Once our website gets live, we implement Google Analytics or any other traffic tracking software on our website with the intention that we will start seeing 100’s of visitors to our website from day one. But that does not happen except you are starting a website around big brand or advertising a lot about your new website. So we need to work really hard to increase our website daily traffic from zero to 100 and then from 100 to 1000.
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If spend time on Internet to find out ways to increase traffic to your website, you will come across 100 plus ways at least. But all of them will not work for you. You need to go for the ways that actually helps you improve your website traffic. If you are selling services, products or plain advertisements on your blog, your revenue will depend a lot on your website traffic. As your website traffic increase, sales, leads and money from direct advertisement will increase accordingly. Suppose I’m able to make $200 from advertisements on my website with a monthly traffic of 6000. If I’m able to double my traffic in next six months type somehow, my monthly earnings from advertisements should reach near $400.
In today’s article, I’m going to share 20 tips that will help website owners and bloggers increase traffic to their websites and blogs for free.
1. Write High Quality Contents
As you know more content means more traffic for your website. So you should look at ways to publish more content on your website on regular intervals. It would be great if you could add 2-3 new articles on your website around your website niche. And before writing article around a topic, you should do some keyword research around the keyword you want to target through that article.
2. Active on Social Bookmarking Websites
If you are feeling that your website content are good enough to shared on social networks, start sharing them on social bookmarking websites. If your website contents are good, other peoples on social bookmarking websites would like to read, share, vote and comment on them. When we submit our website articles on these websites, that will help us drive some instant traffic to our website, help towards faster indexing of website contents, brand building and high quality backlinks for better search engine rankings. So I would suggest you start sharing some of interesting articles from your website on top social bookmarking networks including Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Google plus, Humsurfer etc. if any of your article gets viral on these networks, you can get even 10000 hits from these social bookmarking websites in a single day on your website.
3. Use Yahoo Answers
I have seen lots of Internet marketers using Yahoo Answers effectively for driving lots of targeted traffic on their websites. I myself have used Yahoo Answers on some of my websites in health niche. I was able to get even 100 visits from Yahoo Answers in a single day. To be successful with Yahoo Answers, you should start answering questions in niche you are most interested in and knowledgeable about. Your interest and knowledge should match with the website for whom you are thinking of driving additional traffic. I have noticed lots of Yahoo Answers results appearing in search engine results for related queries. Apart from search engine traffic, Yahoo Answers has its own huge fan base that used to browse various categories to get solutions for their problems. You should aim at solving the answer problem with your answer and your answer should not look like a marketing copy of your website. If you do so, your account will be suspended. If other members in Yahoo Answers community feel that your answer is the right answer, they will vote for you and the answer with maximum votes will be declared a winner. The only downside I feel with Yahoo Answers is that all links that we add on Yahoo Answers are nofollow, so we will not get any search engine rankings benefits on Google at least. And we need to be active on Yahoo Answers to keep on getting regular stream of traffic from it on our website. For one of my blog for which I used Yahoo Answers for driving additional traffic has so far given me 20000 plus visits. Here is a screenshot showing traffic that I get from Yahoo Answers for that website.
4. Create Squidoo Lenses
Squidoo gives us the facility to create pages popularity known as lenses around topics of our interest. I have seen lots of people are able to get 100 plus visits on their single lens only every day because Squidoo is top authority website and chances of our content getting higher rankings are quite good if they are published on Squidoo as compared to our own websites. I have even noticed some people are able to make their living from Squidoo lenses only. People use Squidoo lenses to publish their knowledge and interest around a particular topic. So lots of people use Squidoo for creating topical pages. Apart from this lot of guys from seo and blogging communities use Squidoo to build traffic, backlinks and branding for their websites. Squidoo has a huge database of visitors, so lots of people will use Squidoo categories and search options to find desired information. Apart from this, Squidoo lenses rank really high on search engines. So you can expect good amount of high quality traffic coming to your website from Squidoo. You should include few links pointing to your website targeted pages from Squidoo lenses to get maximum benefit of Squidoo lens creation.
5. Create Hubpages
Like Squidoo, we can get some additional traffic to our website by creating hubs on Hubpages.com website. More and more Internet marketers have started including websites like Squidoo and Hubpages into their website promotion plan as these websites give them good traffic and backlinks to help them with promoting their websites.
