Get Free Traffic

Archive for November, 2009

How many emails do you send each day? If you’re like the average person who uses a computer on a daily basis, you may send or receive up to 100 messages a day. That’s a lot of opportunities to share your website! If you haven’t added a direct link to your site in your email signature, you are missing out on a lot of free publicity.

You may think that the people you communicate with wouldn’t be interested in your site. Some people don’t include a link because they think it is the equivalent of spamming someone. This may at one time have been seen as so, but it is common now for business emails to have signatures with not only website addresses, but with addresses for social networking profiles and more!

Take advantage of the emails you send every day by taking the time to set up an email signature. It’s easy. With most email programs, you can input your information in the “settings” and you’re ready to go. Not all email platforms will allow HTML sigs, so in this case you may need a free signature program such as WiseStamp. These programs will automatically insert your email sigs each time you open your mail to compose a new message.

A great way to get your site noticed by people who are specifically looking for information relevant to your site is by listing the URL in a niche directory. A niche is a specific area of interest or demand. If you are selling a tangible product, different niches can include books, movies, cleaning supplies, food, and much more.

Your site’s area of interest may be very specific or extremely broad, but either way you are sure to find a niche directory where you can be listed. A simple search of your product type may bring up locations where you can list your website. More than likely however, you’ll just bring up competitor’s websites. Try a search using your product and “listing directory”.

The main advantage to using niche directories to add a listing is that you are already reaching your target market. Advertise your barbeque business in the “Memphis Area BBQ You Can’t Miss” directory, and you know your URL is going to be seen by people ready and wanting to try your barbeque.

It takes little time and no expense to list your website in directories, so there’s no reason not to take this simple step to free marketing. It’s like listing your business in the yellow pages–for free.

If you’re looking for a free and relatively easy way to draw free traffic to your website, offering goodies to your readers is always a good choice. Visitors love getting freebies–whether they’re a newsletter, a free report, a mini-series, or something of the like. Offering a free report is a common way to gain subscribers and get readers and one-time visitors to return to your site.

You can outsource the writing of the free report if you are better at running your site than writing. Many freelance writers can put together a quality report for you in as little as a few days, depending on the length, at a fairly inexpensive price. Once you have the report to offer, there are a couple ways you can distribute it in exchange for an increase in website traffic.

Perhaps the most popular way to use free reports is to offer it to your readers if they sign up or subscribe to a mailing list, through which you then try to sell your product or service. These mailing lists are managed through service such as AWeber. You solicit signups through the offer of this report, and you instantly add to your list of potential customers. Though readers may eventually opt out of the mailings, many find it too cumbersome, and you’ll most likely enjoy the benefit of a large mailing list for quite some time.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to draw traffic to your website is through the regular use of commenting on blogs. There are many good reasons to participate in the discussions on other blogs, and no apparent drawbacks except perhaps a small initial investment of time.

Taking advantage of other blog owner’s readership is simple. If you have a website about gourmet food, for example, you will want to find a handful of blogs that have to do with cooking, food preparation, or recipes. Those would be the most obvious topics, but you can think outside the box as well. A blog that focuses on family life or the life of a mom may have the type of readers who would love to find out more about gourmet foods.

Try subscribing to a few of these blogs, hopefully finding ones that already have a stream of steady blog comments. This way you know there are enough readers to make it worth your while, as it does take some time to leave a comment in response to a blog post.

Most importantly, do make your comments meaningful. Becoming a trusted blog visitor is important, and eventually the other visitors will be interested in what you do–and click through your signature to your site.

Profiles–they’re everywhere! From social networking sites, to niche groups, to professional networks… at any time the average person has ten or so online profiles at various websites. Think of the potential these profiles have to bring in free traffic to your website. With each link to your site you increase its visibility, but you also add to the power of the web working for you while you’re offline.

Whether you’re actively participating in these sites or not, your profile will almost always remain active and visible to anyone who stumbles across it. Advertising your website URL on any profile you set up makes sense. Of course, you may have a niche site that you don’t want associated with certain profiles. In that case, you may only want to share your URL when the network you are on is more generalized, or geared toward a larger audience.

If you use Gmail, you can now create a profile that Google creates as a webpage. When someone does a search for you or a site you are associated with, the profile will show up at the top of your search. This is a great way to advertise your site, as Google allows you to add unlimited links and references on this profile. Take advantage of this marketing tool to get traffic to your website.