Get Free Traffic

Only a few short years ago, directories had a lot of online clout.  Everyone was obsessed with finding a way to get their site into DMOZ.  People were handing money over to Yahoo in large bundles to get into their directory.  And thousands of little site directories popped up all over the web, offering the promise of an SEO-friendly backlink in exchange for a site submission.

Times have changed.  It would be premature to call the directories dead, but they’re headed in that direction.  The search engines once relied upon them.  Today, those same engines are downgrading the value of site directory links.  You’re better off making a comment on a “do follow” blog than you are submitting to another directory.

There is one exception.  Some of the niche-specific directories still have real value.  That’s not because Google still loves them, though.  It’s because real people end up bumping into them while doing research.  That’s right, the only directories that still really matter are those that are performing the traditional role of a directory!

If you can find relevant niche directories, submit your sites.  Don’t worry about the others.  Sure, you might as well submit to DMOZ, but don’t worry about your status as they wait for years to look at your link.  And keep your wallet away from Yahoo while you’re at it.

Directories.  My, how times have changed!

Craigslist has gone through the usual American media target cycle.  It finally appeared on the national media’s radar.  It became the darling of the press, the belle of the reporters’ ball.  Then, it quickly slid into disfavor.  Now it’s reviled.

Based on what you hear on TV and in the papers, Craigslist is nothing more than a shadowy netherworld where sketchy people meet to trade stolen goods for drugs or guns.  It’s the kind of place where women and men alike can find creepy dates with perverted soulless monsters.

They don’t mention the fact that it’s a good way to drive some free traffic to your site.  Your ad on Craigslist is free.  And if you write a good one, putting it in the right place, you can get some attention.  It’s a nice way to grab a few extra visitors for very little work.  It’s also a repeatable process.  You can do it again and again.

If you can get past the scary media tall tales and look at Craigslist with something approximating a rational perspective, you’ll see that it really does have a lot to offer–including free traffic.

If you want to snag free traffic for you site, you have a variety of options at your disposal.  You can do the Twitter thing.  You can get involved in the social bookmarking and networking scenes.  You can find busy forums filled with people talking about your niche.  You can find relevant blogs and comment on them.

All of these options have something in common.  If you’re going to make them work for you, it’s essential to understand the cultures involved. We’re not talking about the national or ethnic heritages of participants in these groups, we’re talking about the way the groups themselves operate.

They’re all little semi-insular communities.  They have their own mores and conventions.  They have unwritten rules.  There are expectations.

If you hop right on in trying like mad to sell, sell, sell, you’re probably going to find yourself an outsider, on the wrong side of the cultural divide.  Do your homework.  Learn the law of the land.  Find a way to exist within those communities and then (and only then) can you hope to generate free traffic via your participation.

You likely read a dozen articles and blogs a day right? If you’re like a lot of people, you have a lot to say about what you read. Beyond sitting and shaking your head and either nodding in agreement or silently thinking “no that’s not right,” you could be adding value to what you read and bringing direct traffic back to your site by commenting on the blogs you read every day.

Blog commenting gives you opportunities to not only share your opinion on what you read but it also introduces other readers and the blog owner to you and your own website. The best part of this introduction is that whether people agree with your comments or not, you’ve given them the key they need to visit your site and bring you new and unique traffic.

By visiting multiple blogs and leaving comments, you share valuable information and thoughts with a whole community of people. You may find them coming to your site simply to say thank you for the comments while other people may let you know that they found your site through a comment you left on another blog. Every person who reads your comment is potential free traffic to your website.

One thing that is known about the blog community is that bloggers are always willing to help a fellow blogger. Whether you’re trying to get your name known to the blog community or you are looking to increase the amount of free traffic you receive.

Often, a blogger may need to take a break from blogging but doesn’t want to lose traffic to their site while they are on hiatus. They may ask other bloggers to fill in for them as guest bloggers. Guest bloggers write related content to be posted on the other blogger’s home site. If you’re ever asked to be a guest blogger take advantage of the opportunity to find new readers and get new traffic.