6. Write Guest Posts
Next thing I would recommend doing is writing guest posts on top blogs in your niche. You should create a list of most popular blogs in your website niche and contact them with the intension to contribute guest posts on their blogs. Most of bloggers will reply positively as blogs need lots of new content on the targeted topics. Once a blogger shows interest in accepting your guest post, you should write a high quality guest post matching that blog niche and follow the guideless given by that blog owners, you should follow during guest blogging on that blog. Once your guest post gets publish, you should share it on social networks where you are active and reply to incoming comments on your guest post. You will get lots of additional benefits apart from instant traffic from guest blogging efforts. You can expect receiving few clicks to 1000 plus visits to your website from a single guest post depending upon your writing style and the popularity of blog where your guest post is actually published.
7. Work As An Expert in Discussion Forums
There are thousands of active discussion forums available, so you will end up getting few discussion forums that are active in your website niche. You should start replying to open threads for which you have a solution. With most of discussion forum, you can add few links to your website in Signature sections. So if people find your solution really helpful, they may go to your website to know more about you and your website services. You should not think of spamming these forums with unrelated self-promotional links. If you do so, your account will be banned from that discussion forum. You can expect some regular traffic and backlinks for your website from discussion forums matching your website niche.
8. Do Lots of Blog Commenting
Make a list of high traffic blogs matching your blog and start making comments on them. As you know, you get a backlink from each approved comment that you write on other blogs. So lots of readers on those blogs will click on the link placed against your website and thus will bring more traffic to your website. To get maximum traffic to your blog commenting efforts, you should try to the first commenter on most of posts as your comment will be more read and clicked there. Lots of people use Google Reader to track their favorite blogs for doing comments. As they notice a new post publishing on any of blog, they will simply go and write their valuable comments so that their comments are actually approved by the blog owners.
9. Do Article Submissions
Write some high quality and interesting articles around your website niche and start publishing them on 5-10 top article publishing websites. Most of article directories will allow you 2-3 links in Author sections that you can use to drive traffic to your website targeted pages. Some high quality backlinks from article publishing websites will help you get top rankings for the targeted keywords and that means more traffic for your website from search engines.
10. Do Press Releases
You should write press release if you adding new product or functionality to your website and submit that on top press release accepting websites. Some topics you can think of doing press release can be latest news, latest development on your website products or services, latest trends etc. If people likes your press release, they will click on your website links that you have placed in your press release. Apart from this, you will be able to get additional links for your website for improving your website search engine rankings and Google Page Rank.
11. Add Links for Your Website on Wikipedia.org
I would advise you to create a page around your brand name on Wikipedia.org website. Apart from this, you should find some topics that you have covered in detail on your website and add links to those pages in Wiikipedia.org articles References or External Links section. For one of my blog, I got 21000 plus visits so far from Wikimedia.org website where I have added a link to one of my blog post in Wikipedia article’s External Links Section. Here is a screenshot showing the same:
12. Facebook Fan Page
Start a Fan Page around your brand and start promoting it. Look for ways to increase your Facebook Fan Base. We don’t need to discuss the popularity and the kind of user base Facebook has. Lots of businesses are able to survive using Facebook marketing only. Having a fan page with thousands of fans will not only help you get lots of direct traffic to your website from your fan page but also helps you improve your website search engine ranking and brand awareness. I have created a Fan Page for Bloggers Passion here, in case you want to check and like my Fan Page.
13. Twitter Profile
Create a strong presence on Twitter and start sharing interesting articles from your website on Twitter. You should write engaging and knowledgeable tweets on Twitter. If people find your tweets interesting, they will click on your website links. You should include some related tags towards the end of your tweet using hash tag. When you use hash tag with your tweets, people may find your tweets while searching for topics of their interest using Twitter search functionality. You can follow Bloggers Passion on Twitter here.
14. Use Classified Websites
If you are a website focused around certain services or products, you should use classified websites. You will get highly relevant traffic when you do classified submissions as most of users visit classified websites to get solutions for their problems. So if they like your product or services, they will surely go for it. So classified websites will help you with more traffic, sales and branding of your website.
15. Directory Submissions
You should submit your website into high PR web directories. Apart from high PR directories, I would recommend submitting your website into web directories having Alexa in five figures and directories that are related to your website niche and demographics. Submission into web directories will give you some gradual traffic and keyword based links which will help you improve your website search engine rankings and thus help you in increasing traffic for your website.
16. Search Engine Submissions
If you have a brand new website, you should submit your website to some popular search engines. Submitting your website into those search engines will help your website faster indexing into their databases and chances of increasing more traffic to your website from most popular search engines.
