10 Ways to Get Traffic for Free

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:

Optimize 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. SEO is not that difficult and if you want to get familiar with it in a nutshell, check our SEO Tutorial. If you are too busy for that, you can start with the 15 Minute SEO article.

Frequently 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.

Take 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.

Use 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.

Get 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 Builder tool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.

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.

Create 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.

Use 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.

Use 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.

Include 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.

21 Businesses You Can Run From a Laptop

Maybe you’re a young kid who wants to start a business. Maybe you’re a college grad who wants to create a job (rather than finding one). Or maybe you’re a corporate mouse who’s fed up with the rat race.

In any case, the internet has opened up a world of opportunities for the entrepreneur-at-heart. Here are 21 businesses that you can start today and run entirely from a laptop and an internet connection.

Development

#1 Web Developer

According to SBA.gov, there were 29.6 million small businesses in the US and Ad-ology found that 46% of small businesses don’t have a website.

#2 Mobile App Developer

In 2010, the International Telecommunication Union reported that there are over 5 billion cell phones in the world and 1 billion of them have mobile broadband subscriptions.

#3 Blog Maintenance Provider

As tracked by BlogPulse, there were 126 million blogs on the internet in 2010 and most of them suck. Most bloggers think they just have to write, post, and auto-tweet. So if you know how to properly post a WordPress blog post, you can offer this as a service to serious bloggers.

Graphic Design

#4 Logo Designer

Since there are 29.6 million small businesses in the US alone, that’s 29.6 million potential logo customers. But most of them already have logos… Yeah, but very few of them have good logos.

#5 Web Designer

According to Pingdom, there are 234 million websites on the net. Like small business logos, most of these websites look terrible. And even the good ones, as you’ll soon see on Retire@21, know the value of continually improving the design.

#6 Book Cover Designer

Right now, there are over 32 million books on Amazon and every one of them has a book cover. According to UNESCO, over 1 million books are published per year. This doesn’t include eBooks.

#7 Mobile App Designer

Much like mobile app developers, there’s plenty of need for mobile app designers. Companies usually contract out to both developers and designers separately to create the app.

#8 Computer-Aided Designer

CAD drawings are typically 3D mockups and virtual prototypes that companies create prior to manufacturing a product. Pretty much every product design starts as a CAD drawing.

#9 Web Theme Designer

According to WordPress.com, there are over 53 million WordPress sites and about half of them are self-hosted. This means, WordPress alone has about 26 million sites that need themes.

#10 Videographer

In 2009, Zappos reported a 6% to 30% increase in sales for products with video. Website owners realize that video converts higher than any other form of content, so they’re starting to contract out for that work.

Writing

#11 Author

According to Authors Guild, a successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies and a successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies. Also, Jenkins Group (a premier publishing firm) reports that 70% of books published don’t make a profit. Don’t let these stats discourage you, but it’s hard to make a living as an author.

#12 Editor

Part of the reason books usually don’t earn back their investment is because they have to pay for an editor. You’ll likely earn more as an editor than an author.

#13 Copywriter

With 126 million blogs, there are 126 million websites that need content. If you’re a good writer and knowledgeable about a niche topic, reach out to the top bloggers in that niche and ask if they’ll pay you to write for them.

#14 Transcription

According to Worldwide Freelance, some industry estimates suggest that up to 50% of all non-fiction books are ghostwritten. Often, these books start as audio recordings and the ghostwriter transcribes and spruces up the content. This is just one way to make money as a transcriber.

#15 Translation

English is the universal language of business, but there are roughly 6,500 other languages in the world. Books, websites, manuals, etc. all need to be translated to other languages.

#16 Blogger

Much like authors, few bloggers make a living strictly from blogging. To attract advertisers, you typically need a couple thousand unique visitors per day. Think of a blog as a platform to attract other business opportunities.

Internet Marketing

#17 Search Engine Optimization

234 million websites compete to rise to the top of search engines. If you know how to optimize websites, you can help website owners save a lot of money on internet advertising.

#18 Search Engine Marketer

The other side of search engines is paid search. It’s not unusual for internet marketers to have $500,000 per month budgets for PPC (pay-per-click) and CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions) advertising.

#19 Social Media Manager

Don’t let companies outsource their social media campaigns. But a service that helps people set up their Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus profiles is completely legitimate.

#20 Email Marketing Manager

Michael always tells you that the money is in the list, but it takes a lot or work to maintain that list. If you offer to create and automate the email newsletters, it’ll take a lot of pressure off their backs.

#21 Affiliate Marketer

To date, ClickBank has paid out almost $1.9 billion to affiliate marketers. Affiliate marketing is another way to make a living as a blogger and it’s the primary way that Michael makes money.

So what…

I know I gave you lots of big stats and that can be overwhelming.

To put it into perspective, Michael has partaken in or hired out at least 14 of these 21 services; this includes over $30,000 on web design updates to IncomeDiary.

There’s a lot of money to be made on the internet. If you have a laptop, an internet connection, and a working brain, the only thing holding you back is you.

Online marketing tools for success

Online marketing means creating awareness about particular products and services and selling them successfully to online purchasers.

It requires a great deal of effort on part of Company to market their products and services, online.

Creation of Website: First step towards online marketing is creation of website. A website is a compilation of complete information about products or services, along with photographs, specifications, and each and every minute detail that a Company offers through that product. Website is designed to equip the visitor with all relevant details and convert a visitor into customer.

Selection of Seo Company: A Company is apt in manufacturing and trading of its product in physical market. Since it is completely unknownabout online marketing, therefore, it has to hire a professional SEO Company for getting services for successfully launching and marketing the product.

