Every site begins with one click, one visitor, one subscriber. While everybody needs to start with one visitor, that single person hardly indicates online success. In today’s Internet world, you do not need to settle for low traffic volume. There are many ways to generate traffic for free.
Facebook is proving to be a marketer’s best friend. Succeeding on Facebook requires more than posting links. That will lead to very little traffic. Facebook is most effective as a means of developing relationships, making connections, and establishing trust. Facebook users who gain valuable information from your updates may click through your links to your site or sign up for your newsletter. This traffic is already pre-sold on your ideas and are likely to share their great finds with their own Facebook friends. They will likely become frequent visitors or site subscribers, which is exactly what you are looking for.
Twitter is another great social media tool to generate free traffic. The Twitter craze continues to expand. Twitter offers a platform for fans to mingle with their idols. You also have the ability to let people know about product promotions, giveaways, and more. There are millions of users who are all potential customers. Though the constant depositing of tweets into cyber-space may seem chaotic and pointless, there is a method to the madness. You post your thought or tweet, which is visible to all your followers. If you reference another person by name, and they respond back to you, your name is visible to that person’s follower. Twitter is a nice way of getting yourself and your company’s current campaign noticed.
Social bookmarking sites are another means of obtaining free traffic. Sites like Digg are less popular than the two kings of the social media world, but they can still serve you well. When you enroll at a social bookmarking site, you can often set up a mini profile of yourself. You then add links to the site based on interesting things you find on the web. You’d be foolish not to add your own sites to the mix. Others can find your links through the site. The manner varies based on the site.
Using articles to attract visitors to your site is also effective if you are a highly skilled writer who is an expert in your field or adept at researching. Articles which you publish will link back to your site and potentially increase your search engine ranking. If you publish prolifically and your information is excellent, you will gain a reputation as an authority within your niche. People may also follow your link directly to your site if the article you wrote was written well and contained quality information. A side benefit is that some of these sites pay for articles.
Forums and discussion boards target highly relevant traffic. Most forums are very anti-spam, and therefore require membership applications, acceptance, and a probationary period. After you prove to be legitimate and reliable, your moderation status is often removed and you are free to link to your own site.
Commenting on related blogs is another way to get your name on somebody else’s site within your niche. You can include a link with your name to encourage a payback visit. Blogs have become a sought-after source of information from the common person, and are highly read. Posting comments that are thought through and beneficial to readers will attract them to your site.
You need free traffic and you need it now. There is no time like the present to get your free traffic strategy running. You have nothing to lose but your time.