Free Traffic
Tips
A Complete Guide to Free Website
Traffic
Two million visits and
more….
We don't claim to be an
expert, but we know enough about traffic generation
to
regard getting a million
visits a year as an
achievable
target.
We've done it, doubled it,
and more - with FREE traffic.
If you haven't reached a million
visits a year, you should find this Blog
article
useful.
When it comes to traffic
generating, many affiliates and other
website
owners tend to get stuck in a
comfortable rut. We often use a small
number
of favorite techniques and rarely
venture beyond them.
I'm hoping this report will
encourage you to look beyond the
techniques
you're using and try a few new
ones. By using a wider variety of
techniques,
you'll attract new visitors from
new places.
The wider you cast your
traffic net, the more you future-proof your
business.
You probably won't use EVERY
method listed here. Choose the ones
which
best suit your site, your skills,
your interests and your temperament.
All the techniques we
describe here involve work - but that's a GOOD thing.
Many of your competitors will be
too lazy to do the work involved, so
when
you do it, your traffic will leap
ahead of theirs.
About 95% of this report
describes strong, solid fundamentals -
techniques which build a solid,
long-term business. About 5% deals
with
gimmicks. Don't ignore the
gimmicks. Sometimes they can work
brilliantly.
We like to think of search engines
as our private free workers, working for us
24
hours a day, 365 days a year. This report is aimed at affiliates,
but you don't have
to be an affiliate to find these traffic-generating tips
useful.
Traffic tip
#1
You MUST have high quality, unique
content if you want
long-term,
free search engine
traffic.
This is the most important
tip of all. Sadly, it's one which many
website
owners ignore.Provide LOTS
of information-rich, keyword-rich, useful content for
the search engines and humans to
find.
You know that search engines
are being clogged with junk at an
alarming
rate. The other day, we came across
a marketer who was boasting that
he
owned more than 20,000 blogs
- and he's not the only
one.
Consider the scary effect of this
exponential increase in low quality
Blogs
and websites. Old, large, well
established sites will inevitably become
more
and more important and
trusted by the search engines. Owning a large, well established,
high quality site is a very solid
investment in your future. These days, even Google's webmaster
guidelines advise affiliates to publish "unique and relevant"
content.
If you spend time thinking
of ways to provide truly USEFUL content
that
people will talk about, you'll
automatically end up with lots of free,
one-way
links to your site as people
recommend it without even being asked to
do
so. We've been building
information-rich websites ever since we created autosurfmonster.com
. This method has worked extremely well for us and continues to work
very well. If your website helps solve people's problems, they'll
love you for
it.
Traffic tip
#2
Keep ADDING fresh, relevant, useful
content.
According to Google, about
half the 2.5 billion searches done a day
at
Google are for unique, one-off
phrases. The more pages you build full of on-topic material, the
better the chances your
site will be found.
When it comes to keywords,
think big.
You want your site to be found
via
THOUSANDS of different phrases
every month. Then you can lure that traffic to your best
money-generating pages or to your newsletter sign-up
page.
Also, search engines prefer
fresh sites which keep gradually adding
new
content. Don't let your site go
stale.
"Our own rule of thumb is this:
Add a minimum of 1 article per week,
2
preferably. Adding an article daily
is euphoria and adding 1 every
six
hours, well, that's the
best."
Traffic tip
#3
Choose a memorable domain
name.
If you're launching a new
site, choose a name people will remember
easily.
Ask yourself: "Will people remember
my domain name?"
Try to choose a name which won't be
confused with similar names.
You
don't want people typing your
competitor's domain name when they’re
trying
to find your
site.
NameBoy.com has a
handy tool to help you choose domain names.
Also,
you can find a surprising number of
good deleted (expired) domain
names
at Whois.net. Both those tools are
free.
Traffic tip
#4
Buy the wrong domain name,
too.
If you think people may
confuse your domain name with a similar name,
try
to buy that name, too. A good
domain name registrar will make it very easy for you to redirect one
domain name to another.
Traffic tip #5
Make your domain name easy to read
- especially if it's a
.NET
Which of the following is easier to
read and understand?
www.autosurfmonster.com
or
www.AutoSurfMonster.com
See how using a capital letter at
the start of each word makes the
second
domain name easier to read - and
easier to remember.
Whenever you mention
your domain name anywhere, ALWAYS present
it
in its most readable form. A good
place to start doing this is in your
email
signature file. If you're
unfortunate enough to have bought the ".net" version of a domain
name because someone raced you to the ".com", help people to
remember your site by
writing it like this...
