Having a website is only a small part of developing an effective presence online. There are many things you need to do to make the most of your site, but the most important has to be driving online traffic to it. Traffic is just another way of saying visitors. The good news is that you don’t need a lot of money to start getting people to a website, and many traffic methods can be done for free (though the less you spend, the longer it tends to take).
Before you start driving online traffic, it is vital that you understand what makes quality traffic. It would be very easy to get millions of visitors to your site, and some companies offer such services, but you can safely skip such offers. Why? Because they can’t deliver the kind of visitors you want. Yes, they can deliver the numbers, but they will be meaningless. A lot of this traffic is automated, and even if a human is looking at your site, you can be sure it will be a brief and uninterested visit.
The following methods are a good place to start, and all can be done for free.
1. Posting in forums. A forum is an online community where people with similar interests get together and talk about things related to their interests. Furthermore, there are forums for just about every subject that you can think of (and some that you can’t). Driving online traffic with this method is as simple as registering for forums and then participating in them.
Participation is the key. That doesn’t mean spamming the other members, and it doesn’t mean making a few posts hoping someone will click your link. Instead, it means being a contributing member that earns the respect of other members over the course of time. While this may seem a bit slow, it will give you highly-targeted traffic, and that’s the kind you want.
2. Blogging. It is recommended that you buy a domain name and hosting when driving online traffic with this method. You can get set up for about $20, and will give you an edge over free blogging platforms. However, if you have absolutely no money to invest in your site at this time, then you can use free blogs to start with.
You need to make frequent and useful blog posts to get the most from this method. You can also encourage people to leave comments and participate as this will give you followers…and that means even more targeted traffic.
3. Article marketing. This is one of the most effective ways of driving online traffic because you will be attracting visitors that are hungry for whatever it is you’re providing. To do this method you write keyword-rich articles that provide solid information, but not too much. The whole purpose of the article is to get people to click through to your site. When you leave out a key piece of information from your article the reader will then be so curious that they will have to learn more, and your site is where they will go to do it.
