Use Your John Hancock For Free Traffic

Your signature in forum posts can be one of the best sources of free traffic. It works very well in high traffic forums.

BTW, those of you not familiar with the popular phrase, John Hancock was the first to sign the United States Declaration of Independence – hence sign your John Hancock. (wikianswers.com)

A signature after you post to a forum is like free advertisement for your site or blog. On most forums, your signature is automatically inserted at the end of your post.

Here’s how to create an effective signature:

1)     Write a one-line description about yourself and add the URL of your site under that.
E.g. John Doe – Internet marketing Guru and Free Traffic Expert.
http://www.yourdomainname.com

2)     Go to Google or your favorite search engine and do a search for a keyword or key phrase tied to your niche followed by the word forum.
E.g. If you are looking for traffic for the niche Internet Marketing, search for Internet marketing + forum. You will see a list of forums related to your niche.

3)     Sign up as a forum member and add your signature in your profile.

4)     Look for topics or posts that are very active and have lots of people asking questions.

5)     Start replying to some of these posts using your expertise and knowledge in your field. (Be genuine otherwise people will see right through you).

As you become a regular contributor to these forums, members will start noticing you. These people are your mother lode of free traffic. Some of them will click on your link and it will lead them to your website.

Use your site to impress the first time visitor with your content. Try to get them to sign up for your newsletter or a free eBook or an eCourse. Getting that sign up is your ultimate goal for building a qualified opt-in list.

Some forums (See Warrior Special Offers Forum) will also allow you to post special offers and discounts to their members.

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?

How To Use Blogs For Driving Traffic

Blogs are fertile grounds for driving qualified traffic to your site. Here are 10 way to use blogs to drive traffic.

1. Make use of Technorati – Technorati allows you to ‘claim’ your blog, which can be great for social networking and gaining traffic.
2. Don’t forget about SEO – blogging is, essentially, SEO article writing. It is much less informal and much more fun- however, it still follows the same rules surrounding content, links and keywording. So make sure you re-read the above tips on “Article Marketing” and “SEO Marketing” when writing your blogs.
3. Blog often – blogging is not necessarily a full time job; however, you should always set aside some time during the week to contribute to your blog. While some people blog two or three times a day, it’s probably best to blog one day a week. Stay on a regular schedule to create a following and give your readers something to look forward to.
4. Blog on and away from your site – there are several different ways to use blogging as a way to generate traffic. Many people choose to blog on a different website such as HubPages and then link to their website. This works. However, another good way is to include a Blog section on your website. People who are interested in your website content may subscribe to your blogs, which means even more hits and traffic generation to your sites.
5. Yahoo Answers – whenever someone types a question into a search engine, Yahoo Answers usually comes up. Check out Yahoo Answers and see what questions have been asked in your niche category. Then, answer them and include a link. This is a great way to gain free publicity and market yourself as an expert. Another good resource is Wiki Answer.
6. Stay within your Niche – another important thing to consider when blogging is that you will need to always write about something related to your website. Sure, it might be fun to write about the latest Michael Jackson scandal, but how is that helping your website on massage therapy? If you can find an angle and link the two together, then you have just uncovered a great traffic generation secret.
7. Include blog interviews – interviewing someone in the field of choice is a great way to gain traffic to your blog. Sure, it may not be an interview with Brad and Angelina, but a well-known figure in your niche market will get the traffic you want. Interviews are unique and they are informative. They make great blog material.
8. Write something controversial- there’s nothing like controversy to get the traffic flowing in. Write something controversial and then ask for comments, questions and concerns about what you have said. This will help to get the cyber conversation going and ensure traffic to your site.
9. Make friends with other bloggers – ask other bloggers to review your website, in exchange for a link of course. Blogging is a community thing and the more you participate in this community, the more successful you will be at generating traffic.
10. Add your URL to all posts – make your link like a signature. Anytime you make a post (relevant to your website of course), add a link at the end. Many people will read the comments, the forums, and the discussions for additional information. If a link is included, they will click on it.

Golden Rule of Twitter

Twitter is all about building personal relationships. Like every thing else on the Internet, it follows the GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) principle.

If I’m following you on Twitter and you feed me crap, I’ll ignore you. On the other hand, if you feed me good stuff then I’m likely to read your tweets and may be even click on your links.

So, here’s my golden rule for Twitter:

Attract > Interact > Give back

• Attract like-minded followers
• Interact with them by replying to their tweets
• Give back by providing interesting content and links to good content not just a sales pitch

If you follow that golden rule, then you can successfully use Twitter in your business to attract qualified traffic, build a loyal following and ultimately make more money.

I’ve released a new Twitter for business training program. Learn more about Twitter: Zero To Hero In 14 days.

