How Do I Drive Free Traffic to My Website? - 5 Quick Steps to Start Driving Free Traffic Today “How do I drive free traffic to my website?” It’s the million dollar question, isn’t it? Countless website owners have been in your shoes. You design (or pay to design) a fabulous looking site, but it sits there idle until you can answer the question of driving traffic to your site. First, I am not going to sit here and paint a super rosy picture for you…this is the blood and guts of the internet business. Where the rubber truly meets the road and more often than not the men are separated from the boys (or the women from the girls…covering my butt, there!). There were countless times that I asked myself the same exact question and over the years through trial and error and buying and testing numerous programs out there, I have been able to come up with some answers. So allow me to share with you just a few tips that you may find will help get you on your way. OK…your site is built. Now what? Clearly your site falls into some specific niche, whether it be in the field of sports, or cooking, or health and fitness, or jewelry…whatever it is, it falls under some category. Step 1: Go to Google’s Keyword Tool and Do Some Keyword Research This step alone easily can comprise a whole series of articles and indeed perhaps even an e-book, but here is where you need to start. Using the free Google Keyword Tool, type in some keywords related to your site. If it is site about sporting goods, type in that phrase. The keyword tool will then present to you a listing of search terms related to that phrase and the amount of monthly search traffic Google receives for each term. Find terms that are in the mid-to-low range on the competition scale, but have decent search volume, say at least 1,000 searches per month. Step 2: Enter the Keyword Phrase in a Google Search in Quotes Using the example of sporting goods, you would find that the term “online sporting goods” returns a mid-level of competition and gets about 3,600 local searches per month. Take that term in quotes and enter it into a regular Google search. In this example you would find a return of 229,000 results. From there, edit the phrase into some variations of the term until you can find a result of 20,000 or less (for example the term “buying sporting goods online” returns 3,420 results). Step 3: Write an Article Using This Keyword Phrase
This is the step that can be scary for some. Remember how you used to hate to write term papers in school? (at least I did!). Don’t fret. You can do it. You will find when you are writing about things in your field, the words will come quite naturally. Just imagine you are talking face to face explaining things to a buddy of yours. From a technical aspect, you will want to include your keyword phrase in your title, somewhere in the first paragraph, and particularly in your author bio. You want your article to be about 400-600 words. Step 4: Submit Your Article to Top Article Directories There are numerous free directories online looking for content and when your article is built correctly, they tend to rank very well in the search engines. Some of the top directories include Ezine Articles, GoArticles, ArticleAlley, ArticleDashboard, ArticleBase, Easy Articles, Buzzle, Web Pro News, and ArticleFactory. There is an approval process for Ezine Articles and they can take some practice, but they are far and away the largest and tend to be very search engine friendly. Step 5: Promote Your Article on Social Sites and Blogging Communities By now, chances are good that you already have a Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other type of social networking site that you use. You can attach these accounts to your article marketing sites and each time you publish, your followers can be alerted. You may also want to publish your article on blogging communities such as BloggersBase or BlogEngage. These sites can generate hundreds of extra views and lead to visits to your site. These are just a few of the basics to start answering the question of how do I drive free traffic to my website? Did you know there is a site out there that allows you to convert your articles to PowerPoint and can generate thousands of visits to your site? To learn this and much more, visit http://plankmarketing.com/traffic-report.html. Tim Barnes, of Plank Marketing, is passionate about the internet and all that it has to offer. He often focuses on new and unique programs that are created and helps to review and uncover such items for those who seek them.