Published August 24, 2012 | 
Paid advertising is getting more expensive for newbies and average Internet marketers to afford. With paid traffic gaining in popularity over the years, it’s causing the price to rise as normal economic factors come into play. Only Internet marketers that know their Return On Investment (ROI) survive web advertising 3.0.
When word class copywriters are too costly and conversions aren’t the greatest for your website, you must start by reducing your expenditures and use free methods of generating traffic. Media buys are usually expensive and require upfront funding that most marketers simply can’t afford at the beginning. Here are the best free methods to get targeted free traffic without opening your wallet…
Before we continue – I want to warn you, that the 3 methods listed below require a significant amount of time to achieve a constant flow of traffic. Website traffic is never; totally free because in this case, the TIME you put in will be GREAT.
Don’t expect to throw up a “viral video” and become an Internet sensation overnight. I want you to set your goals HIGH and be reasonable so that when you do fail (which you will), you won’t be discouraged by it. You’ll learn from it and move on.
(Getting free traffic is NOT EASY)
Now that we got that out of the way, we can continue to number one on our list for getting free traffic…
1. Niche Related Forums – Are Communities that gather like-minded people together to discuss, comment and share views on a particular niche. This traffic can be very effective as it allows you to target a specific niche and leave a link in the signature line of your post. You can easily find forums in your niche by Googling (YourNicheHere + Forum) your desired community to interact in. Have a “call to action” (Ex: Click Here) pointing to your link that entices a visitor to click in a non-spammer way. Forums have evolved online to what we know them now as…
2. Social Networks – Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Pinterest are the four social media networks I want you to focus on. These social networks are getting the most visitors in the world right now. Targeting the MASS POPULATION while using free traffic generating techniques is what you need to constantly progress online. Target BIG TRAFFIC websites and focus on users commenting on your related niche. Be friendly and helpful when interacting with your peers. Just make sure you join the conversation and help others. You will be building the next on our list by doing items one and two everyday…
3. Word-of-Mouth – If you have something worth talking about, people will naturally talk about it. It’s so important to always deliver valuable content and try your best at taking care of your visitors and customers. Talk to your friends and family about your new project and see if they might be interested. Go to seminars and meet-ups related to your website and start talking.
The free traffic methods mentioned above take constant effort on YOUR BEHHALF to get the ball rolling. Responding to public questions, comments and emails is a crucial task during this process. The faster you solve people’s problems, the quicker your desired traffic goals can be achieved.
You’ll be going down a long road through natural search engine rankings and popularity by using this method, but it will pay off over time. This is the ultimate goal, as search engines will send you free traffic for rewarding your websites quality, popularity and relevance.
These three methods should be your main focus in getting free traffic to your website. The more you interact, the better your chances will be of getting a steady flow of visitors.
So now I leave you with a question…
What FREE techniques do YOU use to get free traffic to your website?
Write your answers and questions by commenting below.
4 Responses to Top 3 Places to Get FREE Targeted Website Traffic
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Thanks for making this post bc I will need it in a few more months…. Hopefully social networking & word of mouth will be enough for what I’m trying to do along with a few business cards, and flyers. Technically its not free considering you have to pay for the paper, ink, etc. but in the end when you get consumers it’ll pay for itself!
Glad to see you back on my blog Shanda!
These tactics are great non expensive ways to get started but it won’t be “enough”. It does give you a good start in seeing your first trickle of targeted visitors. Handing out flyers and business cards is another word-of-mouth play that’s hard to turn into actual website visitor. As you can imagine, it’s hard to meet someone OFFLINE and get them to actually go ONLINE to your website on their own time. Card and flyers are non expensive but to a business making $0, everything will be expensive. This can be effective if you have a large potential reach in the number of people you target offline. Even then, a direct response message with one objective is better. This can be a good tactic to build a list before you launch any product online. Hope this helps!
Hi Ty,
There are plenty of ways to get free traffic to your website but as you say, they all take a lot of effort. Although once you get the ball rolling you can get a flood of traffic. Many top forums now don’t allow you to add a link on your signature until you have made a certain number of posts, but this can be worth it in the long run. Social media is definitely the way to go now but this also takes time. Funny, I recently posted on my blog about free traffic as well. Great minds
Cheers
Roger Weavers
You’re right Roger!
I see the search engines paying more attention to social media factors these days. All websites need to have the ability to connect and socialize with their potential customers. You will get more out of your natural search engine ranking by doing so. Google+ is another social network that is gaining ground due to Google giving + high importance within it’s products. There’s NOT much user interaction so it will be interesting to see where it goes from here. I’m predicting another Google Wave.