So, you’ve got your website up but now you need some traffic. What to do, what to do. You could buy some PPC ads through Google Adwords, email all your friends, and post a few links…but how do you get some real, solid, consistent traffic flowing to your beautiful new piece of web real estate? Here are my top 5 free traffic sources for small business websites.
1) Twitter
I really think Twitter is one of the most powerful, simple tools for generating traffic right now. True it is not as automated as search engine traffic can become, but the fact that it is free, fairly fast, and gives you almost an on-demand ability to generate traffic makes it my #1.
2) Search Engines
I didn’t say top 5 ‘instant’ traffic sources…I said free. Although it may take some time to rank well in the search results, it is well worth the effort if done correctly. Daily traffic volume for even an average keyword can be worth $100s in PPC ads.
3) Article Marketing
Article marketing isn’t as talked about as it used to be, but that doesn’t mean this form of traffic generation is lacking efficacy. Articles are ranking high in the search engines and are being distributed on blogs and other sites like crazy. If you write interesting, unique articles with attention grabbing headlines, they will get noticed. Just don’t forget to put a link to your site in the bio!
4) Email Marketing
Now, you might be thinking, “Email marketing is FREE traffic, you have to GET the traffic before you can build a list.” Well, after you work so hard to get that traffic in the first place, wouldn’t it be great if you could bring them back over and over again by collecting their email addresses and sending them offers, updates, and freebies?
5) Shout Out Exchange
There are lots of terms for this, I like to call it shout out exchange. I simply mean when you approach a complimentary business (one that sells goods / services that compliment, not compete with, your goods / services) and say, “Hey, I’ll give a shout out to my list / blog / twitter followers about you if you do the same for me.” It’s simple to do, most people say yes, and you get instant, fresh traffic. Delicious.
Now some of you might say, “What about affiliate marketing?” I have heard this referred to as “free” traffic, but there is nothing free about it unless you hope to cheap your affiliates out of their deserved rewards. It is nothing a CPA (cost per action) system. You may get a lot of traffic from it, but you don’t want traffic unless it provides sales, and when you make a sale you have to pay the affiliate.
There you go, top 5…may not be as cool as the NBA Playoff’s nightly top 5, but it may be a good substitute for those of us that are under 6′8″ and can’t jump over minivans.