17. RSS Feed Submissions
If you are offering RSS Feeds facility to your website readers that they can use to subscribe to keep track of latest content coming on your website. I would suggest you submit your RSS feeds into RSS directories. There are hundreds of active RSS directories where you can submit your website RSS. Again you will get some traffic and backlinks for your website through RSS submissions.
18. Use Your Website Links in Email Signature
It is advised to add a link for your website in all of your email signatures. Presence of your website links in signature sections will help people know in detail about you and your company. And when you send emails to someone who is receiving your email for the first time, may even go on checking your website by clicking the link available in your email signature.
19. Show Your Presence in Groups
You should join and be active on groups that are focused around the topics you cover on your website. You will get lots of targeted groups on Google Groups, Yahoo Groups and Facebook Groups section.
20. Do Link Exchange
Link exchange is still effective if done properly. While doing link exchange, you should go for websites and blogs only are related to your website niche. So when you get seo optimized links from related websites and blogs, will help you drive lots of traffic to your website from Google, Yahoo and Bing.
I hope this should be the ultimate list for someone looking for ways to increase traffic to their website. And if you feel I missed something killer traffic generation method that is available for free, please share in the comments section below.
Article by Anil Agarwal
Anil has written 347 articles .
You can follow BloggersPassion on Twitter and Facebook here.
BloggersPassion was started on Jan 01, 2010 on the world’s most awesome blogging platform- WordPress. This blog was started to share blogging tips and for helping you become a successful full time blogger. Blogging is an art and the more you do it, the more you perfect you become.
{ 53 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s good Anil, yahoo answers works and it has been my weapon. I stay off the radar, use yahoo answer and tutorials to send avalanche of targeted traffic to my website on a daily basis. It works so well and I’m glad you shared this.
have you considered writing a tutorial and submitting it online?
Just try it and give your testimonial on my blog
Hi Michael
Thanks a lot for your valuable thoughts. I have written some tutorials and they were helpful in bringing additional traffic and backlinks for my websites
Good article which is based on actual experience and work . Useful.
hi. i tried yahoo answers but someone always report my posts even though i do not spam and my posts are very related to the question. eventually i got suspended. i only use yahoo answers every other day or every three to four days so that i could become off the radar.still my account got suspended.
That’s really bad scenario. I never get into such a situation. I don’t think if only one version is reporting your account on Yahoo Answers, that should create much problem for you.
Huge and Very informative article
Yeah, graet post for bloggers who want to increase traffic to his blog. I like all point but #20 is a point that I don’t like, we should build a blog brand and backlinks will come naturally.
That’s true. But on lots of occasions link exchange can be very handy. Suppose you are providing seo services in Canada, it would be beneficial for you to get links from similar websites based in Canada and other demographics. Since you will be getting relevant backlinks, Google will give some weightage to links that we generate through link exchange process and hence will help improve rankings and traffic for targeted keywords on Google and other search engines. But one thing I would like to say, we should not do much link exchange. It should be used to some extent only in combination with other link building processes to increase backlinks for a website.
I agree that link exchanges should only be used, if you think the site you are exchanging with will be of interest to your visitors and vice versa.
Great list though Anil, one thing I would add, is try and be genuine when you’re active in forums, social media or blog commenting, if you come off as a robot or just repeating yourself it won’t help too much.
Putting quality content to you blog and writing guest post on popular blog of your niche is the best way to drive traffic to your blog
Oh man, this is absloutely fabulous, loving the pictures you show us from your other blog, would you mind telling me what those blogs are? and the page you included the external link on wikipedia?
Right now I have the serious urge to join Yahoo Answers!!
Thanks for this post,i’m really grateful,now my blog is really getting it warrant traffic,thanks for this post anil.
Blog commenting has got to be one of the easiest and best ways to build backlinks and generate traffic. Yahoo Answers is good as well, but I just hate the spammers.
Got a nice idea from the article. I have not thought about wikipedia submission before. Facebook fanpage marketing is working great for my site. I’m happy
-Kabir
Very nice post. Writing Good Content and Blog commenting is best way to increase web traffic
i will apply these tips to my blog! Thanks for sharing such useful info.
Nice post! I will try to apply your tips on my blogs.
Such nice list of ways to increase traffic to your site. Unfortunately I use only few of them. I think I will have to use more of them for my blog.
Great list. THANKS
Thanks very much for your useful advice, I benefit a lot from your suggestion, next time, I will try to put it into practice, sincerely hope that it can bring our websites traffic and links.
