If you are a website or blog owner, traffic is one of the most important elements for the success of website. There are numerous ways to generate website traffic, some free, some paid. This post will focus mainly on the free ways to get or increase your website traffic.

Get Your Website to Load Faster

What do you think would happen if you had a massive traffic generation campaign but you end up referring people to a website that takes a few minutes to load? Do you think they would wait that long. Some would but I can bet most of them would not.

It is generally agreed that web surfers are a very impatient audience especially due to the great diversity of websites on the internet. So, no matter how informative your website is, you may miss the opportunity to make that first impression if your blog or website loads at snail speed. Your visitors will simply slick away and surf elsewhere. What a terrible way to lose your traffic.

While this doesn’t directly get you website traffic, it helps you to retain the visitors you have already generated.

It is also believed that Google penalizes slow loading websites or blogs. This may neutralize or diminish the impact of your search engine optimization efforts. Cutting down on the size of your graphics is one classical way to make your website load faster. It is also recommended that you specify the dimensions of your graphics to help browsers load your site faster.

If you are a blogger, then you should consider having the w3 Total Cache plugin installed. This nifty plugin will increase your blog loading speed tremendously and some bloggers have reported an increase of as much as 85%.

photo credit: Robert S. Donovan

Write great content

Great content is one of the most important magnets for attracting repeat website traffic for free. So, irrespective of any other traffic attraction techniques you use, the first important element is to focus on providing value to your website visitors.

Your website or blog should above everything else provide real value to your visitors; otherwise they will just click away within no time. As much as possible you should try to have your own unique look or approach to things while at the same time solving real problems experienced by your blog or website visitors and readers.

Get Handy Traffic Generation WordPress Plugins

If you use WordPress, then these plugins will help greatly in generating and retaining website traffic.

All in One SEO Plugin: This plugin will help you in optimizing your posts for the search engines. We have already talked about this plugin before I talked about it in a previous post called How to get more Google traffic part 2, but it is so important that it deserves yet another mention.

Google Sitemap Generator: this is a very handy sitemap plugin that submits XML sitemap of your blog posts to Google and other major search engines. Even more interesting is the fact that there is no input required on your part once you have installed this plugin. The plugin does everything automatically for you, helping your blog posts to be indexed faster by Google.

Similar Posts Plugin: This plugin is important for retaining your website visitors by providing them with more information on the topic. This plugin also refers your visitors to your older blog posts.

Add a tool or service that people need on your website

This technique is not for everyone, but it is nevertheless worth mentioning since it is a potentially explosive repeat traffic magnet.

Take the example of problogger.net; Darren Rowse has a blogging jobs board where sites looking to hire bloggers can advertise their vacancies. This is a kind of a magnet for repeat traffic. You see, people looking for blogging jobs will continually come back to this page looking for jobs. As bloggers, they are also targeted to the theme of the problogger.net blog which mostly talks about blogging.

What do you think the chances are that these job seekers will also click to the main blog? Well, you bet they are very likely. So while Darren Rowse makes money selling jobs advertisement space, he also generates repeat traffic to his blog that way.

What else would you do to generate repeat traffic to your site or blog? You can start a discussion forum and this is particularly easy to do nowadays with so many open source forum software available online today.

photo credit: senekin

Give your article marketing a unique twist

Article marketing is a classic but very effective traffic generation technique. Some people argue that article marketing is not the best way to get fast website traffic on the short term.

This is especially true for the immensely competitive niches such as “internet marketing” and “making money online”. Don’t get me wrong, article marketing is still a powerful strategy but it doesn’t guarantee immediate results unless you can submit lots of article daily to the article directories.

That not withstanding, I recommend you use your creativity to leverage on the exposure provided by the article directories and give your article marketing a unique twist. How do you do this?

The first way to leverage on the power of article marketing is to write a top ten or so list of… and publish it on your blog. Then you take some first five tips or items from the list, rewrite them into about 350-500 words and submit them to article directories. In your resource box, you should then write a blurb in the line of:

To get five other tips to lose weight naturally, visit Your site

You get the point? The idea here is to promise the article reader some more tips on the exact topic he/she just read about. This will likely increase your conversion rates and increase your traffic tremendously.

Secondly, focus on writing and submitting informative articles with a unique twist as opposed to the throwaway articles that we see all over the article directories. If you write great, informative articles that solve real problems, then you increase the chances of your articles being picked up by other site owners.