Example.NET
Being MEMORABLE helps
you get more repeat
visitors.
Traffic tip
#6
Use appropriate keywords in your
image file names.
searching for images. We are not
sure how valuable those visitors are, but
we
didn't have to do anything very special to get them.
Google Images - http://images.google.com
- makes it easy for people to search for graphics
online.
To take advantage of this,
when choosing the file name of an image on
your
site, use an appropriate key
phrase, for example, "book-ends.jpg" if
you're
promoting book
ends.
Here's a tip we just
discovered...
When we searched in Google
Images for "book ends" we discovered that
the
very first search result was
for a page which did NOT contain a graphic
of
book
ends!
Instead, the page contained
a "book ends" LINK to a
book ends graphic
on
a second page. It if suits the
design of your site, you may want
to
experiment with this
technique.
We are not sure how much use
traffic to images is, but if it's ADDITIONAL traffic
you can get simply by choosing image file names carefully,
it's worth
having.
Traffic tip
#7
Do REALLY SERIOUS keyword
research.
If you want to get LOTS
of traffic from search engines, you need to find
out
the exact phrases which people are
typing into search
engines.
There are free tools available for
this, but they're not nearly as useful as
the
more comprehensive paid
tools.
For example, if you're using the
Overture keyword tool for your research,
be
warned, its results can't be
trusted. The Overture tool shows you the SAME number of searches for all
these searches:
bikini
girls
girls
bikini
bikini
girl
girl
bikini
bikinis
girl
girl
bikinis
This is obviously
nonsense. The Overture
tool is useful to give you a quick rough guide, but NOT for,
serious
research.
"The harder it is to discover a
certain search phrase (getting traffic),
the
less competition you will have in
the SERPs (for that search phrase).
If
a keyword research tool is free and
popular, how many competitors
will
you have for the phrases you
discover there?"
Traffic tip
#8
Try this page titles
experiment.
Here's a good way to increase your
traffic.
Go to Google and type any
phrase into the search box. Look at the titles
of
the websites in the top 10
rankings.
Which ones catch your eye
and tempt you to click on the link? Some
are
dreadfully stodgy, boring. Some are
merely a long list of keywords.
Some
are good. Some are junk. Good
titles are written for search engines AND humans.
Now look at the titles on
your site. Start with your most important
pages.
Rewrite them to make them more
eye-catching.
Now go to Google and do a search of
your site like this...
site:example.com
Study the page titles. If
you own a large site created over many years,
you
may be horribly embarrassed
at just how BAD some
of your page titles
are.
Do you want to find some examples
of good titles? Simply go to Google
and
do
some more searches. Don't stick to your
industry.
Type in all sorts of different
phrases and study the titles that appear in
the
top 10. You'll soon be brimming
with ideas on ways you can improve your
page
titles. Checking how enticing the
information is in your meta description tag
can
help, too. Some search engines
display this information in their
search
results. If you have a well
established site, you may have written many of your page titles and
meta descriptions years ago when you knew less about
marketing
than you do now. If so, it's time
for another look at
them.
Traffic tip
#9
Organic SEO - a few key
points.
Search engines are getting
cleverer all the time. You can try to
outsmart
them but to us it makes more
sense to work WITH them.
They're gradually getting
better at sifting out low quality websites
and
ranking them poorly. So build high
quality websites containing
genuinely
useful material that other people
want to link to.
The basics of good
search engine optimization are fairly simple. Here's
a
very quick
summary:
· You
need to make it easy for a search engine to figure out the
topic
of your
page.
· Find appropriate keywords
or key phrases and use them in the
title,
in the page heading, in the
introduction, throughout the article, in
the
meta description, in alt tags, at
the end of the article, in links on
the
page, in bold or italics,
and perhaps in a list on the page.
· Use key phrases in your
file names, for example:
keyword1-
keyword2.html.
· Use synonyms and word
variations naturally throughout the
page.
· When linking to your
pages, use appropriate keywords in the
anchor
text (the words people click on).
Do this for links throughout your
site,
and also on other people's sites
which link to yours. Vary the
anchor
text.
· For internal links, it's
better to use text than graphical
links.
· Create a logical
navigation system so that humans and
search
engines can easily find the content
on your site.
· Get links from other
sites to internal pages as well as to your
main
page.
Traffic tip
#10
Submit to the main
directories.
The more high quality links you
have to your site, the more impressed
the
search engines will be.
