Driving traffic to your website is crucial for your business, to state the obvious. “But with so many traffic generation methods available, how do I get my head around where to start?” you ask. We’ll cover three ways to drive traffic to your website, in this post.

Of course, there’re numerous ways to drive traffic to your site, including offline methods. For instance, banners, flyers, direct response marketing, etc. Free/organic online traffic, nonetheless, is essentially getting visitors to your site without paying for advertising. Though it may not cost you money, however, you’ll invest time. Nevertheless,  if you’re strategic and consistent, your efforts will be rewarded.

But first, focus on one approach and apply your strategy. Set a timeline, i.e., 4 weeks and track it. If after that period you’re happy with the results, rinse and repeat then move on to the next traffic method, test and track, as before. Whichever practice you choose, see it to the end; you’ll learn if it’s working quickly, as opposed to dabbling in various areas; which will only lead to confusion and overwhelm.

Three Strategies To Get Free / Organic Traffic

Here’re three strategies you can implement to get free/organic traffic to your site:

• Article Submission Sites
• Search Engine Optimization
• Backlinking

Article submission involves submitting articles relative to a niche topic to high traffic submission sites. The goal is to promote your content to get quality backlinks. And the purpose of that is to improve keyword ranking and, of course, traffic, to your blog/website. When people search for specific keywords, those articles that include them will pop up, which leads readers to your website via information in your resource box.

Interestingly, many people think that article submission sites are defunct. But they’re actually alive and well. Most importantly, they’re still effective if used correctly. Here’s a site that goes into more detail on how you can take advantage of this strategy.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is getting your page to the top of Google or Yahoo’s search engine by targeting high search volume ‘keyword phrases.’

Backlinking is a great way to get more links to your website from outside authority websites. Think Forbes, HubSpot, for instance. Getting links from such sites means your site will rank high on Google.

Article Submission

Article marketing was one of the most widely used traffic generation methods in the past, and though it has waned somewhat, as noted above, it’s still widely used. The process involves submitting articles to article submission sites to drive traffic to your website.

Each site has its own set of submission guidelines. So, be sure to read and adhere to them to avoid your articles being rejected. As a rule of thumb, write unique articles that include keywords related to your topic.

The purpose for this inclusion is that your article will appear on the site’s directory, along with your author’s resource box, if approved and accepted. When people search for specific keywords and your article pops up, if they wish to find out more information, they can easily link back to your website. Ensure your article title is keyword optimized to be easily found and it’s catchy enough to stand out from the crowd.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. Wikipedia.

It’s also referred to as ‘natural’, ‘organic’, or ‘earned’ results.

SEO changes from time to time, but there are still many basic SEO techniques to get your website seen by Search Engines. One way is in-site optimization. This involves optimizing your website and blog posts so it’s easy for Google’s ‘Spiders’ to crawl your website and index it so it can be found. For example, include keyword phrases into the titles of your blog posts.

Also, it’s helpful, though not necessary, to add a sub headline and include keyword phrases and keywords in the first sentence of the first paragraph.

Find a good balance between SEO optimization and user readability. You don’t want to sound like a robot in all your blog posts and ensure your pages are mobile friendly.

Backlinking

Backlinking means the more links your website gets from outside authority websites, the higher your page will rank in Google.

It’s better to get quality backlinks (e.g., reputable websites similar to your niche) than many links from smaller websites – this is frowned upon, as it’s seen as ‘link farming’.  You can also link between blog posts on your website to boost SEO points, but this doesn’t contribute nearly as much as outside links.

Then there is social interaction, meaning, people are actively interacting on your website, whether it’s through sharing, tweeting or commenting on your blog posts. Search engines love this and your site will get a good boost in the page ranking.

————————–

Start by implementing one of the strategies above, and as noted, if you’re strategic and consistent, you’ll get traffic to your website, become an authority in your niche and get more customers/clients.

© Cherry-Ann Carew

Cherry-Ann Carew is an Online Business Coach, who supports emerging business owners simplify their start-up journey and helps existing businesses scale to the next level, so that they can earn uncapped income and live life on their terms.