Search engines, (Google, Yahoo & Bing) use web site content as an important factor in determining search engine rankings. Adding fresh and related content to your website that includes the page keyword, is an important search engine optimization (SEO) task which will help your page rankings. The Internet is full of free article services that allow instant access to thousands of relevant articles for your website. A great place to search for articles for your site is ezinearticles.com. You can select which articles are added according to category, keywords and subject matter. Take a few minutes once a week or at least monthly to add some fresh content to your site. Search engines and visitors alike will reward you for your effort.

TIP:  Use the search term “article directories” to find many sites from where you can get free content. Keep in mind one of the requirements for using free articles on your site is that you have to include the author’s resource box. This is no big deal though. The gain you get by providing fresh content far out weighs any impact the author’s resource box may bring.

There are basically two ways to get website traffic. You can buy it, or you can get it for free. I’ve tried both methods over the years, and although the easiest way to drive traffic to your site is to use Pay Per Click marketing, I don’t recommend it. That’s because if you’re not careful you can spend a fortune buying website traffic and end up with a bad website ROI. I mean why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? However if you prefer the easy way and you have spare money check out…

15 free traffic generation techniques that work:

1. Submit your site to the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) and to as many other search engines as you can. Before you do this however ensure your site has been properly SEO’d with relevant keywords/phrases.

2. Write 1-2 articles each week for 8 weeks and submit them to the free article directories. Be sure to include a link to your site after each article in the bio box with a link containing the main keyword used for your site. Each article should be optimized with the keywords your site is using.

3. Submit those same articles to email newsletter publishers in your niche. Even if you only get one or two of your articles printed a tremendous amount of traffic can be generated.

4. Find blogs related to your topic and leave useful comments with a backlink to your site.

5. Answer questions related to your site’s topic at answers.yahoo.com. Be sure to put a link to your site in each of your answers.

6. Join a handful of the most popular forums that deal with your site’s topic and become an active poster. Include a link to your site in your signature.

7. Write a press release about your site and submit it to press release sites such as prweb.com. If you are not familiar with press releases, take some time to do a little research: a press release is not written like an article.

8. If you are happy with a product or service you have used, write an unbiased testimonial and trade it for a backlink to your site.

9. Start a blog using WordPress, provide links to your site from each post. Submit the blog to the hundreds of free blog directories. This will get you plenty of quality traffic as long as you keep the blog updated.

10. Post ads with a link to your site on all the free classified ad sites you can find (such as craigslist.org). The best ones will allow you to post a live link. But don’t neglect the other ones. If your ad is well written, people will go out of their way and type your url in their browser. Off course you must post in the appropriate category.

11. Write an interesting email signature that includes a link to your site, and use it with every outgoing business email you send.

12. Start a page on facebook.com and on any other popular social media site you can find, always provide a link so visitors can go to your site. Building a fan base on Twitter is another good way to promote your business and gain traffic. Be sure to offer useful information to your followers and avoid blatant sales. Remember these are for socializing not selling.

13. Submit a video with useful information to YouTube.com, Squidoo.com, etc. You don’t really need any video producing know-how as a simple PowerPoint slideshow with some background music will do the job. Even short videos (3 minutes or less are best) captured with your cell phone camera can be submitted.

14. Search your main keywords on Google and see if you can exchange reciprocal links with related websites that come up in the top results.

15. Write an ebook or a short report (say 10 to 20 pages), or find a product with giveaway rights that you can brand with a link to your site. Then submit it to all the free ebook directories you can find online.

While all this sounds like a full time job, remember, you don’t have to do this all at once. Just pick the traffic item you feel best with and take action. Invest an hour or two daily working that traffic item. Once finished with a traffic item move on to your next favorite technique. If you work diligently at this, over time you will increase the free traffic flow to your site that will dramatically boost your bottom line.

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Google Images has indexed billions of images. If your image can be found for the right keyword, then you will get targeted visitors to your website.Why images can help you to get more visitorsDepending on the search query, Google displays several images above the regular search results. For example, try this search for German Shepherd Dog:The images can be found at the top of the search results and they are linked with web pages. If someone clicks on the image, the person will be taken to the web page that shows the image.How to optimize your images so that they can be found If you have a website about German Shepherd dogs, then wouldn’t it be great if an image from your website was listed above the regular results? You’d get many additional website visitors then. There are several things that you can do to improve the position of your images in Google Image Search: Use a file name that contains the keywords for which you want to be found. In this example, the file name german-shepherd-dog.jpg would be a good idea. Separate the words with a hyphen. Use a descriptive Image Alt attribute text. It usually makes sense to use the same keywords that have been used for the file name. In this example, the Image Alt Attribute would be “German Shepherd Dog”:<img src=”german-shepherd-dog.jpg” alt=”German Shepherd Dog”> In the same way, you should use the Image Title attribute:<img src=”german-shepherd-dog.jpg” alt=”German Shepherd Dog” title=”German Shepherd Dog”> The textual content on the web page before and after the image also impacts the position of your image in Google’s Image Search. In this example, the text “German Shepherd Dog” should appear close to the image. Bigger images seem to get featured more often on Google’s first result page. The bigger your image, the easier it is to get at the top of Google’s regular result page. Include the Width and Height attributes in your image tag to show search engines the size of the image:<img src=”german-shepherd-dog.jpg” alt=”German Shepherd Dog” title=”German Shepherd Dog” width=”600″ height=”400″> Optimize the rest of your web page for the chosen search term. If the complete web page has been optimized for a keyword then it is easier to get good listings for images that are on the page. Make sure the image you optimize with a keyword is attractive and of good quality. If no-one clicks on the image then you won’t get the traffic boost you’re aiming for. Reprint rights provided by Axandra.com – Visit Axandra.com - Copyright Axandra.com – SEO software

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I have done SEO work on scores of websites. All those websites achieved the goal of better SERP (in most cases 1st and 2nd page placement). However the most common complaint I hear is there is still not enough traffic to the site. After taking the time and effort of doing all the proper things to achieve SEO it turns out that traffic to a site can still be disappointing. While front page exposure on search engines is the main goal of SEO, this by itself, in some cases, does not guarantee enough traffic to achieve success.