Start with major directories such
as...
Yahoo!
DMOZ.org
sbd.bcentral.com
...and move on
to...
Gimpsy
Skaffe
Joeant
GoGuides
Business.com
SevenSeek
ThisIsOurYear
LookSmart (probably too
expensive)
BlueFind
WowDirectory
Best of the
Web
GeniusFind
Traffic tip
#11
Submit to niche
directories.
Search for smaller, specialist
directories in your niche. For example, if
your
site is on a health topic, look for
health-related
directories.
How to find niche
directories:
· Go to Search It!
(It's a very
handy free research
tool.)
· Scroll to the Search
Category, "Specialty Hubs and
Directories"
· Choose one
of the 4 options in STEP
2
· Read the "Click Here for
Information..." help before
proceeding
· Complete
STEPS 3 and 4, and then click on
Search It!
· Read the tutorial. It
tells you what to do with the search
results
· Get your search results.
You should be able to find relevant,
themed
hub sites and directories which
will list your site. Some charge a
fee,
some are
free.
Traffic tip
#12
Distribute USEFUL articles to
article directories.
Write articles and
submit them to article directories. Make sure
they're
USEFUL, interesting articles, not
fluff. Other websites will pick up
these
articles and use them on their
site.
If you've added a link to your site
in the "About the author" box at
the
bottom of the article, you can get
hundreds or thousands of links to
your
site. You also boost your
reputation.
When writing the article, you need
an eye-catching heading. You also
need
to give people a strong incentive
to visit your site.
Here are some ways to do
that:
· Give people a link where
they can get a free
report.
· Tell them where they can
subscribe to your
newsletter.
· Tell them to visit your
site for Part 2 of the
article.
· Tell them to visit your
site for a more comprehensive version of
the
article.
Distributing articles
to directories is tedious and time-consuming. You
can
either do it manually or you can
speed up the process - and receive a
very
helpful instruction manual - if you use
ArticleAnnouncer. It's expensive
but
good
value.
Another popular way of distributing articles is to use
the Article
Marketer
service to do all the hard work for you.
iSnare
is another good one.
One annoying thing about this
technique is that some unscrupulous
website
owners will publish your articles
without linking back to your site.
Traffic tip
#13
Write articles directly for other
sites.
Getting high quality
links to your site is hugely important. Ideally, you
want
links from "authority" sites
- sites which have a lot of links to THEM.
As well as reading
what search engine optimization experts say, study
what
they actually DO. One
common tactic they use is to write expert articles
and
get them published on related
websites. When they do this, the links
they
get to their site are beautifully
on target - those links come from a
page
which is all about search engine
optimization - which perfectly matches
the
theme of their
site.
To a search engine,
such links look much more important than a boring
link
which is just one of dozens on a
page in a little mini-directory tacked on to
a
mini-site.
Traffic tip
#14
Submit articles to newsletters
which are archived
online.
Submitting articles to newsletters
has been popular since the early days
of
marketing online. In the "Internet
marketing" niche, publishers tend to
be
swamped with offers to publish
articles. Other fields aren't so
ridiculously
competitive.
Traffic tip
#15
Submit brief hints to newsletters
and blogs.
A brief, useful hint published in
an archived newsletter can give you a link
to
your site for many years - perhaps
even a decade or more.
You can also submit tips to
blogs.
Traffic tip
#16
Include keywords in your online
profiles.
Whenever you create an online
profile anywhere online - on your blogs,
on
a forum or on sites - always use
carefully chosen key
phrases.
This increases the chance that
people will find you, either via
search
engines or via the site's search
facility.
Traffic tip
#17
Get one-way links and a few
reciprocal links.
Reciprocal links aren't as
important as they used to be. They should not
be
your major traffic-generating
strategy. They ARE still
very useful, especially
when you're getting a new site
established in the search
engines.
Traffic tip
#18
Publish articles on your site and
invite other sites to publish them
on
their sites, with a link to
you.
Some websites make it very easy for
other sites to reprint their articles.
At
the end of each article on their
site, they publish a note giving
people
permission to reprint the article
providing the source box at the end
is
published,
too.
(Caution: Although this technique
apparently works well for those who do
it,
We don't use this technique. Our
goal is to have almost all unique content
on
Our sites. We wonder if the technique may
not work quite so well some time
in
the future. We could be wrong, but We
speculate that as search engines become more and more clogged with
junk sites, search engines will get
much
tougher on duplicate content. Sites
which don't publish duplicate
content
will
benefit.)
