Free Traffic Generation Tips
The question most often asked on the Internet is, "How do I get more traffic to my site?"
The following are some free ways of generating traffic to your website. Once you have used these methods and earned some profit, you can consider spending a little money on some low cost methods of traffic generation.
1. Search Engine Submissions
Almost everyone starts right here. They know that search engines bring 84% of the traffic to most web sites, so they know they have to submit to them. To achieve the top rankings in the search engines will take some serious work. You have millions of competitors, but you have an advantage. You are willing to learn and do what it takes to get to the top. To achieve the top traffic building positions, you will need to study everything you can on search engine positioning, link popularity and meta tags. Then, you will have to test. Check your rankings, examine competitors that are beating you, and then edit your pages. If you are willing to keep going through this process and learning each step along the rise of your rankings, you too could soon be generating 100s, even 1000s of hits daily from top search engine positions.
2. Yahoo Classifieds
Classified ads can work if you figure out how to work them for your product or service. There are very few free classified ad sites that actually work. Yahoo is one of the shining lights that stands out above the crowd of mediocre free ad sites. Yahoo has more traffic than any other Internet site and it definitely shows when you place your ads here. On Yahoo, you are allowed to place 10 ads at a time, so do so. A little key to creating effective ads here is to delete your ads every few days and replace them. Then, you will be able to keep your ads towards the top of the list and receive more free readers.
3. Trade Links
If you develop a strong content oriented site you can persuade thousands of other webmasters to link to you or to trade links with you. There are even a few consultants online who have developed linking campaigns and have achieved a million hits a month or more for their customers within 90 days by linking with the right sites. You can do this yourself. The key is to develop content people want to link to and then get out there and make the contacts by visiting people's sites, sending out personalized emails to webmasters you have visited, and networking in discussion groups.
4. Participate in Leveraged Banner Exchanges
Regular banner exchanges don't work that well. Although they can produce a few extra hits a month for your site, they never seem to give you the kind of traffic building leverage you need to grow to hundreds of thousands of hits a month. A new wave of banner exchanges is growing though at unprecedented rates. What they do that separates them apart is that they will give you a 5% to 20% credit of banner impressions of anyone's site that you refer. If you refer a site which gets a million hits a month, you would get 200,000 free impressions a month extra.
5. Start Your Own Mailing List
If you want to make money online, start your own mailing list. It is the best way to keep contact with your prospects and your customers. It is also the best way to build the credibility you need to make sales to your targeted market. A little less talked about advantage to having your own mailing list is that you can use it to trade ads with other e-zines out there. If you trade ads with 10 other ezines out there, you could easily be saving yourself $100 - $500 in advertising expense every week!
6. Free Stuff
The top way to get traffic is free stuff. If you want to get real traffic to your site, provide the kind of free content and services that your market is hunting desperately for. Provide free articles to other web sites. Provide free downloads. Give away free programs. Provide hundreds of links to needed tools. Provide links to downloadable software. Give your visitors what they want and they will keep coming back and referring their friends.
Many different types of Internet advertising work, but only if you are willing to keep on going even if you fail a dozen times trying. You have to learn what works for your site and what doesn't work.
Attract Visitors
Identify your needs
Identify the visitors you most want to attract
Employees? Couples? Customers? Men? Women? etc If men, what kind of men? Men who play sports, Men who listen to a certain type of music? married men etc. For the best results, you want to attract your best visitors, not untargeted clicks.
Decide where you can find these visitors
What Web sites do they use? What newsgroups do they read? What email lists? What printed publications?
Determine why somebody would want to visit your site
Compile a list of reasons. Be specific. Use your list in subsequent tasks.
Use existing marketing mechanisms to attract visitors
Use these first. They take the least time to implement, and build a foundation for other promotional projects. BUT, don't promote your Web site until AFTER it opens
Print your home page address on anything that has your phone number
Letterhead, business cards, catalogs, advertisements, checks, product labels.
Include your home page address in all email signature files
This costs nothing and over time is extremely productive.
For example:
Jane Smith
Sales and Marketing
http://www.sam365.com
Email announcements about your Web site to people you know & prospects
Start collecting customer email addresses before you open your site then email them to let them know about your site and ask them if they would forward your email to as many of their contacts as they can.
Issue a press release about your Web site
Send it to print media, especially trade publications, your home town newspaper, and print publications that cover the Internet.
Email announcements of what's new on your site
Do it monthly. The most cost-effective way to generate return visits is to send "What's New" announcements to an email list of people who have already visited your site and have asked you to email announcements to them.
