alternate days if not everyday.
Viral Marketing is everything and anything to do with propagating your name and URL through giving away free e-books, reports, article and e-zine submission, classified ads etc. But this is only by technological means. With people, we are talking about word-of-mouth.
Massive giveaway events come once in a while but they are really the biggest source of opt-in subscribers for anyone who participate in them. The organizer announces a proposal to carry out such an event, inviting contributors to submit a product of their own or one with resell rights to be given away for free. When the event begins, anyone and everyone can download all these exclusive products as long as they opt in. It's very easy to get 1,000 subscribers in a week.
Of course, the organizer gets the most numbers, but he also puts in the most work to make sure the web server doesn't collapse due to traffic overload, the gifts don't go missing and the event proceeds on schedule.
Awareness and application of the 7 above traffic generation methods slowly but surely builds a good list of followers who are willing to patronize us.
