SEO Basics: 8 Essentials When Optimizing Your Site

Basic search engine optimization (SEO) is fundamental. And essential. SEO will help you position your website properly to be found at the most critical points in the buying process or when people need your site.

What are search engines looking for? How can you build your website in a way that will please both your visitors/customers, as well as Google, Bing, and other search engines? Most importantly, how can SEO help your web presence become more profitable?

During the Introduction to SEO session at SES New York, Carolyn Shelby (@CShel), Director of SEO, Chicago Tribune/435 Digital, fully explained the extreme value SEO can deliver to a site, and stressed the importance of basic SEO using the following analogy:

"Skipping the basics and spending all your time and money on social and 'fancy stuff' is the same as skipping brushing your teeth and showering, but buying white strips and wearing expensive cologne," Shelby said.

Although the Introduction to SEO session was intended for industry newcomers, Shelby's tips offer important reminders for even experienced SEO professionals who have been optimizing sites for years.

What is SEO, Exactly?

The goal of foundational SEO isn't to cheat or "game" the search engines. The purpose of SEO is to:

• Create a great, seamless user experience.
• Communicate to the search engines your intentions so they can recommend your website for relevant searches.

1. Your Website is Like a Cake

Your links, paid search, and social media acts as the icing, but your content, information architecture, content management system, and infrastructure act as the sugar and makes the cake. Without it, your cake is tasteless, boring, and gets thrown in the trash.

2. What Search Engines Are Looking For

Search engines want to do their jobs as best as possible by referring users to websites and content that is the most relevant to what the user is looking for. So how is relevancy determined?

• Content: Is determined by the theme that is being given, the text on the page, and the titles and descriptions that are given.
• Performance: How fast is your site and does it work properly?
• Authority: Does your site have good enough content to link to or do other authoritative sites use your website as a reference or cite the information that's available?
• User Experience: How does the site look? Is it easy to navigate around? Does it look safe? Does it have a high bounce rate?

3. What Search Engines Are NOT Looking For

Search engine spiders only have a certain amount of data storage, so if you're performing shady tactics or trying to trick them, chances are you're going to hurt yourself in the long run. Items the search engines don't want are:

• Keyword Stuffing: Overuse of keywords on your pages.
• Purchased Links: Buying links will get you nowhere when it comes to SEO, so be warned.
• Poor User Experience: Make it easy for the user to get around. Too many ads and making it too difficult for people to find content they're looking for will only increase your bounce rate. If you know your bounce rate it will help determine other information about your site. For example, if it's 80 percent or higher and you have content on your website, chances are something is wrong.

4. Know Your Business Model

While this is pretty obvious, so many people tend to not sit down and just focus on what their main goals are. Some questions you need to ask yourself are:

• What defines a conversion for you?
• Are you selling eyeballs (impressions) or what people click on?
• What are your goals?
• Do you know your assets and liabilities?

5. Don't Forget to Optimize for Multi-Channels

Keyword strategy is not only important to implement on-site, but should extend to other off-site platforms, which is why you should also be thinking about multi-channel optimization. These multi-channel platforms include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email
• Offline, such as radio and TV ads

Being consistent with keyword phrases within these platforms will not only help your branding efforts, but also train users to use specific phrases you're optimizing for.

6. Be Consistent With Domain Names

Domain naming is so important to your overall foundation, so as a best practice you're better off using sub-directory root domains (example.com/awesome) versus sub-domains (awesome.example.com). Some other best practices with domain names are:

• Consistent Domains: If you type in www.example.com, but then your type in just example.com and the "www" does not redirect to www.example.com, that means the search engines are seeing two different sites. This isn't effective for your overall SEO efforts as it will dilute your inbound links, as external sites will be linking to www.example.com and example.com.
• Keep it Old School: Old domains are better than new ones, but if you're buying an old domain, make sure that the previous owner didn't do anything shady to cause the domain to get penalized.
• Keywords in URL: Having keywords you're trying to rank for in your domain will only help your overall efforts.

7. Optimizing for Different Types of Results

In addition to optimizing for the desktop experience, make sure to focus on mobile and tablet optimization as well as other media.

