Over the years, I have had several people ask me this very question; how do I get FREE traffic to my website or blog?
Mostly I tell these people, your blog or website’s strength depends on its visitors and without visitors, you have no business or blog.
What is the point in having a website or blog which is only visited by you and probably your mother—that is if the latter is even interested?
Today, I’ve decided to answer the above question to help the many website owners and bloggers fetch the needed traffic…
Free Traffic
Getting traffic to your blog or website for free is easier than most people think. What is mostly holding people back is that, they do not actually know what brings in the FREE traffic and how to get these things to perform.
So let’s look at how to get FREE traffic to your blog or website;
-Content
Without good content, why should anyone visit your blog or website? Why will anyone want to visit a place that does not offer what he/she wants? No one likes to waste their time in life and even if they visit your page my mistake, they will quickly leave because you will not be able to offer them their wants.
Creating good content is the key to getting good traffic. You must be able to give people what they cannot find somewhere or something of higher quality to be able to attract them to your blog/website—or to get them to stay after a first visit.
You should consider what will interest people and provide your content along those lines—-so that they will feel your blog/website fits their interest.
Whatever you decide to write about, make sure you know what you are talking about—or else, those who visit will never return again.
–Through Search Engines
When you have great content and a great website/blog layout, the search engines will easily rank your content very well—and this will bring hundreds/thousands of FREE traffic to your blog/website.
About 65% of my blog’s traffic comes from the search engines and this is because, people are daily looking for things and I happen to write on these things.
Though good content will get ranked well in search engines and ultimately bring you some traffic, the amount of traffic depends on what your content is about—that is, are people searching for the things you have written about (Keywords).
It is difficult to generally know what people WILL be searching but quite easy to know what they searched by using tools like Google’s Keyword Tools.
When it comes to what people WILL be searching, depending on your blog or website, you stand a chance of getting huge traffic if you break news or get it right—since people will be searching that news.
I remember when Nelson Mandela died, I was one of the early bloggers to report it and immediately, my blog’s traffic went over the top—to the extent that the traffic that day is my all-time highest.
–Social Media
Facebook, Twitter and several of the social media platforms are great traffic generating tools—which most people do not know.
With millions of people on these platforms, you can share your content or website/blog links regularly to catch your friends into clicking on them and visit.
Also, instead of doing the sharing yourself, you can have a facebook LIKE button or a TWEET button placed above or below each content so that whoever reads it and loves it, can easily share it with others. That way, your readers will be spreading the content by bringing you more readers—all for FREE.
Have you got a facebook fan page or group page for your blog? Create a social media community around your blog/website and the community members will help promote your blog/website.
–Give out Freebies
Even though there is always a catch to freebies, people still love freebies—and in fact, I am yet to meet a person who hates FREE things.
Why don’t you spark your website/blog traffic by giving out freebies to visitors? This can be in a form of holding competitions where one of the requirements is for the person entering the competition to share an article, share your website/blog link or invite friends to your blog.
Even without asking for any of the above, the fact that people love freebies mean, news about freebies goes far—especially if the freebies are valuable.
So if you are good at something, hold a seminar to teach that thing for free, give out free CDs or DVDs, free books. Such things can help fetch your blog/website the needed attention…
-Word of Mouth/Offline Promo
Do you have promo flyers for your website/blog? Why don’t you give some to your friends to distribute at their universities, colleges or place of worship for you? You can also do this and you will be amazed as to the number of people who will follow the flyers/leaflets to your blog/website.
Even if you do not have a promo leaflet or flyer, you can tell people about your blog/website during conversations and if you are able to tell 10 different people each week to visit your blog that will be 40 people in a month…
Anytime you are attending an event, be prepared to promote your blog out there for FREE…
-Comment on other Blogs/Websites
Instead of just building a relationship with the readers of your blog, you can also do so with readers of other blogs within your niche—and even the owners of these blogs by regularly contributing to their website (valuable comments).
Most blogs and websites will allow you to leave your link within valuable comments, as long as you are not spamming their platform.
If you are a popular commenter, you can easily invite the other commenters to check out your blog or occasionally share some of your great content with them…
-Guest Posts
Even though commenting on other blogs is a good tool to pick some of the blogs traffic, the best tool is to write an article for the blog and have your link placed below the article—most websites/blogs will gladly do this.
So instead of keeping all your great contents on your blog only to be read by a few, why don’t you give some away to other blogs as a bait?
This works really great!
-Interviewing the Big Bloggers
Who does not love to be recognized for his/her achievements? You can strike a relationship with some of the big bloggers in your niche and request for an interview which you will publish on your blog…
Here is the catch; after publishing the interview, share the link with this same big blogger and even if he/she does not publish excepts of the interview on his blog with a link back to you, he may tweet or share it on social media for you. This way, his/her readers will see the link and follow it to your blog.
You can easily tweet at the big blogger with the link and kindly request a retweet, which the big blogger will easily do—after all, it is an article about his/her great achievements.
-Other ways
There are several other ways out there through which you can get FREE traffic to your blog-such as free banners and link exchanges. The above are a few of the good ones…Share with us how you get FREE traffic to your blog/website.
I will follow this post up with another on how to get PAID traffic to your website.
Vincent, that is a great piece of information. I have started blogging in Ghana and am gathering numerous information as to how to create traffic and also make some money. I find this information helpful.
Glad this has been helpful to you—and I hope your blog is picking up.
Great job done Chris. I think your blog is just what everyone should look out for before starting a blog.God richly bless you