Easy Ways to Generate Free Website Traffic to Your Blog
You will never generate enough sales to build a viable business if you don't get any traffic to your website, no matter how cool your company's website is or how fantastic your product is. If you want your business to succeed, you must publicize it and provide a compelling reason for people to visit it; otherwise, your company will fail. The good news is that there are numerous free online methods for effectively advertising your company's website and driving qualified traffic to it.
When it comes to the long-term traffic potential of different marketing strategies, content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) typically provide the best return on investment. They naturally lend themselves to compounding returns and have almost no risk if executed correctly. However, there is one drawback to these strategies: they typically take some time to set up and even longer to see a positive return on your investment. It can take months, if not years, to see positive results from your SEO strategy, and when you're launching a new business, you don't want to have to wait to generate traffic to your site.
Fortunately, there are a variety of other low-cost ways to generate traffic quickly. While each of these options has advantages and disadvantages, they have all been proven to increase traffic quickly, and the best part is that they will not cost you anything. With these five free traffic generation strategies, you'll drive more qualified traffic to your site, who are more likely to purchase the products or services you're offering.
1. Employ Viral Marketing Techniques
Using viral marketing strategies to entice people to learn more about your product is an excellent way to increase traffic to your website. Viral marketing messages have been spreading like wildfire across the Internet in recent years. If you're unfamiliar with viral marketing, it's any type of advertising that is self-sustaining and encourages people to share it with others, causing it to spread quickly throughout a community.
The story of Hotmail is an excellent example of Internet viral marketing. One of the very first free e-mail services to appear on the Internet was Hotmail. It managed to sign up a whopping 12 million users in its first year and a half of operation. They did it in a very straightforward manner. Hotmail included the following message at the bottom of every email sent through the service: "Get your free, private e-mail at hotmail.com," encouraging anyone who received an e-mail to visit the website to sign up for the free service.
Large corporations, such as Hotmail, use viral marketing messages to help keep their brands in the public eye. This is frequently accomplished by creating animated clips or humorous videos that people feel compelled to share with their friends for a good laugh. The large corporations are not the only ones who have seen benefits with viral marketing strategies. If you enjoy experimenting with animation or video, you can use this strategy to increase interest in your company. It's important to remember that tracking your ROI with viral marketing can be difficult because it's nearly impossible to track where the ad goes.
Furthermore, while viral marketing is great for raising awareness of your company and products, it does not always result in immediate sales.
2. Use Online Business Networking Sites
More and more business network communities have sprung up on the Internet in recent years. These online networks are similar to social media or dating sites, but they are solely used by entrepreneurs to connect with other like-minded businesspeople with whom they can form mutually beneficial business relationships. These types of websites can provide you with an excellent opportunity to form joint marketing ventures with other business owners who share your interests.
Business networking communities can assist you in increasing traffic to your website by allowing members to create personal profiles with links to their main company websites. Creating links on business networking sites can help your website rank higher on search engines like Google and Bing.
Another way to use business networking communities to drive more traffic to your site is to collaborate with businesses that are similar to yours and try to get mentioned on websites where your target audience is very likely to visit. Look for businesses that are similar to yours but are not direct competitors. Offering to swap links with other businesses is an excellent way to get your website mentioned on their website. Make sure to find high-traffic sites. Tell them that if they do the same for you, you'll put a link to their website on yours. Not only will this generate a lot of traffic, but having more links on your website will also help. You'll improve your ranking on Google and other search engines by linking to other websites.
If you decide to join a business networking community, make sure to partner with companies that are complementary and relevant to your own. The companies you choose to partner with should have audiences that are similar to your target audience demographics and are likely to visit your site and become customers as well.
3. Make Free Content Available
Giving other businesses free content can help you spread the word about your website quickly. This is one of the most effective methods for ensuring that your company's website is mentioned on other websites. Many Internet business owners would welcome the opportunity to obtain high-quality content for their websites or opt-in newsletters. Offering these other businesses regularly updated content from your site can greatly benefit your business. When you give away free articles, advice columns, or product reviews to other businesses, you're not only doing them a favor, but you're also increasing the exposure of your own website.
The goal is to have your content published on well-known websites or in newsletters with large mailing lists. This means that before you offer your content, you'll need to do some research to find out how much traffic it receives or how many subscribers they have to their opt-in newsletter. You'll also need to figure out which business sites are popular in your industry, as these are where you'll want your articles to appear.
It is critical to remember that in order for this strategy to be effective, you must include your contact information as well as a link to your website at the end of each article published on another website. This allows those who read your article to easily visit your website to learn more about what you're selling. As a result, it is critical that every site that publishes your content include a link to your website as well as your contact information.
4. Participate in discussion forums and newsgroups.
You can increase traffic to your website by becoming a well-known figure in your industry. Participating in discussion forums, newsgroups, and even blogging networks can help you become a thought leader quickly. Participating in these channels is an excellent way to establish your online identity and begin to establish relationships with your potential target audience. Discussion boards, newsgroups, and blogging networks are all excellent tools for directly communicating with your target market and determining what they require and desire.
If you sell ski goggles, for example, spend some time on ski-related forums. This is where your target audience will most likely be. Alternatively, you could start your own blog and describe your most recent skiing adventure, including eye-catching images. You could even combine the two strategies to increase interest by mentioning your blog in the forums and newsgroups where you participate.
You should keep in mind, however, that these types of groups do not allow people to openly advertise their businesses. If you are caught spamming the group with obvious advertising for your company, you will not only be kicked off the site, but you will also earn the reputation of a spammer, which will in turn off your target audience visiting your site. If you want to use this strategy to drive traffic to your website, you must ensure that you are providing friendly, helpful advice to people who are in need of assistance. You can include a link to your website at the end of your comment when you do this. People who like what you have to say may decide to visit your website to see what else you have to offer.
5. Make Use of Affiliates to Increase Traffic to Your Website
Starting an affiliate program is without a doubt one of the best ways to increase exposure and traffic to your site. Affiliate marketing is when you pay people to promote your products on their websites and blogs in exchange for a commission. You can get qualified traffic to your website by paying affiliates a commission using a variety of techniques, some of which have already been discussed in this article. The best part about hiring an army of affiliates is that they handle the majority of your marketing.
Most businesses that rely on affiliates to market their products or services don't have to spend a lot of time optimizing their site to rank high in search engines; instead, they mostly hire affiliate marketers who do the work for them. Most affiliates already go to great lengths to ensure that their own sites are highly optimized in order to rank high on Google and other search engines, they will also help to boost your search engine ranking because they will be directly linking to your site.
The best part about establishing an affiliate marketing program for your company is that you don't have to pay them unless they make a sale for you. This makes this tactic a win-win situation for everyone because the more sales your affiliate helps you close, the more money they'll make in return, motivating them to work harder to promote your company.
Conclusion
There are numerous paid and free strategies for driving more qualified traffic to your website. While SEO and content marketing are the most effective ways to drive more qualified traffic to your website, they can take a long time to generate a positive return on investment. If you want to increase the exposure of your website without spending any money, you can do so by employing one of these five free strategies. Combining several of the above tactics to increase exposure and traffic to your site will yield even greater returns on your investment.
When it comes to your online marketing strategy, keep three words in mind: location, location, location. To increase traffic, your website should be mentioned frequently in places where your target audience congregates. This is the only way to ensure that your website is seen by as many prospective customers as possible. There is always room for improvement in terms of content marketing and driving traffic to your website. Put these five free traffic generation strategies to work for you, then sit back, relax, and enjoy all of the free, qualified traffic that comes to your website.