It used to be so easy to get free website traffic to your blog. All you had to do was fill out a few meta tags and made sure you used relevant keywords in your content. Now everyone is on the internet trying to make money, get their message out, or just plain connect to other people with like interests and the competition for attention has gotten fierce. Getting free targeted traffic to your website is a lot more challenging.
But with consistent action and these seven tips, you can drive traffic to your website without having to spend money on hit or miss advertising.
1. Increase Website Traffic by Getting Involved
Get involved in the internet via forums, social networking sites, and commenting on blogs. This accomplishes several things. First of all you are meeting people and making contacts. By helping out on a forum in your niche, you are increasing the perception of you as an expert and because most forums and blogs allow you to link to your website, you are also improving your search rankings with back links and getting targeted website traffic from both the sites and the search engines.
2. Generate Free Website Traffic with Guest Blogging
Submit posts to other sites in your niche or just outside your niche. The major benefit of guest blogging is that you are tapping into an already established audience who is ready and waiting to hear what you have to say. The best way to take advantage of this is to submit unique and useful content to avoid the duplicate content trap and to maintain the reader’s trust in their favorite blogger.
3. Submit Articles Directly to Websites and Newsletters
If you have a stable of articles that you want to distribute, consider submitting them directly to the source rather than using article directories. This provides you with control over where your content shows up as well as the ability to confirm whether or not the site has a reader base.
4. Generate Free Traffic to Your Website with Blog Carnivals
A blog carnival is a roundup of posts from the blogosphere that are centered on a main theme. You submit a link to a post on your blog that fits the theme of the carnival. The host will usually review your article and, if it fits, will add the link to a list that they then post on their own blog for their readers to peruse. You will gain both relevant links and targeted traffic from this. A well known blog carnival is Thursday Thirteen. However, a search on the internet for blog carnivals will turn up more.
5. Increase Online Website Traffic by Offering Freebies
People love free stuff especially if it helps them solve a problem or be more effective in their business and life. Another good marketing technique is to provide useful freebies that people can only get from your site. This could be anything from a WordPress template to a plugin that helps with the functionality of software to an e-book that provides valuable information. In addition to getting more people visiting and reading your blog, you can also build a mailing list if you set things up right.
6. Join a Social Marketing Group or Blog Network
A good way to increase website traffic free is to form a social marketing group or become a part of a network. A social marketing group is a group that promotes each other. This could be anything from highlighting each other’s posts to giving each other a boost on social networking sites like Digg.
A network is a group of websites owned by one individual that span a variety of topics. Most of the networks on the internet have been around for awhile, have quite a number of blogs, and use an internal link and marketing structure to drive traffic throughout the network. Blogging for a network helps you gain a good amount of credibility as an expert as well as exposure for your other projects.
7. Increase Exposure and Traffic with an Interview
Get interviewed by other bloggers or interview others in your niche/market. Doing interviews is probably one of the most effective marketing techniques that you can use. As the interviewee, you get to sell your business and yourself by letting your potential customers get to know you better. People like to do business with those they know and interviews go a long way towards making them comfortable with you.
As the interviewer, this is a great way to make contacts in the blogosphere. People like to talk about themselves which is evidenced by the popularity of blogging. So if you do an interview about someone, most likely they will send readers to your site earning you both traffic and links.
Generating free website traffic takes commitment and drive because it is not an instantaneous fix. However, you can get targeted traffic to your blog using these tips. Just keep your eye on the prize and you’ll have a popular website in short order.
Daria Black is a freelance and fiction writer. Although she writes all types of stories, her specialty is science fiction/fantasy erotica. Stop by her website to read erotic fiction stories, or talk about sex, art, life and other random topics.