• Create rich media content like video, as it's easier to get a video to rank on the first page than it is to get a plain text page to rank.
• Optimize your non-text content so search engines can see it. If your site uses Flash or PDFs, make sure you read up on the latest best practices so search engines can crawl that content and give your site credit for it.

8. Focus on Your Meta Data Too

Your content on your site should have title tags and meta descriptions.

• Meta keywords are pretty much ignored by search engines nowadays, but if you still use them, make sure it talks specifically to that page and that it is also formatted correctly.
• Your meta description should be unique and also speak to that specific page. Duplicate meta descriptions from page to page will not get you anywhere.

Title tags should also be unique! Think your title as a 4-8 word ad, so do your best to entice the reader so they want to click and read more.

Summary

You should always keep SEO in the forefront of your mind, and always follow best practices. Skipping the basics of SEO will only leave your site's foundation a mess and prevent you from fully maximizing revenue opportunities.

5 Steps to Create a Website That Both Your Customers & Search Engines Will Love

A major mistake businesses often make when it comes to SEO is optimizing their website at the expense of their customers. Have you ever entered a website while researching a product or service, only to be confronted with massive amounts of content on a poorly designed website? This probably resulted in not only a frustrating experience, but also your exit from the site, and a lost sale for that business.

Here are five steps you can implement to avoid this scenario, and create a website that both your customers and search engines will love.

Step 1: Understand Your Customer

This seems obvious, but business owners tend to design websites that are appealing to them, rather than figuring out what is appealing to their customers. The way you perceive your products or services may be very different than how your customers perceive them.

If you don’t already know, figure out why your existing customers buy from you, rather than your competitors, and make this differentiation readily apparent on your website.

Communicating this value proposition to prospective customers as soon as they enter your website can mean the difference between whether they choose to stay on your site, and whether they choose to do business with you.

Step 2: Don’t Attempt to Create a Work of Art

Websites don't have to be beautiful. They just have to be useful and engaging to your target audience.

This isn't to say your website shouldn't be attractive. But unless you're selling art, it doesn't have to be a work of art. Instead, focus your energy on creating aesthetics that appeal to your customers, emphasize credibility, and improve your brand.

Different aesthetics appeal to different audiences. For example, if your target audience is women ages 18 to 28, the colors, fonts, and imagery you choose to incorporate in your website should be very different than if you’re targeting men ages 45 to 55.

Additionally, emphasize credibility and improve your brand by utilizing a professional design. A website that looks cheap can undermine the credibility of your business and detract from your brand.

Step 3: Create Purposeful, Well-Written Content

The purpose of the content on your website should be to inform your reader, rather than to attract search engines. Your content should be well written, concise, and purposeful. Poor grammar, excessive verbiage, and content without a clear purpose will turn off readers, and potentially result in lost customers.

For each page on your website, ask yourself the following questions

• What is the purpose of this page?
• Will my customers find this information valuable?
• What is the impression I want to make on the person reading it?
• What is the action I want the reader to take?

Step 4: Provide Easy-to-Use Navigation

User-friendly navigation is key to allowing your customers to quickly and conveniently find what they’re looking for on your site. Incorporate navigation in both the header and the footer, so your customers have easy access to it, regardless of where they are on the page. If your site has lots of pages, consider including a drop-down menu for easy access to pages deep within your site.

Also, consider including a sidebar menu that allows for an alternative way to access pages deep within your site. For example, ecommerce sites often list product types in the header navigation and list brand types in the sidebar menu, or vice versa. This gives the customer the option to search by product type or brand, rather than forcing them to search by one or the other.

Step 5: Measure & Improve

Once all of these elements are in place, measure the results by determining your key performance indicators (KPIs). Of course, you want to monitor your search engine rankings, but understanding how those rankings contribute to increased quality traffic, and conversions is essential.

For example, if you own an ecommerce store, your KPIs should include purchases and shopping cart abandonment rates. If you own a brick and mortar, your KPIs may include contact form submissions, phone calls, and the percentage of those form submissions and phone calls that result in sales.

Utilize tracking software such as Google Analytics and know where your customers are coming from, and the steps they are taking that result in conversions, and those that do not. Use this data to continuously improve both your website and your SEO strategy.

Conclusion

Follow these five steps to create a website that both your customers and search engines will love. This will not only improve your rankings, but your bottom line as well.