Your posts will be read by the other blogger’s visitors and readers. Every day that you post as a guest blogger, you can blog about topics that have appeared on your own page and use those topics as click throughs to your own blog or you can simply add your URL to your bio in every post. Guest posting is a great way to introduce yourself to a new community and interact with readers and possibly gain new ones.

Every now and then a blogger discovers that the best way to promote something would be to show their audience rather than tell about it. Video can be a very powerful medium, and not just because it’s gaining in popularity. Youtube, Vimeo,Viddler  and Blip.tv are just three of the many free video submission sites available on the Internet.

By creating an account at any free video submission sites, you can video blog about a product you’re trying out, share content that you would have otherwise blogged, or create a tutorial and instructional video blog on how to do something. Posting the video on your site as well on the submission site introduces you to a new network of readers and viewers. Keyword tagging helps viewers find your video page faster.

In order to get free website traffic back to your blog from the videos you create, add your url to the videos as well as your public profile on the video site. Many video bloggers include a line that reads “for more information…” and input their URL. Adding numerous video and building a channel are an excellent way to gain new readers and viewers on to your site.

Similar to a magazine or ezine, a blog carnival puts together a series of posts on a themed topic. The posts are usually based on a specific topic, which changes regularly and published on a weekly or monthly basis.

You can participate in blog carnivals by searching for sites that host blog carnivals or by hosting your own. Links are collected and then posted for blog readers to click through like a magazine. For readers, a blog carnival is a great way to find information and posts on a topic of interest. For bloggers, it’s a great way to get free traffic back to their site.

Whether you’re creating your own carnival or participating in someone else’s, a blog carnival is free. You must write a post that pertains to the theme (for instance, pet care) and then submit your link to the blog carnival host, by the deadline. You can choose to participate in as many carnivals as you like, each one will bring unique traffic to your blog.

Though blog carnivals can be published weekly or monthly, the link backs to your content can continue long after it’s over as others discover your content.

Many companies or website owners often find that outside of their website there is a lot of valuable information they could be offering people.

Unfortunately, reaching a mass audience can be rather tricky if you don’t know how to go about it. Writing articles and submitting them to various article sites and portals can be the answer you’ve been looking for.

Once you’ve written an article (or hired a professional writer to do it for you), submit the article to various free article sites. Your articles should be relevant to your website and keyword rich in order for it to rank well in search results. One of the benefits of article submitting is that after the article has been submitted, there is little else to do. There is no additional maintenance needed.

Make sure that your articles contain links back to your main website. This way, readers and people looking for more information can click through to your site. Your site can gain a great deal of exposure by submitting your articles to multiple sites. This will result in authentic traffic from those who read your articles and click through to your main site for more information.

Twitter has been hailed as one of the easiest and most versatile way to connect with people in an easy to use platform. Ask anyone on Twitter and they will tell you that’s not only true but the potential to use twitter to gain traffic is enormous.

What most non twitter users don’t realize is that Twitter isn’t being used to talk about your lunch plans or the guy who cut you off in traffic. Rather, twitter is a means for getting your voice heard and your website known. Influencers all over Twitter share their posts, and the posts of other people with their followers.

A look at any blogger’s traffic will tell you that their traffic has increased by using Twitter. When someone clicks on the twitter link you post, they are taken directly to your page. From there they are free to search and retweet anything on your site that they may like.

While people are still just discovering the power of Twitter, one thing is known for certain; this is just the first step to taking social networking to the next level. By interacting with a network of people (your followers) you can share a variety of news and information with them in an open forum.

Most content on the Internet today is user driven, meaning anyone can create content and post it online. The thing is that not everyone knows how to use SEO (search engine optimization) to get their content seen by search engines. If you’re one of those people who are creating content but not sure how to get it seen, consider setting up a Hubpage (hubpages.com) and let them do the optimization for you.

Hubpages allows users to create and set up their own hub for free and submit content that they retain the rights to. You can have your own website and repurpose the content or create new content on Hubpages with backlinks to your main website. Hubpages has been considered an authority by Google so the content you create may get to the search engine results faster than if you had written and posted on your own site.

Since Hubpages allows you to link back to your main site and create a user profile for free, readers can find your content and click through your main site, which is where you want the traffic from the Hubpages you create to go to. However, Hubpages can also be utilized as your main site as well which still results in free traffic.