Free traffic methods

By , on November 7th, 2011

Getting traffic doesn’t have to be expensive. It can even be free. But if you want free traffic, you’ll have to invest your time and energy in getting free traffic. And you’ll have to learn about the free traffic methods.

Here are 31 methods to get free traffic to your site or blog.

Optimize your website or blog. Learn SEO or pay someone to optimize your site for you. Read more about SEO here.
If you don’t have a blog yet, start one. Make sure to host the blog on your domain (not on a free blog).
Post frequently on your blog. The more often you post, the more results you can expect. Blogs increase SEO and traffic. You can expect 30% increase in traffic when posting every day. Google likes blogs, especially blogs that provide new quality content on a regular basis. Additional benefits of blogs include fast search engine indexing because of ping services, blog directories and blog search engines. Find out more about blogging here.

Make money by promoting affiliate programs on your blog!

Free traffic methods continued:

Submit your blog to blog directories.
Provide quality, unique content. Google’s Panda algorithm updates have hit poor quality sites. Make sure you have high quality content on your site to avoid getting Panda-related penalties.
Get backlinks for each of your blog posts or web pages. There is a lot of information on this site about linking methods.
Add your site to free Web directories. Just don’t forget to get your website ready and functional to increase your chances of getting accepted in directories. Make sure all links work and that you don’t have missing images.Don’t overlook Open Directory - You can get the submission directions at www.dmoz.org/add.html. Make sure to read their guidelines before submitting. Free Web directories. More info here.
Submit your site to free local directories, local review sites and specialized directories. Using “local” services to list your business is one sure way to get your website listed in the search engines. Click here to Read more info about local directories.
Create profiles on popular social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. (Profiles give you links.)
Be active on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. Provide a lot of helpful tips. Don’t give up too quickly. It might take 6 months to a year before this pays off.
- Read here to find out if you should be on Facebook
- Linkedin. Any business regardless of the kind of business and industry should be active with Linkedin. Find out more info about Linkedin
Install plugins in your WordPress blog so that your blog posts will automatically be announced to your Facebook and Twitter.|
Video marketing. Create videos and put them on YouTube and other video sites. The more creative your videos are, the better your chances are that the videos will become viral. Also, demonstrating the benefits of your products with videos works well. Find out why it’s important to do video marketing.
Drive free traffic to squeeze pages through video marketing. You could use PLR and add callouts with your links using video editing software such as Camtasia or Cam Studio, a free video editing software.
Bookmark. Submit each post or each article you write to top social bookmarking sites. You can do automated submission to social media sites. Use either OnlyWire OR Social Marker, a social bookmarking service for fast tagging and posting to all major social websites – SocialMarker.com and automate the process. Both are FREE (free if you do it yourself. Or you can check my bookmarking services). Read more info about social bookmarking.
Focus on building a list. Use some of free traffic methods below to drive traffic to your opt-in page or squeeze page. It takes time but it’s one of the best online marketing techniques.
Join JV giveaway events. JV Giveaways are one of the best ways for newbies to build a list. Most JV Giveaways are focused on Internet Marketing. Also some of the leads are freebie seekers, but it’s a great way to start building a list. To get a list of JV giveaway events, visit NewJVGiveaways.com.
Add an exit page.
Set up an affiliate program and have your affiliates promote your products or services. You’ll have to pay commissions but it won’t cost any money up front as you’ll only pay commissions for sales (and optionally for leads.)
Do joint ventures with poeple in your niche.
Do adswaps and reciprocate with other list builders in your niche. They email your offer to their list and you email their offer to your list. You will need a list of at least 300 to participate in an ad swap. Don’t overdo ad swaps as you don’t want to burn out your list’s responsiveness. Once a month is good.
Write a compelling signature to use when posting in forums, posting comments in blogs, submitting articles to articles sites and anywhere else you’re posting.
Write quality articles and submit them to a few select article directories with your signature. It’s a time consuming marketing method but you will see consistent results for a long time. Read how article marketing has changed.
Write and send out free online press releases. This is a free website promotion tactic that you can do anytime. There is a lot of information on this site about press releases.
Leave useful comments on blogs in your niche with a link back to your blog or site. Do a search on Google for other blogs in your niche that are relevant to your own blog and try to find blogs that have a lot of traffic, a lot of activity, and are seen as somewhat as an authority in your niche. It’s a great way to get targeted visitors to your blog that will be interested in your content and products. If you focus on high ranking, popular blogs that receive a lot of daily traffic, you can begin to generate traffic to your website instantly at absolutely no cost. Read 5 reasons to comment on blogs.
Write content on other blogs. Contact other bloggers in your niche who have popular blogs that receive a LOT of traffic and offer to write unique content for them. In exchange you will get a link that will give you more exposure.
Be a guest blogger. Write guest blog posts on one or more active blogs in your niche. Guest blogging is writing original articles on subjects that interest the readership of your host blog. Get more info on becoming a guest writer at myblogguest.com/
Write and give away a free ebook or free report.
Leave useful messages at forums and popular message boards such as Yahoo Message Boards. Find forums and message boards that are very active and related to your niche/topic, post actively, provide good tips and put your site url in your signature. Or link to a squeeze page to build your list. See how to get forums traffic.
Answer questions related to your products or services. In addition to answering questions on forums, a popular question and answer site is Yahoo Answers. Click here for more information about how to use Yahoo Answers.
Be a guest speaker at teleseminars. Interview someone in your industry or have someone interview you.
Be a speaker at life seminars and conferences.
Attend seminars and network with attendees.
Advertise on free classifieds like craigslist and backpage.
Be friendly online. Other webmasters can provide links, guest posts, recommendations, become affiliates and more.
Swap banners. Make a banner ad for your site and ask another webmaster to do the same for his site. Then swap! This is a variation of link exchanges.
Traffic exchanges. Traffic exchanges will give you traffic but it’s low- quality and low-converting traffic. Some traffic exchanges are easyhits4u.com (geo targetting) and trafficswarm.com.
Word of mouth and offline promotions. Tell everyone about your site. What is free website promotion without the word of mouth? Mention your website, its URL and features in daily conversations and let the good news spread from one mouth to another!