How to Use Google Webmaster Tools to Maximize Your SEO Campaign

Google provides a number of tools for your SEO arsenal. The most obvious is Google Analytics, which offers an in-depth analytics suite to help even the most basic user understand and improve traffic to their website. But Google Webmaster Tools gives the advanced search expert another perspective on planning and evaluating his or her search efforts.

Here's a closer look at how to use Google Webmaster Tools to get the most out of your SEO campaign.

Google Webmaster Tools: The Background

Google's Webmaster Tools are essential for any strong SEO effort. To understand their full potential, it's helpful to think about what Google Webmaster Tools' role is for webmasters: it helps you see your website as Google sees it. The toolset gives you insights into what pages have been indexed on your site, what links are pointing to it, your most popular keywords, and much more.

A site that's active in Webmaster Tools has a better shot at being fully indexed and ranking well. There are also a number of deeper insights from Google Webmaster Tools can be turned into SEO tactical gold.

If you haven't set your site up on Google Webmaster Tools yet, getting started is simple. Once you've signed up for an account, login to the Google Webmaster Tools dashboard. From there, you're able to add your site.

You'll have to first verify that you own the domain. Depending on your host, Google may provide verification through an easy pop-up process that allows you to login and verify in just a couple steps.

Other options include entering a Google-provided meta tag to your homepage, uploading an HTML file to your site's root folder, or confirming ownership via Google Analytics if it's already installed on your site. After you've verified your website, it'll usually start populating data within 24 – 48 hours.

Google Webmaster Tools Features You Should Be Using

Once your site is set up, it's time to log in and get to know the interface. If you need an introductory tutorial, here's a good overview.

At its core, Google Webmaster Tools is all about metrics: what's getting indexed, what's getting linked, and what's getting traffic.

Breaking down that data in different ways and looking at it with an eye toward learning specific things will help you make the most of the information. From this data, you can quickly formulate a plan around what next steps you need to take.

Get the Lay of the Land with Search Queries

 

The Search Queries area gives you both traffic and keyword information.

Why not just consult Google Analytics? Actually, Google Webmaster Tools gives a completely different (and possibly more holistic) view. It doesn't just show you the breakdown of the traffic that made it to your site; it shows your traffic potential via impressions and site ranking across Google search results as well.

The Search Queries section is broken down into five main indicators:

• Query: Query gives you details on what keywords your site is currently ranked for. This is one of the fastest ways to decode whether your efforts to get on the map for a specific keyword are working. It's important to remember that "rank for" means showing up in the SERPs – not necessarily actively attracting traffic (yet). This feature can help you quickly identify keywords that are relevant, but need a boost from linking or further content optimization.
• Impressions: If you've ever wondered how many people are seeing your website for a specific keyword search, this will tell you. This metric gives you a good sense of how many people are seeing specific sections of your content. This is another way to confirm the value of a keyword in addition to traffic data from the Google Keywords module and other tools.
• Clicks: Of the people who are seeing your site, how many are clicking? This information lets you know how many searchers seeing your site are taking action and clicking on your search result.
• CTR: Your CTR, or click-through rate, is the percentage of people that are clicking on your site in the search results. If your click-through rates are low, look at whether you can improve your meta description for that page. Can the content be made more relevant to the queries driving the most impressions for that page, or can you add a stronger call to action in the title tag or meta description? You should also consider the broader search landscape: is PPC activity driving traffic away from your branded results in the search, for example?
• Average Position: This metric tells you where your site typically ranks for each keyword. Since the vast majority of traffic goes to the sites in the top 2 positions for a given term, it's helpful to see how you're performing and the impact that has on your traffic.

Viewing Data With Change to See Trends Over Time

If you've recently launched a new SEO strategy and want to see how effective it is, one of the best ways to do that is to use the "With Change" feature. While you're in the Search Queries section, activate the "With Change" button. This shifts the perspective and shows your current statistics as well as looking at your change in performance over time.

This data can be useful in a number of ways. Have you recently changed your site copy? If so, this can help to gauge the effectiveness of your updates. It's also useful in the context of Google updates to see how your average rankings and conversions have been affected. Tracking this information over time is the best way to consistently adapt your SEO strategy to the broader SEO landscape.

