By: Mark Dennis
Once your website gets up and running, you probably implement some sort of traffic tracking software intending to see 100’s of visitors coming to your website. Unfortunately, that usually doesn’t happen. You will need to work really hard to increase your website daily traffic from zero to 100 and then from 100 to 1000.
I’m sure you can find hundreds of tips on the internet that boast helping you, and wading through all of them can be intimidating to say the least. And unfortunately, all of them will not work for you. You need to zero in on the ways that actually help you improve your website traffic. No matter what you have going on within your blog, your success or failure depends on getting a lot of traffic to your website. As your website traffic increases, so does sales, leads, and money from direct advertisement. If you are currently able to make $300 from advertisements and 10,000 unique visitors a month, how nice it would be to double it in the next six months.
In this article, I am going to share 15 tips that will help you increase traffic to your website for free.
1. Write Quality Content
More content usually means more traffic to your website. So, you should look for ways to publish more content on a regular basis. It would greatly help if you could add 2-3 new posts or articles on your website’s niche as often as possible. However, you don’t want to just write a lot of words just to write. Be sure your posts and articles have good content. If your site gets a bad reputation for publishing crap, it might have been better if you didn’t get traffic at all. And before writing article around a topic, you should do some keyword research around the words you want to target throughout the article.
2. Become Active on Social Networks
Share your material on social networks. If your website content is good, other people on social Media websites would like to read, share, and comment on them. When you submit your articles on these websites, it will help you guide traffic to your website. It will also help towards brand building and high quality backlinks for better search engine rankings. So start sharing those articles from your website on top social networks such as Digg, Delicious, Facebook, Twitter, and any other social networking sites. If your article gets a lot of traffic, you could get thousands of hits daily. Imagine what that will do for your Google Ranking.
3. Write Guest Posts
Writing guest posts on top blogs can get your name out there and at the same time, give you backlinks to your site. You should create a list of the most popular blogs in your website niche and contact them with the intension to contribute guest posts. Most of the time, they will reply positively since everyone needs new, high quality content. After your post gets published, you should share it on social networks where you are active and reply to incoming comments on your guest post.
4. Become An Expert in Discussion Forums
There are a lot of active discussion forums available. I’m sure you can find a few discussion forums are relative to your niche. You should start replying to or opening threads on topics that you are well versed in. Most discussion forums allow you to add links in your Signature section. If others find your post helpful, they may go to your website to know more about you and what you were discussing. It isn’t recommended to spam these forums with unrelated self-promotional links. Sometimes account will be banned from that discussion forum. It isn’t going to give you real traffic anyways
5. Do Press Releases
You can do press releases if you adding new product or something to your website. Submit it on top press release accepting websites. If people like your press release, they will click on the links that you have placed in your press release. This will give you additional links for your website which should improve your website search engine rankings and Google Page Rank. These press release sites range from free to expensive, so there’s no reason not to. It can fit anyone’s budget.
6. Add Links for Your Website on Wikipedia.org
I am not sure if you can still have your own page without submitting it, but anyone can edit the existing pages. You can probably submit a documentary of your website that is chock full of links to your site. If you only want to edit, find a page that deals with things that your site deals with and edit it with links to your site. It’s easy and free. You should be able to find some topics that you have covered on your website and add links to those pages. They rank high on Google and can generate a lot of traffic.
7. Facebook Fan Page
Start a profile and start promoting your blog. Find ways to increase your Facebook Fan Base. Participate in games or discussion groups. Find friends and locate other profiles dealing with your niche. Everyone knows how popular Facebook is. Some businesses survive using Facebook marketing only. Having a fan page with thousands of fans will help you get lots of direct traffic to your website, and will also helps you improve your website search engine ranking.
8. Twitter Profile
Create a profile on Twitter and start tweeting those articles. Let everyone know a new article is out. When people find your tweets interesting, they will click on your website links. Include some related tags towards the end of your tweet using hash tag. When you use hash tag with your tweets, people may find your tweets while searching for topics of their interest using Twitter search functionality. You should also strive to increase your friends on Twitter so that your tweets reach more people. As in Facebook, join groups or discussions and add friends as you go.
9. Use Classified Websites
If your website is focused around certain services or products, you could use classified websites. You will get highly relevant traffic when you use classifieds since most of users visit classified websites to find what they are looking for. These classified websites will help you with more traffic, sales and links to your website. If you don’t think so, then just take a look at Craig’s list and see how big they are.
10. Directory Submissions
Submit your website into high PR web directories. I would also recommend submitting your website into web directories having Alexa in five figures or less, and directories that are related to your website niche. Submission into web directories will increase your traffic and give you keyword based links which will help you improve your website search engine rankings.
11. Search Engine Submissions
If you haven’t already, you should submit your website to some popular search engines. This will allow them to index your website faster into their databases. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this can increase traffic to your site.
12. RSS Feed Submissions
If you are offering RSS Feeds on your website, readers can use it to subscribe and keep track of the latest content coming from your website. I would suggest you submit your RSS feeds into RSS directories. There are lots of active RSS directories where you can submit your website RSS. This will allow you to get some traffic and backlinks for your website.
13. Use Your Website Links in your Email Signature
It is advised to add a link for your website in all of your email signatures. Presence of your website links in the signature section will help people know about you and your company. When you send emails to someone, they may go to your website by clicking the link available in your signature.
14. Show Your Presence in Groups
You should join and be active in groups that are focused around the topics you cover on your website. You will get lots of targeted groups on Google Groups, Yahoo Groups and Facebook Groups.
15. Do Link Exchanges
Link exchanges are still effective if done properly. While doing link exchanges, you should go for websites and blogs that specialize in related material. When you get SEO optimized links from related websites and blogs, you will help drive lots of traffic to your website from Google, Yahoo and Bing.
