No one can deny that you need traffic to your website in order to succeed online. And nothing beats free traffic. So where do we get free traffic? Google and other search engines.
How does free search engine traffic work?
This is something you’ve experienced first hand countless times. You load up Google or another search engine. Enter in a word or phrase you want to research. And click one of the links that shows up. Turns out that the website you visit just got free traffic from the search engine. We will be discussing here how to get website traffic to you for free.
You probably only visit a link or two from the first page of results. In fact, the first page of results receives almost all the free traffic. What’s even more amazing is the the first 3 links get more than 70% of the free traffic.
So to get any significant amount of free traffic from Google, you really need to be on the first page. And that means you need to be “ranked” in the top 10 by Google. And this bring us to…
What is search engine optimization?
Search Engine Optimization means that Google thinks your site matches what people are typing into their search box. The formula Google uses to determine this is known only by Google. However, we do know a few things that count.
Getting indexed
First, before you can get ranked highly, Google has to know you exist. This is known as being “indexed.” When your website gets indexed, Google stores information about it in their massive database.
In order to get indexed, Google has to be able to find you. Links from other sites are the easiest way to accomplish this. Google will actually follow the links on sites it already has indexed to find new sites and index them.
Use your Twitter and Facebook updates to get quick indexed links to your site. Google visits these sites many times every day. So your new link will get indexed very quickly.
Gaining ranking
Once you have been indexed, you will start working on increasing your rank. Due to the massive size of the Google database – literally billions of pages – just getting indexed doesn’t do much for you.
Here’s what’s important in ranking:
- Content
- Links
- Activity
Great content
This is the SEO work you do on your page. And it means that the content on your page matches the keywords you’re targeting. Clearly this article is about search engine optimization. One reason Google knows this is because the words search engine optimization appear inside it. Another reason is because there are related words, like website traffic, too.
The title of the page, the domain name and other pages on your site are also important. Each of these plays a roles in Google determination about your site.
Your links
The next thing to consider is your links. This includes both the inbound and outbound links. With inbound links, you want to have more coming in than going out. So the number of inbound links is important.
Article spinning is a super easy way to get a bunch of inbound links. To use this technique you write articles related to the topic of your websites. Then you have to create multiple versions of this articles. And then upload a different versions to a bunch of sites that allow you to add content. And the more you do the better.
Increasing your activity
The last thing we know for sure is that Google likes to see active sites. You can’t just put up a page and leave it alone and expect it to rank well. Regular content updates to your site are expected. You can do this with RSS feeds and news posts.
Another great way to keep your page content fresh is to enable comments on it and allow others to discuss your page topic. This means you need to get real live people to your site, as well. Online forums are simple source of real live visitors.
Set up forum profiles with the ones related to your website. And post their often. Then put a link to your site in your profile. This gets you inbound links. And it will also get real visitors to your site.
Conclusion
It’s important that you do everything listed here. But let’s face it, writing multiple versions of the same article. Setting up tons of profiles on forums. And posting your articles and comments takes a lot of time. And the bad news is that you probably won’t do it.
The good news is that there are automated software programs out there that will do this for you. So my best advice is to automate as much of this as you can. And then you’re sure to get it done. And not doing it means you will never get free traffic from Google.
Tags: free traffic, Internet Marketing, search engine optimization, seo, traffic generation