Drilling Into Individual Keywords

To understand how you're performing for an individual keyword, click on that term while you're in the search query section. Diving into the data for individual keywords gives you insights on which pages are ranking for those words. Not only will this help you better understand your overall SEO successes, it specifically informs different elements of your content strategy.

It lets you know if content you're developing is effectively targeting your selected terms. It also helps you identify connections you might not have perceived previously between existing content and target queries. Individual keywords with potential can also be given more focus when you're developing new content such as blog posts, videos, and more.

Finding Optimization Opportunities with Top Pages

Within the "Search Queries" area, you'll have the opportunity to see the "top pages." This metric tells you which content on your site gets the most impressions and clicks. You can identify low-hanging fruit opportunities that are easy to capitalize on.

For example, if you have content that gets a great CTR but is ranking on Page 2 of the SERPs, you could build some links to that page in order to bump it to the first page. If you've been working hard to optimize content that's not getting traction, you will often find other pages that are organically capturing visitors and can adjust your strategy. The key here is to understand that sometimes your audience focuses on something unexpected, and by uncovering that information you're able to deliberately build your strategy to make the most of it.

Refining Your Page-Level Strategy

When you structured your site, you likely chose specific keywords to target with each page or section of content on your site. Google Webmaster Tools allows you to take that process in reverse, and identify what keywords each page of your content ranks for. Likely these will include both your target keywords and some surprises.

Once you've mapped out the keywords for each page, add those keywords to a rank tracking tool to find out additional data like traffic and competition. This will help you uncover any unexploited opportunities.

Once you get a list of what keywords a particular page ranks for, you should make sure your page actually contains all those keywords. Pay specific attention to high value real estate like your page titles and the first paragraph of your article.

Using Google Webmaster Tools Labs: Author Stats

Google's Labs are where they test new features that are still being refined. Some will make it into the standard Google Webmaster Tools feature set, while others will fade away (like Site Performance). One popular option is the Author Stats information.

Author Stats allows you to tie in guest posts on other sites by connecting it to your Google + author account. Google Authorship is a major topic in the SEO world: it's easily accomplished by "rel=author" tag that's imbedded as a link in specific articles.

Your picture will appear next to content in the search engines, and it's much easier for readers to find related material that you've written. It will also likely be used by Google in the future in the form of Author Rank.

"Author Stats" functionality can be used to identify the search statistics for your guest posts.

Up to now, it's been hard to know what kind of traffic your posts on various sites get. This data can be a major input into your guest posting strategy. Now it's possible to look quantitatively at not only which links are valuable, but how each posting is exposing your brand in a meaningful and scaled way.

Summary

When you're developing an SEO strategy, consulting Google Webmaster Tools can give you a unique perspective. Diving into the data provides new opportunities to understand how your site is performing and help improve your overall campaign performance.

Are you using Google Webmaster Tools in other ways to support your SEO efforts? Let me know in the comments sections below!

10 SEO Tips to Make Your Blog #1 In Search Results

Question 1:  Have you tried everything you can to get traffic to your blog, but not getting much results?

Question 2: Do you ever wonder why your blog is not getting much traffic, while others seem to get hundreds or even thousands of unique visits every month?

Question 3: What makes your blog shrinking and how to get more traffic and #1 place in Google search results.

Curious to know?

Hmm lets get into this topic then…

You can’t do anything without having huge traffic, can you? Then what’s the best way to bring massive traffic to your blog?

Surely with the help of search engines via organic or natural traffic. It’s the easy and smart way to get free traffic to your blog.

Did you notice that only few blogs get #1 search results in the search engine results almost every time?

How to get it done for your blog too then?

You can do this with the help of quality backlinks and better search engine optimization techniques.

First things first, let’s begin from the bottom.

What Is SEO? (In simple words)

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality of web traffic to your blog or website from search engines through “Organic/natural” way for targeted keywords.

What are targeted keywords?

Targeted keywords are the “Specific Keywords” which you use to expose your blog content i.e to give more importance to few keywords which people may search most often on Google to reach your blog.

Now coming to the main part..

SEO Tips to Make Your Blog No.1 In Search Results

1. Getting high quality inbound links

Inbound links or incoming links play a major role in making your blog search engine friendly and giving top search results to your blog.

Let’s assume, if a PR 6 blog linked one of your posts, then the chances of getting exposure will be really high.

