Ok so the first way to get traffic is not particularly unique. But the fact is that you will get lots of traffic by writing articles. The traffic won't come immediately but it will come. Articles will also bring link popularity. I wouldn't be doing my job if I wrote about free traffic and neglected to mention articles.
If you write one article a week for the next year at the end of that year you will have an unstoppable flow of traffic and where there is traffic money follows.
So traffic source
#1 - Write articles
#2 - Post ads on other peoples sites. Now you're probably thinking 'tell me something I don't know' but think about this for a moment. If there is a site that has a lot of traffic, gets spidered frequently and has excellent page rank. Do you think pages on that site get good search engine rankings. You betcha!
Here in the UK there is a site called UK Free Ads. It has an Alexa rank of about 20,000 and, you guessed it, you can place ads on it for free. All you have to do is find your equivalent of UK Free Ads then find a keyword phrase without too much competition and write an ad optimised for the keyword phrase. I'm not guaranteeing a top ten listing but a percentage of the ads you write will place well in Google and other search engines. You might even get a number one position.
The best of these sites allow your url to be included in the listing. But better than that some of them allow you to upgrade your listing and have that listing redirect to the url you supply. Top Tip: Wait until the page has been spidered and ranks well then upgrade and have the listing redirect to your web page.
#3 - Get your site mentioned in mailings from complimentary sites in return for you mentioning theirs. You're going to need a list for this. But assuming you have one why not contact other site owners with a list and ask them to mention your site in their next mailing. In return you mention their site in your next mail. This doesn't have to be a heavy sell, just a mention of a friends site.
At worst this strategy will put your site url in front of a lot of people who may not have heard of you. At best you will get a lot of free visitors. This strategy should work out just fine if you partner with a site that isn't in direct competition with you.
#4 - Instead of just trading links why not trade home page links or ads. Next time you visit a site and they have a space for an ad and are inviting you to buy that space, why not contact them and offer to exchange the ad space for a similar position on your site. Or why not barter an ad for a mention to your mailing list. A lot of smaller sites have trouble selling their ad space, but these same sites still have respectable traffic flows.
#5 - The last free traffic tip is probably the hardest to pull off but also the most regarding. The strategy is to offer something of real value for free. If you use Adwords you no doubt know about Mikes Marketing Tools where you will find a 'keyword wrapper'. Or if you are into natural search engine traffic then you probably visit Market Leap to find out how many pages you have ranked. People need these tools and everybody recommends these sites. They offer a valuable resource for free. Once you do that, word spreads quickly . Mikes Tools has an Alexa rank of 5Article Submission,000. Market Leap has a rank of 900. Yes it's in the top 900 websites online. Do you think you could make some money with that sort of traffic?
To pull this off you need a tool that is useful to your target audience. Maybe some sort of calculator or a data manipulator or converter. Although a software tool is an excellent choice it doesn't have to be software. Think what tool do I use that I could make available to others.
If your goal is to build free traffic to your sites then you need to be thinking about this all the time. As you surf keep this need in the back of your mind. Every site you visit think 'how could I get free traffic from this site' or 'what is this site doing to get traffic that I could copy'.
If you want to learn more about free traffic sources & other free resources then visit www.ireviewguru.com/freeresources.html
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Darren Power is your host at www.IReviewGuru.com where you will find the latest marketing product news & reviews
