The methods of getting traffic above are all very workable and using them will definitely help you see more traffic. Still, there are more webmasters than ever before who are also trying to get traffic to their websites. That means you need to use outside of the box strategies you can use to set yourself apart from the competition. Using these ideas will help you get a devoted following, and a lot of traffic.
Run contests
People love to win things. If you run contests on your website you can be sure that people will stop by to see if they can win. Your hope is that they will see that you have quality content that is worth reading. This can go viral since people are likely to tell their friends about such a great contest.
Contests you can run include product giveaways, free links on your blog or site, and more. Think about what the people in your niche want the most, and give it to them.
In fact, here’s a free report you can read on the topic:
HYPERLINK “http://www.webtrafficbasics.com/BoostTrafficwithaBlogContest.pdf”http://www.webtrafficbasics.com/BoostTrafficwithaBlogContest.pdf
Use Yahoo Answers efficiently
Many marketers are using Yahoo answers in an effort to get traffic to their websites. The problem is most of them are not using in the right way. The point of using Yahoo Answers with a link back to your website is NOT to spam. Instead, you need to seek out questions that you can answer as an expert and provide a great answer to. If your website is relevant, you can link to it as long as it is serving the needs of the person who asked the question.
Your answer needs to be very detailed and specific and showcase the fact that you are an expert in the niche. You’ll have a better chance of getting chosen as the “favorite” answer, which is great for those times when Yahoo Answers ranks highly in the search engines.
Sponsor a blog theme
Many people use Word press blog themes because they are attractive and very efficient, whereas you would have to pay a designer several hundred or thousand dollars to design something similar from scratch. Since you find these themes so useful, you know that other people will too. You can now be on the other side of things by sponsoring a theme.
Don’t worry if you’re not very technologically savvy, because you can hire a freelancer to do this for you.
Need outsourcing help? Check out HYPERLINK “http://www.OutsourceWeekly.com/”www.OutsourceWeekly.com
The cool part is that at the very bottom of the theme you’re going to include a link to your website or blog. That way, whenever someone installs the theme on their site, you’ll get the benefit of having many links over time
Sponsor an HTML template
Just like you can sponsor a WordPress theme, you can also sponsor an HTML template. This works in much the same way as the blog themes above. Create a template (or have one created) that people will be sure to use, and include a link in the footer that leads back to your site.
Remember — make this very high quality so that people want to use it.
It works even better when you create a template that is focused on your particular niche. When people use it for their site that’s in the same niche it will count as a contextually relevant link.
Build a network of sites instead of just one
You can do very well if you have more than one website in a niche. Interlink these sites to help you boost your search engine rankings. You can also create sites in smaller sub niches to hit more areas of the market at once. The idea is best built up over time, but there is nothing stopping you from building more than one as soon as you can handle it. They can all “help each other out” in the rankings.
Talk about the “gurus”
Every niche has a set of gurus who people either look up to or who create controversy in some way. If you create a list of these gurus or talk about them in an interesting way you can get some traffic — you might even get some kind of response from the gurus themselves.
Try looking for keywords that are related to these people’s names because they may be easier to rank for, yet are still highly searched.
Research using sites that are for sale
What you may not realize is that people sell their websites all the time and basically give away all of their marketing methods. All you need to do is go look at the website listings to see what level of traffic they were getting and duplicate exactly what they were doing.
The most popular site for doing this is SitePoint.com.
If you go there and look at the premium and established websites you should be able to find one that is related to your niche. Prospective buyers will usually have asked them questions about their marketing methods, and it’s safe to say that if you do as the site owner has done you will start to see the same levels of traffic.
Better yet, you can improve on their strategy to get even more traffic for your own website.
Another option is to buy sites that already have traffic and use them as a shortcut to getting traffic of your own.
Submit an ad or your content in magazines
Another great method is to submit an ad or write an article for offline magazines in your niche. This is great because many of the smaller niche magazines have inexpensive ad fees and are regularly looking for writers. A lot of marketers stick to online methods and completely forget that the offline world exists. That’s just fine, because you can use this method to your advantage.