It will increase your organic traffic, better search results and gives quality backlinks to your blog. Moreover it increases your PR too. One shot, two birds.

That’s why writing high quality content is more important than any other for a blog to get #1 search results.

2. Keep your URL’s short and sweet

Why you need to make your URL structure short?

Smart question..

I will show you in a pictorial way to better understand this, before that you need to know the difference between better URL structure and bad URL structure..

Worst URL structure:

http://www.yourURLsucks.com/20012/04/10/about/p=?5874

Optimized (better) URL:

http://www.yourURLrocks.com/post-title/

If you use the worst URL which is lengthy (in general) then the search engine crawlers find it difficult to find them. It takes extra time to find your content and chances of getting your #1 page search results will be less.

OK then..

How to optimize your URL’s?

Go to:

WP-admin >> Settings >> Permalinks

Now click on, “Custom structure”

and type or paste this:

/%postname%/

You are done! It’s the most optimized URL structure for your blog which gets crawled easily.

3. Always interlink to your old blog posts

Interlinking your new blog posts with the old blog posts is an effective way to reduce the bounce rate. It also increases the chances of getting #1 place in search results.

Don’t use irrelevant links to your blog. Make them relevant and use them effectively.

You may interlink 1 to 3 in least case (for every blog post you write)

Even you can use more than 3 (if your content is too lengthy and where it’s appropriate to interlink with your previous posts)

4. Don’t be selfish, include at least one outbound link to the authority blog in your niche:

Outbound linking means “giving links to other blog(s) from your blog posts”.

This can actually help your blog’s performance in the search engines!! But, how?

Whenever you provide a link to authority blogs or other blogs,  you will get a trackback and in some cases, your search engine ranking and visibility may increase due to that particular post. But, you should consider few things while doing outbound linking.

Precautions while doing outbound linking -

Try to make it “nofollow”

Don’t over link to the external sites/blogs. Even if you want to link, simple include their link without giving the “link address”.

Ex: If you want to link to seomoz.org. Instead of giving a link to it, try to write seomoz.org/5-tips-to-die  Just remove the link and everything else will be fine.

Benefits of doing outbound linking is, you can have a healthy relationship with whom you are linking to and there may be a chance of getting links from them in return (if they are from authority blogs, then your blog ranking, visibility will be up in the sky  but the chances are less though). But, you should have some respect on the authority blogs and be generous to linking them when ever it’s needed.

It will surely help your business in long run.

5. Build quality backlinks

The more quality backlinks you have the more authority it is. Backlinks are  just like ‘votes’. Most bloggers believe that, backlinks from low rated PR blogs is not good – it’s a myth actually.

It’s like ‘voting system’. No matter from where you are getting, but they worth. But, not in the case of buying the backlinks  :P(never buy the backlinks from anywhere – Google penalizes for sure and Google is smarter than us)

How you can get quality backlinks to your blog then?

Few ways are(I will make this as brief as possible)

• Blog commenting: Comment on top blogs in your niche. Try to make useful and insightful comments. Read: 3 Reasons Your Blog Not Getting Much Comments: How to Get Them
• Guest blogging: Guest blog on other blogs in your niche. Try to start from the small blogs like PR1 or PR2 and slowly increase the pace. I would suggest you to guest blog at least on 3 or more blogs in a month.
• Participating in forums: This is another way to build quality backlinks. Try to find out the forums which are related to your blog’s topic and participate there actively and submit your blog posts regularly.
• Article marketing: Submit your best content to article directories like;
• www.GoArticles.com
• www.Article99.com
• www.ValuableContent.com
• www.EzineArticles.com
• www.eHow.com
• www.ArticleDashBoard.com

6. Search engine friendly design

Try to use search engine friendly design. A Better search engine optimized blog design always makes the search results better and effective. The major point here is, you can get better search results if you have search engine friendly design even if you don’t know much about SEO!! That’s the key-point here.

If possible, try to purchase Thesis or Genesis as soon as possible (I will be purchasing Thesis next month – I will tell you why I am going for Thesis instead of Genesis in my next article – hopefully)

Customize yourself(if you know coding) or hire a professional(this is better) or buy a SEO friendly theme skins 

7. Keywords play essential role

Keywords should be used in a smart way. No over usage or less usage!