Optimization of site: A website is never designed as per SEO’s perspectives. Therefore, it is loaded with keywords, and phrases along with meta-data for its compatibility in search engines. Optimization of content is also done to complete the ground work for marketing of the site.

RSS feeds: Companies can share and syndicate their content, through RSS. Unlimited RSS channels are created for more effectiveness.

Search engine optimization: Optimizing a site is not all. It has to be integrated in different search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other local Search engines to introduce it amongst various customers in its locality. A website needs to be compatible enough to get the desired results. When a search engine indexes through the pages of a website, then it searches for relevant material to rank the website in search engines. 

Addition and removal of web-pages: A website goes stale with no changes. It needs to be regularly updated, for its better functionality and extreme efficiency. A web form creator in your website is extremely important, to take care of customer’s requirement and process payment transactions. 

SEO tips and hints for startup businesses following the Google penguin and panda updates

One of the most widely used forms of online marketing is search engine optimisation (SEO). This is primarily because of its ability to reach large volumes of a business’s demographic and its relatively cost effective nature. When done properly, it can propel a business to the top of Google and other search engines and pull in plenty of highly targeted, organic traffic. However in this post Panda and Penguin world what can a small business do to get it’s self visible in the search engine rankings. Let’s now go over some SEO techniques along with some hints and tips for startup businesses.

Guest Posts

Creating guest posts for relevant websites and blogs can be an incredibly powerful way to build backlinks while generating direct traffic at the same time. It works by contacting a website owner or blogger in your niche and asking if they would allow you to create a guest post. From there, you will need to write a helpful and insightful article that will naturally pique the interest of their audience. This can have profound results when their audience shares your content with others and visits your website directly. Since a website owner or blogger’s audience is likely to trust that person, it tends to make it easier for you to gain their trust as well. Over time, you can expect a pretty serious SEO boost and improved rankings.

Video Content

Another idea involves creating video content. Due to the fact that humans are visual creatures and not always interested in reading long winded articles, videos can be very helpful for reaching lots of people while also appealing to search engines. For this technique, you will need to create a brief but quality video about the products or services that your business offers. In most cases, you will want to keep it somewhere between two to five minutes with no longer than ten minutes at most. From there, you should embed it within the content of your website and also on video sharing sites like YouTube. Doing so should help familiarize consumers with your products or services and should get indexed by search engines.

Integrating traditional PR

It can also behoove you to utilize traditional PR to get your start up off the ground and running. For example, you should build a relationship with the journalists in the relevant trade journal and local press. Advertising in there publications can be useful in building the initial contacts, they may also be interested in competition. An editorial like from one of these journals will almost always be high authority and relevance.
Along with this, it’s smart to take advantage of Google plus and author rank. These platforms were created as a way to rank the overall quality of an author’s work so that search engines can provide users with the best possible results. For this reason, you should sign up with Google plus if you haven’t already and fill out your profile and link it to you blog profile. From there, you can gradually build your credibility and your content should rank highly as long as it’s of good quality.
In addition, it’s critical that you track your SEO campaign. By utilizing a platform like Google Analytics, you can keep track of all aspects of your marketing and SEO. One of the best features is the ability to monitor which keywords are being searched for and which ones are bringing you the most organic traffic. After you learn what’s working and what’s performing poorly, you can tweak your SEO campaign accordingly. Consequently, you should be able to improve your efficiency and effectiveness while saving time.

How to Make Certain Your Online Marketing Biz Survives the Google Panda Update

The Panda update was carried out with the best of Google’s motives. Panda was created in an effort to purge peoples’ search engine results of all of those spammy feeling websites that had started to take control. You know how from time to time you look for something in Google and are given a single poorly written article that is published on ten different websites?
The objective of Google Panda is to make it stop. It just wants to help people get excellent and appropriate search engine results and not merely be met with spam that is intended to game a system and to increase ad earnings. This is good but when you’re a web marketer, it’s natural to be concerned about the changes this update has caused through the market. Places such as HubPages and Ezine Articles have been hit especially hard, which might have been where lots of your site visitors was originating from. That doesn’t imply, though, that you are guaranteed to go down in smoke. In reality, now the traffic you receive is going to be a lot more highly targeted and interested in what it is that you are selling. Obviously, this depends upon your ability to work with the system.
So what exactly is the next step?
Avoid keyword stuffing your articles. It’s great to focus on a keyword or two but do not try to smash them into your content in places where they don’t fit. This has always been crucial in article writing but it is even more important these days. Panda has made Google spiders smarter than they have been. These bots will know when a keyword is used in a natural way and when it is being stuffed.Update your web site often. This can be through the addition of content. It may be through a blog that sees updates regularly. It is actually even possible to do this via the regular sprucing up of your site content. Whatever the reason, update frequently so that Google crawls your web site a lot. Since its Panda update, Google values active web sites even more than they ever have in the past. The more time you allow to lapse between changes, the lower on the search result totem pole you are likely to be.Only allow completely unique content to be published to your web site. Avoid using recycled PLR content. Do not use something you snagged from an open source article website. Google Panda punishes you rather severely for duplicate content — even if it just appears duplicated. The publishing of used content is an extremely fantastic way to make certain that Google’s bots and spiders don’t crawl your site. That can not be great for your bottom line, can it?Work as hard as you can to give and earn high quality links both outwardly and inwardly. You need to actually earn your back links from sites that have good reputations. Directories and traffic funnels won’t help you appear very popular to Google any longer. Google would like to ensure that your link is legit so they also spider the source. This implies that you have to literally earn the backlinks you get.There are many things you could do to help your business and your website be more Panda compliant. Common sense is the basis for most of them. Look at what you would like to find when you search and then make certain your website matches that. If you do this, you should be definitely okay.