6 Easy Ways to Drive Paying Customers to Your Site By The IMC Team | Posted May 11th, 2008
I’d like to share my top 6 traffic generation tips. If you’re not using any of these strategies the time to get started is today!
Traffic Tip #1: Give away free content
This is one of the best free traffic strategies out there… Simply write a series of short articles that are packed with useful information and tips, then submit them to online article directories and other free content sites.
Not only will you get some great inbound links pointing to your site, which will help you with the search engines — other people can republish your articles on their own sites, which will help spread the word about your business and build your credibility as an industry expert!
Here are some article directories you should check out:
Traffic Tip #2: Register your site with the ‘Net’s top directories
Not only will you get more visitors from these sites — you’ll also get great inbound links that will boost your ranking with the search engines.
And that’ll send even MORE visitors your way!
Here are some directories you can start with:
- The Yahoo Directory (http://directory.yahoo.com)
- The Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org)
- Best of the Web: http://botw.org
- Jayde: www.jayde.com
- Iozoo: www.iozoo.com
- The Virtual Library: www.vlib.org
Traffic Tip #3: Get links from as many relevant websites as possible
By "relevant," I mean sites that have content that appeals to your customers and relates to your business or product in some way.
… For example, if you sell vintage hot rod accessories, you’d want to get links from sites that appeal to antique car and hot rod fanatics.
Not only will these links help you with the search engine, they’ll also put your site in front of a greater number of targeted visitors.
Quality traffic — it’s the "Holy Grail" of online marketing.
After all, there’s not much point in having a website if your potential customers aren’t able to find it!
Traffic Tip #4: Issue press releases about your business
Online press releases are a great way to announce a new product or report on exciting developments in your industry. And, like the strategies listed above, they will help you get quality inbound links as well as new streams of direct traffic to your site.
Some good press release sites to check out are:
- www.prweb.com
- www.eworldwire.com
- www.sbwire.com
- www.webwire.com
- www.ereleases.com
- www.24-7pressrelease.com
- www.prleap.com
Traffic Tip #5: Advertise your services on free online classified sites
These sites are great because they’ll bring visitors who are already in the "buying mood." Plus, they’ll give you even MORE of those all-important inbound links!
Here are a few good classified ad sites to start with:
Traffic Tip #6: Get active on social sites that focus on your market
Discover the blogs, forums, and social network sites that are popular with your customers — and then get active on them!
By becoming a vocal participant on social sites, you can establish yourself as an industry expert and build your credibility as you spread the word about your business. It’s a great way to build strong relationships and turn potential customers into people who will buy from you again and again.
To find blogs that appeal to your target market, try running a search on your top keywords (one at a time) at Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com) or Technorati.com (www.technorati.com).
To find a forum that appeals to your target market, do a search for your top keywords and add the word "forum." You can also check out the following forum directories:
Just remember, driving traffic to your site is an ongoing process. You’ll need to constantly test the effectiveness of the strategies you use, in order to figure out which one works best for you.
Happy "trafficking!"
Comments (61 Comment)
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Great tips on how to generate traffic. Most importantly you have to give the concumer what they are looking for. Also it is important to remember to make web sites easy to navigate, comsumers will get turned off to sites that are not of easy use.
Great tips, Derek – thanks for making an easy-to-use reference list of the places marketers should consider contributing to; you’ve got some terrific resources there. Also I agree 110% with your points; by delivering free content as previews and to establish credibility, it makes it much easier to successfully sell online, because people have had a sample of your knowledge, and it builds trust, while delivering value.
To stunningly profitable business,
Ken C.
Great tips Derek. I just got started on the internet but with your tips I believe I can get more traffic by applying the tips you have given me.
Thank you again.
great links you shared Derek….
tks
Although Dereks tips are really great a lot of these comments are too. And add a lot of value to them. Though I´m from Germany and have to translate everything to use it on my website I wonder it there are more german speaking marketers making use of Dereks tips. If so I´d appreciate if you contact me to share ideas and addresses for the german speaking markets. Because a lot of links, good for the UK and US are not working to address german speakers or to achieve a higher pagerank at Google for german sites. Hopefully I´m not the only one and if anyone else has ideas or links from press release sites etc. in german please let me know.
Thanks
Thanks for the great article. I checked some of the sites and they cost money – in my humble opinion most individuals that are marketing a website are marketing on a zero budget.
Truly thanks for the great tips.
its useful!!!!!
will definitely apply the tips on my corner cabinet furniture store!
Driving traffic to a web site is tremendously difficult. What works for one person is a failure for another. A small business could go broke testing venues which is why I think that a combination of web and traditional marketing is the way to go.
Having just started an online retail business, it is my job to drive as much qualified traffic to the site as possible. Since I sell top-quality sheets, the first thing I need to do is identify my audience. Who buys sheets? From there I try to ascertain where these people hang out on the web and how to attract their attention when everyone is pulling on them from every direction.
I could go on an on but the point I am trying to make is that marketing on the web is not much different that marketing in the brick and mortar world.
Thanks for the post. I will definately be using some of these suggestions to drive traffic to my site.
Thanks Derek. Article marketing does work, somehow many newbies stay away from it because they find it difficult or boring. But Article marketing is a sure fire way to get targeted free traffic. It takes time, but it works. I always look forward to reading your new posts here