Thank you very much for sharing useful tips for site owner. its really help to increase traffic in website.
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Great info! I’ve started several sites and are looking to promote them. Thank you for making such a comprehensive list. I wanted to add stumbleupon.com to the list, as it can direct a lot of traffic to your pages, as they have a specific “weblogs” section. You can also post your website if you have a separate page.
Could you write an article and show readers how to properly submit PR releases?
Very informative article on how to gain some SEO clout and traffic Anil. Well done!
thanks for the info. using wikipedia to drive traffic never came to my mind until now
Great Job! It helps a lot as a reader and as I offer services in Search Engine Optimization. It gives me idea to improve my service.
thank you for this well wrtten blog very helpfull and have learnt alot. Will be returning for more interesting blogs
the traffic which comes from search engines are long term traffic and hence beneficial a lot, it can be achieved by Writing High Quality Contents as you have mentioned above.
Thanks for such useful tips
all these tips are great but I have aquestion. How to add links in wikipedia?
Please help me . I too want to get traffic from there as like you.
Puneet, You can easily add links under References section. While adding links in this section, make sure you are adding links for relevant content pages from your website. Reference links are basically for adding values to a content on Wikipedia.
Anil, wikipedia links are no follow, I think. Right?
That’s true, currently links coming from Wikipedia are nofollow. You should not think much about dofollow or nofollow. Just focus on quality links to make your backlink profile more natural to Google
Very nice. Really very nice articles
Thanks alot for this Impotant stuffs.
Nice post ,blog commenting is a great way to increase traffic to your blog.
Great article. In the web world, each and every online based business needs traffic for its promotion. Even if you have the best product, the best website and everything else you need to make it the best business out there BUT if the webpage lacks traffic, the business will not do so well. Thus, sending traffic to your website is necessary for a business to carry on effectively and profitably.
Thanks for sharing, great blog. It has helped me a lot
hi Aneel glad to see the above stated great tips to increase traffic,i have tried all of them but found three very effective and are “Writting High quality content,Blog commenting and article submission to famous directories like Ezine or that you included Hubpages and Lens.”
Do you think its a good idea to create a fan page for your own personal blog that is written by you alone or just to use the subscribe/follow option in facebook?
I don’t think there is any harm in creating a fan page for your personal blog even. It will actually help you in driving more traffic from Facebook and at the same time will help social signals for your blog, which will be taken positively by Google and other search engines while calculating rankings for your blog.
But i am sharing all the posts in my personal profile itself (Which is set to *Public*) so that should be enough right?
Eg. http://www.facebook.com/tharunpkarun
Profile page has its own limitations. Fan page is something where you can showcase your brand properly. You should focus more on your fan page than your profile.
But Anil, Its my personal blog right? Since the blog name is my name, it can’t be said like a “Brand” but just a blog right?
Don’t you think that for me, Facebook Profile (with Subscribers) is enough?
very nice tips here anil..
but its very hard to implement them all.. i thinks 3. most important things which makes SEO are
1. nicely written article with quality keywords
2. good dofollow backlink list
3. on page SEO with perfect keword research.
Some great tips Anil
Your screenshot about Yahoo Answers is incredibly powerful – I’ll be giving it a go to see what effect it has for our traffic
Thanks for a good post
Thanks, for sharing this helpful article, I like wikipedia (wiki) and yahoo(yahoo answer) platform for increase blog traffic.
Never use hubpage or Squidoo but fter reading you article I am trying to understand how to work with it. But 1 thing you may forgot to tell about “stumbleaupon”
After share I get 100+ visitor everyday. It help me alot even my first share got 86 visitor with in a hour.
hi ! I have a blog of 3 months old but having only handful of traffic …..what would be better to start as a starter ?
Thanks in advance.
This is great Anil. Thank you so much. We launched a month ago and are going through the struggles of driving traffic. Already posted a few answers on Yahoo.
Will be implementing the others as well.. Starting with a comment on your great blog.
Cheers.
I really Love the information is presented in your Post. I have added you in my Social Bookmarking, Social Media & Gust Blogging… and i am waiting for your next Post.
Hii…I recently started a tech blog..and i was searching for the ways to increase traffic to my blog…Thanks for the post …and thanks for suggesting hub pages and Yahoo answers …I really helped me a lot..
You should check this page http://blogs.constantcontact.com/product-blogs/social-media-marketing/facebook-page-vs-profile-championship/ to get a better idea between the two. If after going though this link, you are convinced, you are fine with a profile page only, go ahead with that thing only.
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