Top 5 Ways To Generate Free Website Traffic
If there is one thing you need to make your website a success, it is a steady flow of website traffic. If no one visits your site, it doesn't stand any chance at all of generating any profit whatsoever. So, how can you generate website traffic without going broke in the process?There are many ways to generate free website traffic. Here are some of the more popular.
Traffic Exchanges
With this method, instead of exchanging links, you exchange website views. You view sites in the traffic exchange network, and in return others in the network view yours. This is free traffic, but you can also purchase view credits.
Traffic exchange traffic is not always the highest quality of traffic for sites of general interest. But they can be amazingly effective when specifically targeting what most, if not all, traffic exchange surfers are looking for ... Traffic!
Exchange Links With Other Websites
Although this method is less effective at getting ranked higher in search engine results than it used to be, it still works quite well with flesh and blood visitors. How often have you seen a site with absolutely no links to other sites? Almost never? Many site owners are willing to exchange links with other site owners to leverage their existing traffic.
You'll want to make sure that the site you exchange links with is relevant to your site's topic – without being a direct competitor. Doing this adds value for the visitors of your and the other sites.
And on a related note, don't fear including outbound links to authoritative sites like Wikipedia or Amazon on your site. Done appropriately and in context, this adds value for your visitors and may be seen by the aritficially intelligent search engine robots that way as well.
Write and Submit Articles
There are many e-zine publishers and article directories online that are looking for quality content. Writing articles is a way to provide that content and get a one-way inbound link back to your site from topically related another site.
You can create the articles yourself to save costs. Conversely, there are many freelancers more than willing to write for you on a per article basis. Do be sure to specify that the writer provide original content, and that the rights to the finished article belong solely to you.
Be sure to include a resource box at the end of your article that links to your site. The resource box is also known as an Author Bio box or an “About the author” box. Write the content of your resource box as if you are someone other than yourself (ie. third-person), include information lending to your expertise and credibility. And invite the reader to visit your site for more information.
Build a List of Ezine Subscribers
A list of readers that regularly read your mail can be one of your most reliable sources of free website traffic. This traffic is also of a much higher quality than other sources because your readers know and trust you.
Again, you can write your newsletter articles yourself, or hire someone else to do it for you. You can also publish articles from others that include their own resource box. This can be a win/win situation for both of you as your readers would be getting valuable content and your 'guest' writer gets a back-link.
Contribute to Online Communities and Forums
This is a rather easy method to execute that requires only your time. To use this method, you simply share your knowledge and expertise with the other members of the forum that is related to the topic or theme of your website.
Read others' posts, find ones which you can reply to with some worthwhile knowledge or information. Avoid posting a link to your website in your post as this is generally frowned upon. So what's the trick?
Most forums allow you to include what's called a 'signature' in your posts. And, they allow you to have a link to one or more websites in your signature. Therefore, if you provide a good, informational post, it will have content-value that will live for a long time along with your signature ... and your link!
Contributing valuable, on-topic information also builds your credibility and the credibility and value of your website.