Ticket to Ride: Seven Tips to Free Traffic
“All aboard!” shouts the conductor, alerting the passengers that the train is getting ready to pull out of the station. If you don’t have your ticket and know where you are going, you’d better get it sorted out fast. After all, there are many tracks that lead out from the station. And while you might travel miles and miles down one track, you could end up finding out that you’ve traveled miles and miles in the wrong direction.
Thankfully, the engineers on the train know where all the tracks lead. In order to move people from one place to another, they have a map that indicates the cities each track will pass through. Not only can they get you where you are headed, but they can bring you back safely as well.
Imagine that your website is a train depot, and the tracks carry potential visitors to your website. Is your depot a stop along the way, or is it a major hub that many people must visit in order to get where they are going?
Regardless, much like a railroad engineer, you must be able to conduct people from one place to another. The key is getting them to “jump off” at your stop or to make your stop a regular destination. Here are seven key ways that I generate traffic to my websites. Let’s begin…
1) Articles
Syndicating your original articles is a great way to generate free traffic AND increase credibility in your niche. The key is creating original, quality content and syndicating it to the right places.
While there are many article sites on the web, the vast majority of them are riddled with sub-par content. Rather than submit your work to dozens of sites like these, I recommend putting your article syndication efforts into one primary location, EzineArticles.com.
The oldest and largest article site on the web, Chris Knight’s EzineArticles.com, is a gold mine for those who submit their work. Their team of editors checks for quality of content before accepting it on their site, as well as possible duplicate content. That prevents others from submitting your article for their benefit.
An author resource box allows you to enter your bio, a photo, and links to one or more of your sites. Follow along as you see where the traffic benefit comes into play.
First, your articles will appear on the EzineArticles.com website, which receives massive traffic. Ranked in the top 300 most trafficked sites in the world according to Alexa.com, many people will come to the site just to read your article.
But the real click-through goodness takes place when other site owners choose to republish your article on their websites. EzineArticles.com’s terms of use state that any site owner can republish up to twenty-five articles on any of their websites, provided they republish the entire article WITH the author resource box!
That means not only will your name be spread every time your article is republished, but the links to your site must stay intact. You can now see why I am a champion of this form of free traffic.
2) Autoresponders
It’s been said again and again that “the money is in the list.” The truth is that the money is in the RELATIONSHIP with the list. Once people know they can trust you, they are more likely to buy from you. Since it is more difficult to find a new customer than to interact with an existing customer, your email list is the best way to instantly reach your audience.
It’s one thing to manually send email to your customers, but smart online business owners retain the services of an autoresponder service such as Aweber.com.
Aweber allows you to schedule, broadcast, or drip messages on a pre-determined schedule. For example, a new subscriber would receive a welcome email. The next day she would receive a follow-up message. Three days later, another follow-up message, and so on. What’s the traffic benefit of an autoresponder?
Email is one of the greatest ways you can drive traffic! Simply compose your message, upload it to the service, schedule its delivery, and away you go. You’ll need a catchy subject line to make sure your mail is opened, so be sure to write something that will grab the attention of the reader. Occasionally I will compose brief messages that serve as “teasers” to get people to click to my website. Sometimes a couple of paragraphs with a cliffhanger will do the trick. For example: “Here’s a confession… Not every idea I’ve had has been golden. In fact, I can say that many of the business ideas I’ve tried have managed to bring me… well, let’s just say about the equivalent of one or two lunches per week. That’s one of the advantages of marketing. Everyone gets to know about your successes but… http://www.joelcomm.com/time_to_fail.html.”
Use your email and autoresponders wisely to entice more visitors to your website.
3) Email Signatures
Here’s an easy way to get free traffic. Think of how many emails you send each day. While many of your messages may be correspondence with associates, clients, or prospects, there is a function that is frequently overlooked. And it only takes you sixty seconds to set up.
All email clients allow you to create a signature. That’s the text that automatically appears at the bottom of every email you send. Whenever you create a new email, your computer will automatically insert your signature file in the message.
For example, my current signature file says:
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Have You Got Twitter Power?
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Be sure to take advantage of the white space at the bottom of your email by including your custom signature.
