11 Strategies for Free Traffic

 

By: Matt Bacak

There is a debate as to whether organic (free) traffic is more effective than paid traffic. One of the controversies surrounding paid traffic is the cost of ranking for popular keywords through pay-per-click continues to be cost prohibitive for entrepreneurs.  The strategies used to get free traffic may take a little longer to see results, but the customers will be the right customers for your business.

Many entrepreneurs believe that as long as they get traffic to their website, they will sell a lot of products, make a lot of money and call it a day. They fail to differentiate between a high volume of internet traffic and a lower volume of good, solid, quality traffic.

Below are 11 ways on how to get traffic, quality traffic, to your website:

1. Primary keyword in your domain name. There are several keyword searching tools available on the internet – some are free while others require a monthly free.  Finding the right keyword phrase to describe your product or service will bring your website traffic; however, you want to find a keyword phrase that is high in volume but low in competition. For example, if you sell insurance it will be difficult for your small business to rank for the keyword “insurance” as many of the larger competitors (who have dedicated teams of internet marketers) have mastered that ranking already.

2. Incorporate secondary keywords. Select and prioritize your top ten keyword phrases and use them throughout your article(s) or post(s). Be sure to place your keyword phrase(s) in bold text and if you have more than one website dedicated to a topic, link one keyword phrase back to a post on your main website.

3. Rinse and repeat. By prioritizing a list of ten second keywords, you can now begin rotating these keywords on different websites. For example, if you post an article on your blog you should be able to use the entire list of keywords. On YouTube, however, you are limited to a specific number of characters and the same keyword can’t be repeated unless you place each keyword phrase within quotation marks.

4. YouTube videos. Produce high quality videos that are brief in length whose valuable content is direct and to the point. In order to direct traffic back to your website and prevent your videos from being stolen, place your website’s URL at the beginning and end of the presentation (or watermark it across the lower third of all your slides). Include a clear call to action.

5. Make it easy for customers to find you. If you product and upload a video onto YouTube, be sure to enter your URL in the description underneath the actual video. Add a bold statement (in the description) that include your primary and secondary keywords and state “for more free training go to our website” (list your URL). Consider adding this same statement to the last slide of your video.

6. Comment on others’ blog posts. Search for people who are in your field of interest who have a high volume of traffic to their website. Read what they are saying and post a thought-provoking comment along with your URL. Your comment has to be relevant to the post and it has say more than “nice post” or “I agree with you”.

7. Post a video reply to a popular video. Find a video that is relevant to your topic and one with a lot of views. Instead of posting a comment as your reply, post a video reply with your URL visible in the video.

8. Post an update (one or two sentences) on your topic in Wikipedia and place a footnote that references back to your website’s URL.

9. Write an article and post on an article directory. At the end of the article, in the about me section, add your website information along with other articles you’ve written that are related to this article. Include a controversial article title and include your primary keyword in the title. End each article with a thought provoking question.

10. Optimize Facebook. Post your thoughts on a controversial topic or share a popular news headline and ask a question to get people to respond by taking action on your status.  Share relevant photos on the topic as Facebook is the most popular photo-sharing website (check copyright first or take your own photos).

11. Monitor Google Analytics. Regardless of the strategy you use to get free traffic to your website, it’s important to monitor your website statistics and adjust accordingly. Google Analytics will show you the source of your traffic. It makes good business sense to capitalize on strategies that work (to increase traffic) and eliminate those strategies that aren’t working.