Let visitors subscribe to an email list on your Web site
Emailing short announcements frequently will generate more responses than sending long announcements less often. To avoid angry email from people who don't remember subscribing to your email list, start each announcement with a reminder that "You signed up to receive this announcement" and instructions on how to unsubscribe.
Update your email list before each mailing
Add new addresses from your Web site. Correct or delete any addresses that "bounced back" from your last mailing.
Use key words and phrases in your site
These are the words and phrases used by search engine users when they want to find a Web site that addresses their needs.
Write a list of key words and phrases
Key words are the words you would type into a search engine to find your particular product or service. Don't just include your company name, your product name, your product category.
Key phrases are words which by themselves are too general, but when combined describe your product. For example, the word "earn" is vague, "money" is vague, and "ebook" is vague. But when you combine "earn money" you define a customer's need. When you say "earn money ebook" you describe a product. A customer might use these phrases to look up a site.
Include key words and phrases in page titles
The title of a page is different from its headline. It appears at the top of your browser. Some search engines give much weight to words in the title.
Include key words and phrases in META tags on each page
Some search engines rely on META tags on each page to provide the name of your site, a short description, and key words.
Include key words and phrases in your home page text and in key pages
Several search engines direct visitors to your site based on the words in your text. Some look at all your text. Some look only at the first 125 words. Some look at all your pages. Some look only at your home page.
Look at key words on pages that are ranked high in categories that should be yours.
Couldn't you use these words, too?
Eliminate text on your pages that confuses or distracts search engines
Make sure everything in the "Head" section of your pages works for getting you noticed.
First, find the free target promotional venues
For most Web sites, you can find 200 or more places to promote. Remember, however, that 90% of searches on the Net are on the following search engines: Yahoo, google, Excite, InfoSeek, Lycos, Altavista, WebCrawler and HotBot
Find sites where you can cross-promote and swap links
Look for sites who will trade a link to their site for a link to yours. These can be people in your field, associations you belong to, etc. but not usually direct competitors
Find general directories and search sites
These are the ones where they list everything under the sun from health advice to car parts
Find category-specific directories
These are the ones that only list category specific web sites that cater for a niche market
Find newsgroups
These are topic-oriented electronic bulletin boards on a Web site. You can post our own message. Concentrate on the title of your message. It's the only part that most people will see. Use the rest of the message to draw readers to your site -- not to sell. But do NOT spam them. Your message must be relevant and useful to the group. If you think it might be spam, then it probably is. Far better just to voice an opinion and use your url in your signature.
Find email discussion lists
These are automated email lists on a specific topic. You can post messages to the list, and everybody will receive the email. Concentrate on the title of your message. It's the only part that most people will see. Use the rest of the message to draw readers to your site -- not to sell. But do NOT spam them. Your message must be relevant and useful to the group. If you think it might be spam, then it probably is. Far better just to voice an opinion and use your url in your signature.
Find email newsletters
Request inclusion from the list owner
Consider automatic promotion sites
Some Web sites let you go to one place to submit promotional information about your site to several promotional venues. Most of these do not properly tailor your submission to meet different sites' requirements though and whilst they save time, the potential benefits can be significantly reduced by their use.
Consider automatic promotion software
The best Web site promotion software is better than an automatic promotion site, and saves lots of time.
Write a two-sentence description of your site.
Include key words and phrases.
Research the needs of each promotional venue
Go to each site. Look up its requirements and write them down.
Modify your short description to meet the needs of each venue
Each place has different requirements. Follow them exactly.
Submit your listings
Aim to be within the top 35 positions of the major search engines (that's as far down as most people will look.)
Track each listing. Make sure it did not get lost or scrambled
Set up a tracking system to track your submissions and to record your position on the search engines.
When you find a problem, re-submit your listing until your site is accurately listed.
Repeat this process for each major improvement to your site
Consider banners and links for pay
For most Web sites, the preceding phases and tasks will substantially increase traffic. If the increase is not sufficient, then you may consider paying extra for advertising to increase traffic.
The Get Rich Free strategy employs these techniques only once an income is being generated which is sufficient to fund any expenditure.
Find Web sites visited by your target audience.
Negotiate payment for banners and links to your site
Create banners and place them
Between one-half of one percent and ten percent of the people who see your banner will click on it to visit your site. This is called your "clickthrough rate." To increase your rate, make sure your banner clearly conveys the benefits of visiting your site.
Monitor traffic sources so you know which banners succeed
You can create "bridge pages" to do this. Or use ?source=whatever at the end of a url
Monitor the results. Maintain ongoing promotions
Monitor your traffic and response rate. If levels fall, improve your site or add something new and promote again. For a plan on updating and improving your site, see "Improve My Web Site"