Title tags are really important. Use Keyword tool to analyze the competitive keywords in your blogging niche. If you find it bit tough to use, then use “Google insights tool”. Here is a screen shot for the keyword “seo tips”..

At the end of the above image, you will see “top searches” which will be useful for your blog article keywords, quite easy isn’t it?

8. Getting unique visitors through quality content

What if your blog is perfectly optimized and has everything except the quality content?

Your blog sucks…

So, try to create quality content. Here are few tips on creating it..

Quality content means, it should be

• Valuable: Your content must be valuable, it should add value to your blog.
• Unique: Your content should not be copied from any other source and it should have compelling content writing skills.
• Fresh content: Most of the times, search engines prefer fresh content rather than the old or repeated content. Try to update your blog often if you can. If not, update it ‘regularly’ (not daily) with engaging content..

9. Make your blog loading time faster

Do you know Google considers blog’s loading time to give higher rankings for specific keywords?

Yes, it does..

It will help to boost organic traffic from search engines for specific keywords which you use for your blog posts. So, try to make your blog loading time faster using the following methods.

• Optimize your images before you use: Many expert bloggers have suggested to optimize the images to make your blog loads faster. What I say  is to optimize them before you use them. Use image compressors to do this.  Instead of uploading your images and compressing them using post editors, this is the best way to go.
• Cut the clutter: Don’t make your blog an ad agency and never use useless widgets and plugins. Use the best plugins, try to clear the clutter in your blog as much as possible.
• Use better hosting: Instead of using free or nonsense hosting providers. Use the top class hosting providers like HostGator. Better hosting ultimately makes your blog’s loading time better.
• W3 Cache: This is the best WP plugin to clear the cache in your blog. This is the gift to WP power users like you and me

10. Use the following methods effectively

Submit your sitemap: Submit your blog sitemap to search engines.

Use the ALT tag always: Search engines like Google, Yahoo! uses separate bots to find the images! But these bots don’t crawl as often they crawl your content. What you need to keep in mind is, they will crawl even the images. So, it’s really a bad idea if you use weird names for your images like “0000155.jpg” or “asdaegljadfg.png” etc. Instead of this, name your images corresponding to your blog posts.

Always use alt tags: Here is an excellent WP plugin on this which I came across:

SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images improving traffic from search engines.

Download

Search engines are blind and deaf – So, use them “smart”: Search engines can’t see your videos as we see, they can’t listen to the podcasts as we do. What they only do is – they perform their crawling in text format.

If you have any doubt – once view “page source” does it include videos or only text?

So, create great and in-depth content for your blog along with the ‘regular’ creation of your videos or podcasts.

Bonus tips:

Use XML sitemap, add rel=”nofollow” to the external links, never buy links to increase your PR, use images to get traffic.

Note: If you are a newbie blogger who have just started, just concentrate on creating the content which is interesting, unique and useful rather than worrying about SEO and search results.

In summary, write quality, unique and authoritative content, try to increase quality backlinks to your blog because Google loves authority blogs.

“Just do your work and don’t worry about the results” – this is my philosophy, quite good, isn’t it? 

Killer Tips to Get Free Traffic To Your Website

Getting traffic is one of the most important tasks for any web master. What is more, you can't get traffic once and then just reap the benefits. Getting traffic is an ongoing task and you must be constantly doing it, if you want to get traffic and keep it. Here are some of the ways to get traffic for free:

1Optimize your site for search engines.

Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site.

2Frequently update the contents of your site. .

If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO, content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your site.

3Take advantage of social bookmarking sites.

Social bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free. If you want to learn how to do it, check the How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites article, where we have explained what to do if you want to get free traffic from sites such as Digg, Delicious, etc.

4Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth.

5Get links with other sites in your niche.

Another way to get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you need list of sites within your niche where you could get backlinks from, check the Backlink Buildertool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.

6 Use any chance to promote your site for free.

Free promotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your site work well but if you select the right places to promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic.

7Create a free product or service.

Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the site as well.

8Use viral content.

Free products and services are great for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.

9Use offline promotion.

Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.

10Include your URL in your signature.

URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.

Getting traffic for free is a vast topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know the most important ways – i.e. the ways we discussed in this article and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free.