Now there are various ways to get traffic to your site, the problem is how much (or little) you want to pay for that traffic. Its obvious that popular websites or search terms are expensive. Its supply and demand and with billions of websites (yes billions) the supply of sites is amazing. Which makes is competitive in some areas and in others not that much, but you probably won’t get many visitors either.
For instance, searching for hypopotomusacurlulus (don’t try to google, just use it for hangman) will be very cheap to get traffic. But going for dating or shopping will be very expensive as so many (really soooo many) people will be bidding for that same keyword. So more keywords for your websites means more traffic means spending more $$. If you want to make money with your website then its even more important to get more traffic as that will be your income.
I’ve been trying to use twitter more often to get traffic and that seems to be working a bit but unfortunately its a very short fix to get traffic. I am trying to get more traffic via forums and social networks and that seems to be working better and a bit more solid, steady stream of traffic.
Forums
One of the most undervalued tools of the internet is (in my humble opinion) the RSS feed. This little tool saves me SO MUCH time to get information on a regular basis its not even funny. The RSS feeds allows you to get the information posted on your favorite website (i.e. Twilight) direct to your email or google reader. This means that you don’t have to go to that same site and check if you missed something new. You might say, I don’t mind going to that website I like it! But what if there were 5 or 10 sites you were looking at every single day? This would take up a lot of your time and it shouldn’t. The RSS feed will tell your Google Reader (you don’t need a gmail account to use it) that there is new content on one of your favorite websites and it will display the whole article so you can read it right then and there via Google Reader. There are other readers available but this is an example of the one I use.
Every time you see a new article and you want to chat about it or give your opinion you probably have to register or leave your name, email and website. This is where the traffic will come from. If you are a regular on the site a lot of people will see and read your post and your website. One of my highest referrers to my site is via a Forum I follow and comment on. I’m subscribed to nearly 50 sites and skim/read about 250 articles a day, some I comment on and some I just read. But I’ve already build a steady traffic stream from each comment I make. It is important however to comment when its relevant, but that seems obvious.
I’ve attached a print screen of the traffic sources I get via forums. The traffic is not a lot but that is perfect for this case study on how to generate traffic for FREE!
Just like with Forums, you can engage in conversations with Twitter. Although this might take some time and will be short bursts at a time, Twitter is a very powerful tool. As you don’t only comment on other people or share your latest blogpost, you do build relationships. If you want to know more about how you can use twitter, visit my other post on how to create a twitter action plan.
Facebook is another site which can give you some great exposure. There are various reason and ways to sign up and interact on Facebook. But if you have a website and you want to get more traffic via Facebook than “share” or “like” via Facebook are the ways to go. These buttons will share your website and a short synopis of the blogpost via facebook for all your friends to see and read but most of all to share with their friends or comment on your post.
More on this can be written, but from a traffic point of view this is a great reason to incorporate Facebook into your website. More on Facebook later in a different post where I will explain and experiment more with Facebook.
Backlinks
There is also the cheap(er) way to get more traffic to your site. As mentioned I’ve been trying to get more traffic on to one of my sites without spending money and its actually quite hard.
It takes a lot of time to get backlinks (links from other sites to your site) to the site, also without paying for it, as you really want to get good sites to link to yours. I’ve been searching for sites who offer free backlinks to my site and its going alright but it probably can be a bit better (Ok it can do a lot better). So the above methods are great to create backlinks but it does require a lot of time. 1. you need to create new content on a regular basis and 2. you need to keep sharing, commenting and interacting.
Signature / Personal website
Now a bit of a timesaving way of getting traffic. On your email (personal one, don’t think work would appreciate it) you send out to friends, contacts and different website webmasters and businesses etc, include your website the signature. For instance, my signature contains a few of my sites which I find relevant to include in my signature.
Kind Regards,Ralph KooiTwitter: @ralphkooiBlog: www.hothitmedia.com“Providing the tools to increase your social media status”Website: www.ralphkooi.com“A short overview of the different aspects of my life”Website: www.internetdatingoverzicht.nl“Makkelijk en overzichtelijk dating overzicht”
That way when ever I send an email, I always get a few clicks and let people know what I am doing and what I am into. This seems to be working quite well as most of the time via a friend I get new ideas or I get contacted for some feedback or consultation.
This post is about how to engage your audience without spending money on traffic. I’m already trying to buy some traffic tools (not via Adwords) and that is going alright. This is by using some of the options and programs available and I will write a long post about that later on what seems to be working for me and why I choose that particular tool.
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Great information. Thank you for sharing.
Kathleen Nathan
Kathleennathanstudio.com. Wesite
indeed, well specified methods which does not cost anything. a way to get backlinks from high PR sites is to write nice articles about daily updated info/releases and to highlight the post with efficient keywords. it happened to me a few times to be taken over by various well rated webpages
Exactly, finding websites that are in your area and make a contribution (not just writing) would get you some good quality traffic and backlinks.