Videos for Nothin’ and Clicks for Free

Has your online marketing become dull and lifeless? Are you struggling to attract traffic? What you need is a way to add a little flare and oomph. Video marketing may be the missing ingredient to spice up your content and grab attention.

YouTube and other video sharing sites have made videos extremely popular on the Internet. While online, a lot of people prefer to watch a short 2 to 3 minutes video before deciding on visiting your site to learn more about you and your business. Post your videos to YouTube and get ready for hordes of people clicking through to your site. Now that’s the way to do it, videos for nothin’ and clicks for free.

You can find many research studies on how people use different senses to process information. Some people like to read, some like audio and there are others who prefer both visuals and sound. That’s why video is so effective in providing information. To persuade a larger segment of your site visitors to take action, you need to use all of these communication channels to make a connection with them.

Posting videos on YouTube with a link to your site can explode your traffic overnight because of the power of viral marketing. Think of it as the Internet’s version of old fashioned word-of-mouth publicity. Other bloggers may also be more inclined to link to your video content to add a variety to their boring text only blogs. This kind of “me-to-you” recommendations can be more powerful than paid advertisement because they come from trusted sources.

You can Tweet about your new video content and encourage people to visit your site. Your followers can retweet about it. You can use other social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn to announce your new video. Let your network of friends and business associate spread the words and watch viral marketing do the heavy lifting for you.

Downloading your videos to a MP3 payer will allow people to watch them at their leisure, even when they are not online. That’s 24/7 marketing at its best.

You know your competition is using video to their advantage because you see them popping up all over the Internet. YouTube wouldn’t be so popular if millions of people weren’t uploading and downloading video all day long. You need to get on board in a hurry and add video to your site today.

While adding videos to your marketing plan is a great idea, you’ll need to implement it correctly to maximize its benefits for your business. You don’t want to just slap some video clips together, upload them on your site and expect them to do wonders. A bad video will do more harm than good.

What if you don’t know the first thing about making videos? That’s why I’ve put together a special report, “Video Marketing For Business.” You’ll learn:

• Why it’s important to use video marketing in your online business
• How your Internet business can benefit from video
• How to create effective video content
• Where to market your videos
• How to get started with videos

Don’t let your competitors steal all your customers away from you. Grab a copy of my Video Marketing for Business report today and you’ll be on your way to creating one of the most effective marketing plans for your business.

10 Ways of Getting Blog Traffic

Blogging is a very popular way to create and maintain a high profile online. Just like everything else on the Internet, a blog won’t do you much good unless you attract visitors. Every blog needs traffic, lots of it to be successful.

How do you get traffic to your blog? Here are ten tactics that I use.

1. Fresh Content – No one wants to visit a blog day after day and read the same content. Update your blog content at least twice a week. This will be easier if you write several posts ahead of time and set them up to post automatically at regular intervals. See my post “How Fresh is Your Content?”

2.  Article Marketing – Don’t create content just for your blog. Do submit them to article directories. You may have to combine several posts to make them into one cohesive article. Use the author’s resource box to advertise your blog so people can find you.

3.  Viral Marketing – This is the online version of old-fashioned word-of-mouth publicity. Use viral marketing to get others to spread the word about your blog. Talk to friends, family and even strangers. Mention your blog in the conversation. If it has a memorable or a catchy name, people will remember it. Create a free report or eBook and allow people to pass it along to their friends and network. Links back to your blog (you did include them, right?) will generate substantial new traffic.

4. Use RSS Feeds – RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication.” Readers can subscribe to your feed and get email updates whenever you post something new. It is an easy way for them to keep up with your blog without spending all day online searching for content.

5. SEO Marketing – Write content that is rich with your targeted keywords or phrases. Keyword density between 3-10% is considered good for getting higher page rankings in search engines. Base your keywords on research  and not guesswork.

6. Submit Blog to Search Engines – Google and Yahoo! are two of the most popular search engines that you want to make sure find your blog. It doesn’t guarantee top ranking, though. You’ll have to do a little more work for that. Add a Site Map in the correct format to help search engines regularly crawl and index all your blog pages.

7. Social Bookmarking – Submitting posts to social bookmarking sites allows others who are members of those sites to track back to your blog.

8. Social Networking -Join Facebook, MySpace, Squidoo, Twitter or any of the other popular social networks. Keep in mind that participation is the key to making good connections. Just by following someone or joining a group won’t do you much good unless you are willing to share your expertise with others. Start Twitting about new posts or use “what am I doing now” feature on these networks to announce any new content that you’ve added to your blog.

9. Visit other blogs – Show your appreciation and acknowledge other experts in your field by visiting their blogs. Add links to their blogs in your Blog Roll and ask them if they’ll do the same for yours. You can add a link back to your blog whenever you leave a comment on somebody else’s post.