A little controversy may also be very effective and we have covered this in a previous post called How to trigger the power of viral marketing in your online business. This not only increases your backlinks but also sends you free targeted traffic from such sites.

On the flip side, this technique is very much dependent on chances and you can never tell if your articles will get picked up by site owners and that brings us to the next technique to get free website or blog traffic.

Connect with other bloggers

Like we have already mentioned, getting your articles published by other bloggers and website owners is dependent upon chance and you can only hope that your articles get picked. To get your articles published on other blogs, you may submit articles to other blogs in your niche. In deed there are many blogs that accept guest posts.

You just need to make sure that the article you submit is relevant to their blog topic, are well researched and above all are useful to their readers. You also need to spell-check them and ensure that they have no grammatical and punctuation errors and you will be surprised how many blogs are willing to accept your blog posts.

Again you don’t need to focus only on the popular blogs alone. You will find the growing blogs with some decent traffic are even more willing to accept your guest posts.

Of course some site owners will not even respond to your emails. Just don’t take it personally. If you write to twenty bloggers offering to do a guest post and only receive a response from three, go ahead and submit your guest post. Repeat the same steps and before you realize your traffic will have increased threefold. This strategy alone increased traffic to my other blog by more than 120%.

Please feel free to share the traffic generation techniques that have worked for you. Just drop a comment below.

This is part of an ongoing series titled “How to get more Google traffic for free“. I published the first post, “How to get more Google traffic for free-Part 1” on Monday but wasn’t able to publish the second one on Tuesday as I had promised since I have been overly committed with preparation for my graduation from the campus this December. I am really excited about it and will keep you updated on the progress, plus share with you photos from that event. In the meanwhile, enjoy these tips on getting more Google traffic for free.

1. Make your URLs search engine friendly

It is absolutely critical that you use seo-friendly URLs for your blog posts. By default, WordPress URLs (that is, permalinks) are not so search engine friendly. The posts are identified by a sequential, dynamic number placed after the domain name of your blog such as this:

http://internetwealthlab.com/blog/?p=102 or http://internetwealthlab.com/?p=102

While there is no problem with this, Google or any other search engine can’t immediately tell what your blog posts are about unless they first crawl/spider the content on the post itself. To take care of that, you need to change your permalink structure by following these steps:

-Login to your WordPress control panel (dashboard)

-Click on “permalinks” under “settings”

You normally have four options for permalinks which are Default, Day and Name, Month and Name, Numeric, and Custom Structure. Choose the Custom Structure radio button and add /%postname%/ in the text field as shown below:

For the above permalink custom structure, my blog post permalinks looks something like

http://internetwealthlab.com/blog/4-easy-steps-to-get-your-first-website-online-in-one-day/

This helps my blog posts have a better chance of being shown in Google search results which is something that should really excite any serious blogger or marketer.

2. Optimize your blog or site

Know your keywords and use them for your posts. Use the keywords in your blog titles, headings, and Meta tags. While there is a considerable debate as to whether Google factors the Meta tags anymore, it is still a wise idea to place the keywords in there just in case other search engines still do.

For each blog post you write, you should choose one, specific keyword depending on your keyword strategy and use it in your title. The idea here is to write catchy titles that are interesting to the readers while optimizing your blog posts for the search engines.

What about your blog posts descriptions?

The key with Meta tag description is to write for the search engines as well as the target audience. Potential visitors to your blog judge your website based on the description they can see in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Even if you have the best content but your descriptions can’t entice your readers by making them believe you have what they are looking for, high chances are that they won’t click through to your website.

As part of your blog posts optimization strategy, you should therefore craft a nice SEO optimized description for each blog post with the keyword you are trying to rank for appearing at least once. Answer the reader’s questions in advance by explaining what the blog post is all about. The All-in-one-SEO pack plugin makes this a total breeze and I always use it for my blogs.

I am just about to dart out of the door and head to campus for clearance with the school. I will keep you updated on the progress. Also, be on the lookout for the next post in this series called “How to get more Google traffic for free” tomorrow.

All the best
Kevin Njoroge

Search engine traffic is one of the most targeted traffic and is often free. Because of that, you should be continuously working to improve your search engine rankings and index penetration through various tactics that we’ll be discussing in this and the next post tomorrow.

