7 Unconventional Ways for Generating Website Traffic

Most people understand the basics of website traffic generation. You use tried and tested methods like search engine optimization (SEO), pay-per-click (PPC), article marketing, blogging and social media marketing to name a few.

It’s time now to use a few unconventional methods to boost your website traffic. Here are 7 tips that may not seem obvious to you at first but these will get your website noticed and fast.

1.    Site Statistics: Review and analyze your site statistics to understand how your visitors (traffic) are interacting with your site. Use a free tool like Google analytics to get a good insight into your traffic pattern. Formulate your traffic generation strategy using this data instead of guessing. This can be the key to your success especially if you are into niche marketing.

2.    RSS Feeds: Adding an RSS feed will provide significant benefits to your readers as well as to you, the site owner. The user benefits by getting quick and easy access to most recently updated content of their choice. The site owner benefits by providing fresh content to the readers and encourages search engines bots to index their site more frequently.

3.    Aggregator Sites: Sites such as Feedburner, Squidoo, Feedboy and Jordomedia are great RSS feed syndicators. They will help you distribute your site content to a much larger audience, which in turn will improve your website traffic.

4.    Site Maps: Create a site map in the proper format and submit it to major search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. Check with your webmaster or designer if you are not comfortable creating XML site maps. There are many sitemap creators available, some of them are free and others are commercial software tools.

5.    Directory Submissions: Be careful with this one because over the years, many have abused this technique. Submitting to thousands of free directories may not bring you the surge of traffic that you are expecting. A good place to start is with Info Vilesilencer (http://info.vilesilencer.com/). You can submit your site to free search engine friendly directories from there.

6.    Word of Mouth (WoM): Tell your family, friends and neighbors about your site. Good old WoM publicity is great for site traffic. At family dinners, discuss your website and ask for input. You’ll be surprised by how many people will actually check out your site just out of curiosity. If they like what they see/read, they most likely will recommend it to their friends and colleagues. This simple yet powerful traffic generation tool is often overlooked.

7.    Business Stationery: Make sure your website is listed prominently on your business cards, letterheads, invoices and faxes. Add a signature file with your site URL to all outgoing emails. Do the same when you post to forums or leave comments on blogs. Do the same with any offline advertisement that you may be doing such as Yellow Pages, billboards, Chamber of Commerce directories.

I am sure there are many more ways that I haven’t listed here. How about you, do you use methods that you’d like to share?