There is no doubt that website traffic is critical to your business success. And nothing beats free traffic. Where does free traffic come from? Google and other search engines.
How do we get free traffic from Google?
The process works in a way that you have experienced many many times. You load up Google or another search engine. Type in something you’re looking for. Then you click on one of the pages that in displayed. Well, the link you clicked on just send free traffic to that website owner. So the real question is how you get that free traffic.
Most people only click results from the first couple pages. Actually, almost 100% of the free traffic goes to this first page of results. What’s even more amazing is the the first 3 links get more than 70% of the free traffic.
So to get any significant amount of free traffic from Google, you really need to be on the first page. To do that, you need to be “ranked” in Google’s Top 10 results. Which brings up..
What is SEO?
SEO means that your website is clearly about something specific, Google knows that that is and thinks others will agree and find your site useful. The formula Google uses to determine this is known only by Google. There are several factors that we do know.
Getting indexed
Before your website can begin gaining ranking, you have to alert Google to it’s existence. This is known as being “indexed.” What this means is that Google visits your site and records information about it in their database.
Google needs to actually find your site in order to index it. Links from other sites are the easiest way to accomplish this. Since some of these site will already be indexed, Google will follow the links on their pages and find you.
A couple of great places to do this are in your Twitter or Facebook profiles. Google visits these sites many times every day. So your new link will get indexed very quickly.
Gaining ranking
After this first hurdle, you need to start gaining ranking. Google has billions of pages indexed, so just getting into their database does not mean anyone will see you.
There are three components of gaining ranking:
- Content
- Links
- Activity
SEO content
This is the SEO work you do on your page. It’s critical that your page content is consistent with the keyword phrases you’re targeting. Clearly this article is about search engine optimization. One way Google figures this out is from the fact that it contains the term SEO. But also because other related words like traffic generation show up in it, as well.
The title of the page, the domain name and other pages on your site are also important. Google uses all of this content to figure out what your site is really about.
Link strategy
Next, you need to pay attention to the links to and from your site. This includes both the inbound and outbound links. It’s very important that you have more links coming in than you have going out. And the more inbound links the better.
Article spinning is a super easy way to get a bunch of inbound links. To accomplish this you start by writing an article that targets the keywords you’re after. Then create a bunch of different versions of it. Because you’re going to post a unique copy of it to lots of different websites. And the more you do the better.
Increasing your activity
And lastly, it’s seems clear that Google expects important pages to be actively updated. A page that was created 3 years ago and hasn’t been touched since won’t rank well. Google expects you to be updating your site regularly. RSS feeds are an easy way to keep your content changing.
But the best way is with active discussions on your page itself. So, obviously, you need to get people to visit your site on your own, too. Online forums are simple source of real live visitors.
What you need to do is sign up with several forums in your niche. And post their often. And link back to yourself in your signature file. This gets you inbound links. And it gets people to visit the site you link to.
Conclusion
All of the above is important. Unfortunately, rewriting your articles again and again. And creating a bunch of forum profiles. And posting your articles and comments takes a lot of time. And the bad news is that you probably won’t do it.
Fortunately, you can get rank builder software to do all the grunt work for you. So my best advice is to automate as much of this as you can. And then you’re sure to get it done. And not doing it means you will never get free traffic from Google.
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The most important thing in any web business is traffic – lots and lots of traffic. Obviously, this assumes you actually have a reason for wanting this traffic. Once the visitors arrive you can have them join your mailing list, purchase a product or subscribe to your RSS feed. The important thing is getting the traffic and sustaining it.
How, then do you get traffic to your site?
Here’s a short list of great, free traffic generating methods:
- Web 2.0 Sites
- Article Websites
- Video
OK, so how do they work?
Web 2.0 Sites
By web 2.0 we mean any site where the users actually create the content. The exciting thing about Web 2.0 sites is that you get to add your own content and it becomes part of these sites. Because these sites get so much traffic, Google and the other search engines treat these sites with greater importance in their algorithms. Which means the content on them gets “indexed” faster and with more weight. And any links in your content that point to your own sites count as a strong “vote” in favor of your sites – lending you credibility in the search engines. That’s the real benefit of adding content to this sites – search engine ranking means ongoing free traffic. There are many more web 2.0 traffic tactics we don’t have time to get into here, but this will get you started.
Article Websites
The natural next topic is article marketing. Article directories fall under the category of web 2.0 sites. Just like web 2.0 sites, article websites allow you to upload your own content – as articles. Just as with the other web 2.0 sites, having your content included gives you immediate traffic and search engine ranking. But you also get the extra benefit of other users taking your article and putting it on their site. And along with your article, they have to include your author information and a link back to you – so you get more free traffic and SEO benefits. In order to get the most free traffic make sure you:
- Do your keyword research
- Write specifically to target these keywords
- Hyperlink these keywords to your website – both in the content of the article and in your author’s info section.
Video
Our discussion would not be complete without talking about video. Just like article directories, video sharing sites also rely on user-generated content. And just as article directories give you great SEO benefits and allow others to redistribute your content on their sites. video sharing sites give you all these same benefits. The extra top secret benefit of video marketing is that it’s much easier to rank for competitive keywords than in any other medium.
Here are just a few video marketing tips:
- Get a YouTube account
- When people view your videos, you want them to visit your site, so turn all the other modules in your profile off
- Put relevant “tags” in your profile
- Include a link to your main site in your profile
- Add at least one video to your profile
- For each video use your keywords in the tags, the descriptions and the title
Summary:
If you want to get traffic to your site, then follow the advice in this article.
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If you want to be found as a local business or professional you have got to hang your shingle out there on the web for all to see.
In days more or less gone by you put an advertisement in the Yellow Pages in an effort to be seen, found and or noticed. If your Yellow Pages salesperson was good you might have had pictures,map and a small advertisement in your listing. Most people searching went to the phone book.
Today it is more likely, in all but a few demographic groups, they are going to try to find what they are looking for on the web . Are you there? Do you have a listing. presence or blog. Have you checked?
Forget the Yellow Page which costs money, the web is there for you at no-cost and can be done by claiming your listing. You can put useful information and have the search engines advertise you for the asking.
More on Yes: There Is a Free Lunch for Local Businesses
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