Be a social net citizen

You can generate lots of backlinks by leaving useful posts and comments in dofollow blogs and forums. However don’t just say “Nice post” and leave your link on other blog communities. Add to the discussion with a question, responding to a feedback or question posted by another person or by adding your own opinion to the discussion. Useful comments get approved and will stick a permanent backlink to your website.

The comments you leave should most importantly show that you have read the article you are responding to and be unique to each blog post. There was this blog comment spammer that would leave the same comment about adding adbrite banners to your blog. The comment seemed legitimate to lots of blog posts related to blogging, but when I checked my blog posts for duplicate content with copyscape, the same comment appeared on a few dozen other blogs. Of course I deleted the comment. If you ever asked me, I would rather gain twenty permanent backlinks on a single day than one hundred backlinks that later get deleted for duplicate content

Syndicate articles

Writing articles and submitting them to article directories is an excellent way to amass backlinks to your website or blog.  Google and other search engines place more weight on a sites or pages with lots of backlinks. Any serious blogger or webmaster should therefore work on improving the number of backlinks pointing to his website from other sites on the internet. Again, use your keywords in the anchor text-the words used on the links pointing to your website or web page.

Guest blogging is also an excellent way to get free traffic to your blog or website while gaining backlinks to your site for better search engine rankings.

Sponsor WordPress themes

WordPress theme sponsoring is a smart viral marketing strategy that earns you free backlinks to your website. The idea is to stick the link to your site at the bottom of the theme you sponsor and every blog that uses the theme will have a link pointing to your own blog or site.

You can either build your own themes or sponsor themes already built by other WordPress experts. You can find themes to sponsor on forums such as the digital point forums

Don’t be afraid to be controversial

A little controversy is not bad and may be a powerful link building tactic. A good way to do it is to make some thought provoking comment or opinion to a subject related to your industry. This may be a good way to generate interest and discussion from other bloggers and at the end of it you may get lots of free backlinks. Jason Calacanis is known for this and I did mention about him in another post called How to Trigger the Power of Viral Marketing in Your Online Business

I personally visit online forums almost everyday. Forums are excellent places to hang out with like minded people for several reasons:

a) Getting solution to problems:

Whenever I have a problem that I don’t seem to find an answer to, my first stop is normally online forums. And I in most cases find solutions without having to go any further.

I get amazed sometimes how nice the world has become. Instead of balding your head or banging your computer in frustration over a nagging problem, just visit online forums, ask a question, and someone somewhere, sometimes halfway around the globe, gives you the perfect answer or solution, sometimes in a matter of a few minutes. And above all, for free. That’s the power of the internet

b) Information sharing:

In forums, people with similar interests gather to talk about trends in their industry, changes etc. They also share ideas, new tricks and lessons on various topics and aspects of their industry.

c) Research:

If you enter forums with a sharp eye, you can identify new niche markets and products ideas by:

• Noting the commonly asked questions
• Noting the popular threads
• Reading comments by forum members

d) Hire affordable professionals:

Most online forums allow their members to but and sell their products and services. By visiting the sections in the forums where this is allowed, you can hire affordable professionals such as programmers, copy writers, web designers etc.
e) Driving traffic to your sites:

The signature link in forums can be an important source of free targeted traffic to your website. The secret here is to create a benefit-driven, witty signature link that make people want to click it. e.g. Instead of:

-”Click Here to Visit My Weight Loss Site”

Go for something like:

“Discover How I Shed 20 Pounds in 1 Week”

As for the title of this post, here are five internet marketing forums that you must be a member of:

a) Digitalpoint webmaster forums:

This is one of the oldest webmaaster forums online. It’s also one of the most popular , with hundreds to thousands of members online at any given time.

b) Webcosmo webmaster forums:

This is a fast growing webmaster forum. You can also register your website for the website of the month contest, but you must have posted over 25 comments to win the contest.

c) V7N forum

Another nice online marketing forum. This one allow you to display your latest blog post in your comments.

d) Seochat.com forums

As the name suggests, this forum is a specialized one, allowing only search engine optimization related discussions.

e) im4newbies forum

This one requires manual approval by a forum administrator to complete the signup process. This one is not so popular but you can still get decent traffic from it.

One of the best ways to boost the number of viewers on your website is through SEO or Search Engine Optimization. This process must be applied if you really want to increase traffic in your website or blog. Following the fairly basic guidelines for SEO can greatly help.

For beginners the term optimization may sound somewhat difficult, when actually it is very doable. One must understand that in order for your blog or website to get noticed you have to take the necessary actions, otherwise no one might even know that it exists. Your aim as a site owner is to reach your goal behind the reason why you created the site and for the viewers to consider your site a useful venue.