4) Forums
Pre-dating the web, people have been using discussion forums to interact with others for many years. Essentially, niche-based forums provide opportunities to join the conversation, build relationships, and draw attention to your products or services.
The first thing to do is become familiar with forum sites in your niche. Become a member, it’s usually free. And then avoid the critical error made by so many people… don’t start promoting yourself right away!
You would never go to a conference and start pitching your product or service to complete strangers without building some rapport. By the same token, you shouldn’t immediately enter a forum to talk about how great you are.
Instead, take the time to understand the community and become a part of it by bringing value to the discussion. Remember, people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. So engage with others by providing answers to questions. Perhaps you have a question of your own to ask. Either way, get some posts under your belt before you bring your business into the discussion. Once people see that you are knowledgeable, they may begin asking you questions about what you do. And when appropriate, you can post a link with an answer to your blog or website. Once you have established credibility in a forum-based community, it’s amazing how many people will follow your links and watch for your posts. This is a great way to generate free traffic.
5) Free Reports
You may be seeing a theme in these different ways to generate traffic. You should always seek to add massive value in all you do. Your blog is a great way to do this, but packaging the content in a downloadable manner is also very appealing and effective.
Write original content and create a report that can be given away for free. I’ve written nearly twenty-five reports, averaging thirty pages, and made them available to various segments of my customer base over the years. These reports have focused on list building, affiliate programs, domain names and a number of other topics that I felt were timely.
To create a downloadable PDF, simply create a document in Microsoft Word and save it as a PDF. Not only has this method of deliverability become universal, but you can easily embed images and links within the document as well. This is the where the traffic generation concept hits its stride. Simply give away great content and provide a link where readers can learn more. Your document could refer readers to your blog articles, forums, squeeze page, or sales page.
Use your imagination and take a look at one of my free reports to get some ideas. For example, I have offered visitors to SafetySurf.com a free guide to help parents protect their children online. You can download it at safetysurf.com/freebook.html – be sure to note how I have embedded links back to SafetySurf.com within the free report!
6) Twitter
The poster child for generating free traffic, Twitter has become one of my favorite daily activities. Valuable for connecting with others, building relationships, and exposing others to your products and/or services, Twitter is proof that short messages can go a long way!
Once again, please don’t sign up and immediately begin talking about yourself and your wares. Engage with others by replying to their tweets. Answer questions. Be yourself and have fun. When others see that you have something to say, they will be more interested in who you are and what you have to offer. It’s all about relationships, so remember that everyone else who uses Twitter is a human being with their own mind, will, and emotions.
Once you have established a following on Twitter, you will have plenty of opportunities to drive traffic to your sites by sharing useful links that your followers will appreciate. And wouldn’t you know it… I have a free report on this very subject. You can download it now at twitpwr.com/twitterreport.
And if you want the FULL story on how to use Twitter for business, I invite you to pick up a copy of “Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time,” at twitterpower.com.
7) Press Releases
Just because this item is last on my list, don’t think that it is the last traffic generation tool you should use. On the contrary, press release distribution is one of the staples in my traffic generation toolbox. It’s important to note that the true power of press releases is NOT in getting the media to pick up your story. While that is always a happy thing, the real purpose of using press release services is to get inbound links to your websites distributed across the web.
I recommend either PRWeb.com or ExpertClick.com for distributing your press releases. Both services allow you to embed hyperlinks to websites using the keywords of your choice.
While I have used press releases for a number of sites and services, I have experimented with keywords to see what is possible. One of these experiments centered around getting my first name on the front page of the search results. In each press release I submitted, I usually quoted myself as the founder of a site or creator of the service offered. I made it a point to link “Joel” to my blog at JoelComm.com. Has it paid off? Enter “Joel” into Google and my site will come up on the first page! Yes, this was somewhat vain, but it does demonstrate the power of press releases for search engine optimization and the traffic that can result.
In this article, I’ve revealed seven ways in which I generate traffic to my sites, products, and services. It’s not rocket science and I am certain that you can easily apply these same strategies. There are millions of people searching the web at any given moment. They are going to hop on a virtual train to get where they are going. Leverage these strategies and techniques to bring them to your depot. All aboard!