In the first ten years or so of the Internet the best way of getting traffic to a website was by doing On-Page & Off-Page (minus Social Media Marketing) SEO. However it is starting to look like 1st page on Google doesn’t cut the mustard like it use to. So what’s the deal? I still know that being on the 1st page of search engines is a huge benefit but why isn’t it bringing  the tons of traffic we all envision?

Hears my speculative guess. “Social Media“

There is so much social media activity going on these days that people no longer have to depend on search engines to find what they are looking for. By being involved in Twitter, FaceBook, Squidoo, LinkedIn, etc. one has access to thousands of links and other forms of information that lead to what they might be looking for. Instead of using a search engine, people find their way to products, services, and information VIA the social network.

What do you think?  Is there still value in SEO for the search engines. Will social media take over so completely that search engines become fossils of the Internet? Is Social Media networking more valuable to a website then search engine results placement? Should we coin a new term (SMO) – Social Media Optimization?

Jump on board lets hear what you have to say.

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I recently encountered a website that has peeked my interest in it’s chosen marketing strategy. You see this site spent zero time, zip, nada, on On-Page SEO. If you look at the page source you’ll find that the title tag contains the site Domain Name. No other meta tag related to SEO is used. If you look at the site content for a possible keyword or phrase you’ll find nothing that makes sense to the relevancy of the sites service or subject. There are no H1 tags or alt tags that use anything other than the Domain Name. The ironic thing is that the home page has a PR of 3 while other pages have a rank of 2 and the site is only 6 week old.    

Being an Internet Marketer I found this unusual. I mean to have a PR of 3 in six weeks without any regard for On-Page SEO is just crazy. So how did they do it? As it turns out the subject or niche of the site is article marketing. That got me thinking that maybe they wrote articles to promote the site. Sure enough, a Google search for the domain name pulled up scores of links to articles. Also a Google link:(Domain Name Here) query verified that at least Google is aware of the site.  

I found this of such interest that someone could ignore On-Page SEO but yet have the where-with-all to write articles that I just had to track down and call the site owners.  It turns out that the site owners are quite new (6 weeks) to the world of internet web design. They are still learning about SEO and to their own admission blissfully disregarded any SEO effort. However they are quite busy with the traffic generated by the written articles that they are in no hurry to do anything about SEO. Oh, and by-the-way, they have not spent a nickle on PPC advertising nor do they spend anytime analysing web traffic. Customers are coming to their site and they are busy writing articles for others.    

This case stands as a testiment to the power of article writing. Not only does article writing help with PR, it  provides direct links to your site by creatively developing a resource box with multiple links to your pages. So will this work for everyone, probably not. But I’d say if article writing is not part of your marketing strategy you are missing out on a lot of free traffic. Well it won’t be free if you have to hire a writer but if you are a writer, Cha-Ching, Freebe!

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You may already know, implementing Internet marketing and advertising that generates quality traffic is a difficult task. If not careful you can burn through your advertising budget in a hurry with little or NO ROI. You can spend a lot of valuable time chasing link-backs or writing articles with little to show for your effort. This is what is happening to many website owners and it sucks, is there a better way?

• Search Engines can bring lots of targeted traffic, but despite what many SEO Providers or other marketing service vendors may say, it’s not easy to get free search engine traffic. There’s 157,000,000 competitors with great page ranks that you gotta out SEO. 
• Oh but wait there’s PPC (pay per click) advertising; yeah right go ahead, hope you have lots-o-money that you don’t need. PPC does work if you take the time to do it right and keep up with the rising cost and effort. But to be successful with PPC your gonna have to work your butt off with no guarantee, and guess what folks, you may spend a lot of effort and money only to find out that the ROI is not there.
• Email advertising is one of the most effective site marketing techniques you can implement. However it takes a long time to build an opt-in email list. Oh and by the way you gotta have mucho traffic to build an email list. If you don’t your list is gonna fit on a piece of toilet paper.
• Banner ads are effective for some but yeild the lowest click-thru rate of the various site marketing techniques. Banner ads can cost a sizeable sum as well so real care needs to be taken to get your banners in front of an audience looking for your product or service.
• You can spend a lot of time exchanging links with those standard traffic exchange systems (link farms) but they generate poor results and in many cases don’t work properly. Have you ever tried exchanging links with webmasters of sites you think would make a good link partner. You do the research, find an email address, compose a great (your site is so good) email then wait for a response. Still waiting aren’t you?  
• E-Zine advertising can be a great source of new sales prospects but many people get so many email ads these days that response levels can drop before an ROI is achieved.

These Internet marketing techniques are generally thought of as the “better” ways to promote your web site. If this is the case, and our effort, time and money is not producing profitable results then how is a website owner going to succeed? Let’s face it, advertising online just isn’t as easy as some would have you believe. You can spend months and even years promoting a site and have little to show for it. Getting web traffic sucks!

What do you think? Leave a comment especially if you have some sure fire methods of generating traffic that have tangible and worthy results of time and or money.

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