Getting traffic or visitors to your website is top most priority. This is one of the reasons why it is very important to place anchored backlinks to your website in order for them to rise up in the search rankings. This can be done by interlinking pages. You can get links from other blogs and websites, but you can help your blog a lot by linking from page to page within your website.

You may get links from other blogs or websites similar to your niche, but it would be even better if you link from page to page within your own website. To be able to do this, you must remember to go back and link your pages to anything similar to what you have written in your new post.

You need to check and see if what you are about to post also applies or is similar to what you have written in the past. The bottom line is you just need to link from the old post that is somewhat related to the new one.

This process will help Google crawl your website and it also helps in identifying what the page is really all about. The value of these internal links may not be that great but if you are in a niche or subject in a small competition then this would contribute greatly. What you should keep in mind is that, a link is a link and you should be doing anything and everything to get as many visitors as you possibly can.

Lets assume that on Google you have already ranked on the first page using your main keywords. This means that many people will now find your website and start visiting it regularly and might even recommend it to others.

Getting lots of traffic to your website or blog is one of the best ways to make it to a higher rank. Best of all it can also be done for free and many people make so much money by utilizing search engine optimization. One of the benefits of page rank is that it is good for is getting people to exchange links with you and the more it will generate traffic in your site.

Another effective way is to include meta tags within the website. These are information inserted into the head area of your web pages. This can be achieved by constructing your page title tag in the beginning of your page making sure that you include the keyword you are using as your main word, you can attach this somewhere around the top of the page. You may also add secondary keywords, but it should still sound as natural as possible.

Lets now consider that you have already started ranking the first page on Google search results. The possibility of people visiting your site is now greatly increased. And the more visitors you have in your site, the higher the traffic and the greater the chance of getting a higher rank.

Above all, this can be done for free. Please keep in mind that these are only basic guidelines in achieving a good SEO and not be considered a rigid instruction. If it can bring more positive contribution to your site then you should also be open to other optimization ideas.

If you would like to rank better on search engines you will want to know more about SEO. There are a few things that you will need to consider about internet marketing too.

Please leave your comment below and let me know what you think.

Freetrafficbar is a thin toolbar that you add to Firefox or Internet Explorer developed by Garland Coulson. The toolbar has over 125 tools to help you search the web and market online and a headline area where it shows one headline from one of the members that changes each time you load a new page.

It is free to join and rewards you with 1000 free advertising credits just for signing up. This is in addition to ad credits you earn automatically as you surf the internet like you do everyday (be it on Google, Yahoo, eBay, name it)

You can then use the ad credits to advertise any website, Affiliate or MLM program.

The traffic bar works kind of like the typical traffic exchanges but there is a twist to it in that it earns you credit without any need for manual surfing and clicking that consumes your time.

It’s kind of like turning the time you spend on the internet into traffic and profits without changing anything you do now.

Now, to make the freetrafficbar program work for you, you need to first of all understand your audience and the target your offer to match their need and objectives.

First off, we know exactly why people are using freetrafficbar . They have an online business or want to make money online by driving traffic to an affiliate or MLM program. They want free traffic.

The traffic can thus be very targeted if your offer enhances their potential to achieve what they already want and seek to achieve.

A nice offer would be some Business-to-Business or Business opportunities of some sort.

For example, a nice offer would be something like “how to recruit more people to GDI”, “How to get truckloads of free traffic to your website”, “How I made $25, 262 in one day”, “How to write a Multi-Million Dollar web copy”, How to make money online every day etc.

As you can see, the above examples matches the psychology of a typical freetrafficbar user in some way or the other, right?

You would on the other hand have a hard time trying to promote some niche products on the freetrafficbar network e.g. “How to train your dog to…” get the point?

So, get started with the freetrafficbar by signing up here, then install the toolbar on your browser, target your offer to the needs and objectives of the freetrafficbar members and start driving traffic to your offer as you gain more and more pints day after day.

Forums are an excellent source of targeted traffic and in fact forum traffic is one of the most laser targeted. This is a good idea because forum traffic is often very targeted if you are to make good money online.