This will add a lot to your credibility as well.
Find related news websites
There are likely websites that offer news related to your niche. You can visit these sites to find their author submission guidelines. Browse around to see what they are looking for in a writer as well. If you think you’ve got a good idea, do some research to see what you need to do to send a query letter.
After your article is published, you will get a link to your website on what is likely a highly trafficked news website.
Create surveys
People love to feel a part of something, and surveys are a great to include your visitors. You can use a site like HYPERLINK “http://www.SurveyMonkey.com/”www.SurveyMonkey.com to freely ask questions of people in your niche.
People like know that they have had some kind of input, so they’ll be more likely to visit to see what kind of updates and content you have. They will also be more likely to pass along an interesting survey link to their friends. You can sweeten the deal by offering some kind of prize for completing the survey.
Create lists of things
Other webmasters are always looking for things that will be helpful to link to for their the people who visit their site. You can provide them with the most perfect content to link to if you use the “top 10″ list format.
Remember — since you’re going to get more visitors you should always offer an easy way for people to get updates on your content and products. This means making an RSS feed available if you have a blog. If you have a static website have an autoresponder list so that you can mail your visitors.
This takes away your reliance on search engines and puts a lot of your traffic into your own hands. What I mean by this is that, if, heaven forbid, the search engines all drop you – you’ll still be able to mail your list about your offers to get traffic and make money.
Create a forum
Forums are different because you actually have to drive traffic to them as well, but when you do it correctly it can be well worth the effort. People start to develop relationships with each other because they have found others who are interested in the same topics. This means that you will constantly have content created for you with the forum discussions.
You have to use a lot of the same traffic strategies you’ve already seen listed to get your forum started. But once you get some members it takes on a life of its own. It will be a pretty hands-free way of getting traffic from that point on.
Create a PodCast
PodCasts are another way to use audio to get people interested in your content to ultimately gain more traffic. Many people who are on the go just don’t have time to sit down and read a long article or watch a video on their screen. A workaround to this is to make audio content available to them.
MP3 is the most popular format and you can make the files easily downloadable from your website. You can also submit the audio to sites like iTunes.com and MP3.com to start gaining a following. This will help to solidify your role as an expert in your niche and you’ll get more traffic as a result
Don’t have time to create your own Podcast? Then be a guest on someone elses.
Interview the experts
Once again, people love to hear from experts. You can contact these experts to see if they will allow you to interview them. The chances are good that the expert will agree because it helps to brand his (or her) name and they’ll get a free link from your site.
You can also repurpose these interviews by making them available as a gift for signing up to your list.
Exchange content with others
Yet another way to increase traffic to your website is to exchange content with another authority site in your niche. Do you sometimes get tired of writing content? So do other webmasters. That’s why it’s a no-brainer deal to exchange content.
You will both include a link to the other person’s site on your own site. Don’t get too hung up on the duplicate content myth, because Google itself has debunked this. If the other person is really worried about duplicate content, you can offer to rewrite their article and your own.
It’s still worth it because you will get the link from their site.
Link to other blogs from yours
When you link to blogs they are automatically notified by the TrackBack system.
Some of the bloggers will ignore this, but many others will reciprocate the link “just because.” The more often you link to other relevant blogs the more chances you have of getting free links. These links really do add up over time and they can increase your search engine rankings drastically. This is especially true since the content you’re linking to is so relevant to your own.
Create quality content.
This tip was actually referenced in several of the other tips, but it has to be said on its own and as the final tip, because it is so very important. In fact, if you throw out all the other tips and stick with this one, you will still get a lot of excellent traffic that builds up over time.
If you think about it people want is good content on the Internet.
People want to read quality content for information or to to make a buying decision.
Search engines want to include quality content at the top of their search engine rankings because they want to provide a good user experience for the people using the search engines.
Other webmasters want to link to quality content because it makes themselves look good and improves their own quality in the eyes of the search engines.
Therefore it stands to reason that your number one goal should be to write the best content possible and provide the best user experience possible on your site — the rest of these tips will come together. Follow this tip as your cardinal rule.
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