10.  Join Forums – Become a member of forums that your target audience visits regularly. Try to help others and in the bargain, you will be positioning yourself as the “go-to” expert in your niche. Add a link back to your blog in the signature file and watch your traffic grow like crazy.

Using any of these ideas will start the flow of traffic to your blog. It does take time to build up a loyal following. Want to learn more? Get my FREE special “Content Marketing Revealed.”

Using Web 2.0 Sites to Get More Traffic

One of the essential tools for generating traffic to your site is the use of Web 2.0 sites. Why? The primary reason is that they rank so well in the search engines.

New sites need to build up trust and reputation – that takes time! Sites like squidoo.com can have a new page ranking well for a low competition keyword in just hours – that is insanely fast!

So the technique you use with these sites is to find some low competition keyword phrases, it varies from site to site what you should aim for, but if you search for your keyword in quotes and there are less than 50,000 results in Google then that is a good start.

You then create a page on one of those sites that includes your keyword a few times, publish it, get a few links to the page with your keyword as the anchor phrase (lots of times you don’t even have to get links, but it helps long term) and keep an eye on where your page gets to in the search engines.

Sometimes you’ll need to build more links, other times you will get to the top position easily with no work on your behalf, other times you won’t get near the first page of Google no matter how many links you get to one of these website pages! Google has incredibly sophisticated algorithms to work out who should be on the front page of their results and it could be the keyword or even the market that has unique factors Google wants from you that just aren’t present normally on these sites.

The key is to test, find out what works for you, also to try and get lots of them out there, as some will stick and some won’t. Try to get them all to stick, but then make sure you know when to quit so you don’t waste time on a dud. Then get started building more!

You have to watch what you put on some of these sites, squidoo for instance allows pretty much anything as long as you give some quality information. So you can put up an article you wrote on the keyword phrase, and then plaster it with links to your site. Places like Hubpages, I believe are fiercely guarded by its members. They will brand you a spammer if you try to sell something blatantly on the page. So for that site you have to be more subtle and you essentially write an article like you would for an article directory, that has no selling in it, then at the bottom you get a chance to put a ‘bio box’ with a link in it.

Make sure you pay attention to these rules as you don’t want your page or your account flagged for breaching any rules of the site!

More Traffic For Less Money

How To Generate More Website Traffic Without Spending a Lot of Money

Promoting your Website does not need to cost you a lot of money. There are many ways to drive qualified traffic to your website for free. There are simple but often forgotten things that you can do that won’t cost you a cent but can lead to hordes of site traffic.

If you have no money or if you have a shoestring budget for driving traffic to your Website, you can use these tips to generate traffic to your website for free: 

• RSS Feeds — Create RSS feeds for your site and submit the feed URLs to the major RSS feed directories online. This will generate a lot of traffic to your Website.
• Press Releases – No, I’m not talking about a conventional release, that’s so yesterday! The Internet has completely changed the old rules of PR. Get hold of a copy of “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” by David Meerman Scott. This book will help you learn about the various ways of using news releases to drive traffic to your site without spending a fortune. If you want to write and distribute your own press releases, check out All Press Content by Alice Seba, Mila Sidman & Shannon Cherry. 
• YouTube – self-made videos are hot right now. If you have a Website, sell a product, write a blog, or consider yourself an expert in a certain field, you can create a video on YouTube that supports your site content, and use it to drive traffic back to your site.
• Joint Venture (JV) — Form a JV with other online businesses and list owners and ask them if they would advertise your Website to their list. Of course, you have to offer them something of value in return. This does not cost you anything and all you need to do is to contact some list owners and present your request. See The Loss Leader Strategy.
• Link Exchange — Exchanging links with other webmasters is a powerful way of generating traffic to your website for free. All you have to do is to identify webmasters with websites that complement your website and exchange website links with them. This means more traffic to your website from these external links.
• Blogging — Create a blog on your site and regularly post new content on it. Search engines love fresh content. Use the Google Blog Search Pinging Service to ping your blog whenever you add new content. This is a way to inform Google Blog Search of weblog updates. These updates are then published and shared with other search engines to allow them to discover the changes to your blogs. In addition, Google Blog Search will add submitted weblogs to the list of blogs it needs to crawl and index.
• Forums — Include your web address to your forum profile signature. That way whenever you post or respond to questions on the forum, your Website URL is seen by the members of the forum, which can lead to a lot of traffic.
• Email Signature — Include your website address in your business email signature. Anyone you communicate with can potentially be your prospect, so you can therefore be promoting or branding your Website every time you send an email.
• Article Marketing — Write articles or free reports for other webmasters to publish and put your website address in the author’s resource or biography. If your reports and articles are of good quality, your articles will be published and many readers who will read your article will also visit your website.

By following these tips, you can generate a steady flow of traffic to your website without spending any money. All you need is to act on these tips and you are sure to see an increase in your Website traffic.

« Previous Page