Forums are actually useful in two ways:

First, forums are a great way to know what people in your niche are looking for or want to know but that’s another topic for another day. Today we are going to look at the second way to use forums to build your online business which is:

Getting backlinks and free traffic to your websites or blog. Now, to drive traffic to your website or blog using forums, you need to find forums related to your niche and become an active member of the forum(s). Two to three forum posts are not enough and I am going to reveal to you another secret why you will want to become an active contributor of a certain forum if you keep reading.

You can easily find forums online on almost any niche you want, some free others fee based. You can find them easily by searching over at Google or any other search engine using the search phrase “Niche+forum” e.g. Pet training forum.

Now, before firing your forum marketing, you need to read the rules and regulations of the forum you just joined to stay out of trouble with the forum moderators. It’s also a good idea to introduce yourself to the other members and to get a general feel of the forum before posting. Get to know the tone of the forum members as well as the forum moderators.

You’ll also need to create a signature file which is where traffic to your website will come from. The signature file appears at the end of every post you make in the forum. By including the link to your website, interested members of the forum can click through to your website.

Your signature file doesn’t have to be so big; just your name, a statement or two and your website link are enough. It must however have a clear call to action e.g.

Need to shed those extra calories starting now?

Visit Weight Loss Solutions for time saving solutions.

Discover right here and right now how to shed those

extra calories eating as much as you want.

Visit Weight Loss Solutions for simple weight loss solutions

Once you have read and understood the rules of the forum and have a good feel for the tone of the community, it’s time to start contributing to them.

Spend some time to develop a good relationship with the community. By that I mean that you should contribute something. Don’t post junk or spammy comments that don’t make sense in the context of the thread you are posting in just for the back links to your website or get advertising credit. They will only get deleted by forum moderators in the very least not to mention that you could get your account deleted.

Instead, ask your own questions, respond to other people’s posts by offering solutions and answers to their problems and questions as well as offering useful links to free resources that other members of the community need.

Your long term goal is mainly to build your credibility among other members of the forum community. Be seen as a reliable source of useful information and an active member of the community. Again don’t be afraid to learn from other members of your forum. Don’t get stuck with your own problems when you’ve willing members of the forum community to help you out.

Another powerful strategy is to introduce a free report as a solution to a problem that was posted. It could also be a piece of software, audio file or even video-as it best fits the given situation.

You can even offer some free (but useful) gift to the members of the community for their own purpose if the forum rules permits you to. This could be a set of articles,an autoresponder series etc.

Forum marketing is one very reliable source of targeted traffic to your website. If you can take the time to participate in forums, you can gradually accumulate links back to your website, get some search engine love and generate free website or blog traffic (free is good huh!).

Please leave your comments below and let us know what you think about it.

For the umpteenth time, traffic is the life force of an online business and ongoing traffic generation is crucial to your online business.

Some marketers go ahead to state that traffic generation should account for 80% of your effort in building a successful Internet business.

As important as traffic is to your online business, the quality of the traffic is equally important as it determines how much money you make online in the long run.

The traffic you drive to your Website must be highly targeted. It’s better to get only 100 targeted Website visitors than an avalanche of untargeted Website visitors who hit the close button before the first page finishes loading.

The term targeted imply people who are likely to be interested in what you have to offer or say.

Now, how do you determine the quality of traffic to your Website. Well, there are several things that will help you increase the chances of generating targeted traffic:

Your keywords: The keywords and the language you use to describe your online business is important as they will determine how your business is perceived by others.

Your keywords and language should give your prospects an idea of what your online business is all about and how it is of importance to their goals and objectives.

If someone comes to your Website with a perceived image of a “dog training” related Website only to find weight loss related resources and products, high chances are that he/she will simply click away.

You will thus end wasting your time and effort. Therefore, your keywords and the description you give online for your Website should define your online business in no uncertain terms.

Understand your target audience: Develop a clear profile of your potential customers are.

Who are they? Dog trainers, pet owners, expectant mothers, golfers, photographers, collectors …?

What are they looking for online or what do they want to achieve? How to cure a slice? (for golfers) ho choose the right toy for their children?

What are their hobbies and how can you help them make it much more enjoyable and satisfying to them?

Where do they hang-out online? Once you develop a clear profile of your potential customers, find out where they hang out online. Is it in forums, blogs, chat rooms etc? Then get your message across to them.

Focus your attention on these small crowds to address their needs, problems and attainment of their desired lifestyle. Focus on driving targeted traffic to your website and your sign ups, sales and profits will shoot through the roof in record time

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Also, be sure to leave your comments below and let me know what you think about it

All the best,

Kevin