Wondering on how to drive traffic to your website for free effectively without using all those paid services like email auto responders people talk about?
Paid services are great but when you’re just starting out, money is totally out of the question since we haven’t even reached that high sales level yet to able to spend, right?
Well worry not! I was thinking of the very same thing when I first started my blog as well so it’s definitely possible alright, so I took the liberty to compile those strategies that have worked for me into the…
10 Best Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website
Driving traffic is not a one-time thing that you can just do once.
If you want to get a continuous stream of free traffic, you need to implement these steps regularly in order to ensure a healthy growth.
Ready for some eye-opening knowledge? You better be! Because here are ten of my best performing methods which I personally use until today and so should you…
Strategy #1 – Cracking the Content Creation Code
Content Creations is the big on the website world, so big in fact that it’s actually the very reason your website exists.
Think about it, if you don’t want to create content, why would you have a website in the first place right? Google evaluates websites according to content and the more you have, the more traffic you can get.
In fact, if you Google out question like how do you drive traffic to a website or traffic tips, content will ALWAYS be on the list and this is for good reason too. Take a look at this…
Organic traffic remains the number one source of traffic for a website
That’s my website traffic according to the channels and as you can see, organic search is number one and this has been for many months too, not just for my site but for everyone else’s too.
To create content, you need to regularly publish articles on your website which is relating to your niche.
Thinking of topics on what to write is easy really – You just need to think of things related to your niche and write about them as tips, reviews, ways to solve problems, new products… anything!
It will come naturally to you but of course, there are ways on how to get more ideas on what to write on which I will cover in a bit.
Thinking of ideas is the easy part, writing properly is the hard part because when you write your posts, you need to think of some criteria to really beat your competitors and get the most traffic for that particular search term…
The lengthier your content, the better tendency it’ll have to rank.
- Content length – I can’t stress enough how important it is to have a good article length. According to research, posts that manage to rank of the first page of Google all have at least 2,000 words of content length so what does that tell you?
- Solve a problem – The reason people type something on that Google search bar in the first place is because they want to find something in the first place so it’s important to bear in mind the solution when you’re writing on a particular problem.
- Titles trap your visitors – Although the body of your content is the main part, titles do play a role in making people click on your URL in the first place. There will be so many websites on the website writing about the same thing so it’s important if you write something out of the ordinary that just begs people to click on it. For example, “How to cook a pasta so good, your girlfriend’s parents would beg you to marry her” sounds much better than “How to cook pasta for free”
You might be turned off by the idea of writing content but believe me, this is as powerful as it can get because content contributes to the huge percentage of your entire follower-base and sales.
In fact, if you’re wondering how bloggers can survive just by writing blog posts and still thrive better than most employees, that’s because they earn through their online sales that they make on their blog which their rely sole online.
Even if your website is for a brick and mortar business you’re currently handling, you’d be surprised if you make more sales online rather than at the shop itself.
Strategy #2 – Leveraging Related Searches
Seen this before?
This search box is called Google Suggest
That little box that we always use but never bothered to know what it’s called, is called Google Suggest (Or Google Instant as some might call it).
Don’t take that box for granted though, because the real power to that is the real-time related searches that you get when you look for something.
For example, when I typed in “Affiliate Marketing niches”, I get choices like “most profitable affiliate niches” and “Affiliate Marketing opportunities”.
Believe it or not, that suggested dropdown words are actually things that other people are looking for at that very instant! (Hence Google Instant).
Do you see how powerful that is?
You can totally take advantage of this to generate you more ideas on what to write about but the real reason I want to talk to you about, is that if you include some related search terms in your website content, you can actually get ranked indirectly.
How you ask? Take a look at this…
I ranked for words I never even targeted!
Those words that you see from the screenshot are words that I rank for when people search for those, even when I never intended to include those in my article.
I actually never target some of those terms but I managed to rank when people look for those terms anyway because they are related.
You don’t need to spam the keywords though, mentioning that word even once is already good enough because that way when the readers type in that particular search term, Google can detect that from your website.
Strategy #3 – Getting ranked with images
This is something I always tell my friends but they are always reluctant to listen.
Mainly because they thought that images aren’t very important in ranking although they do know how important images are when writing content.
What do you think? Take a look at this…
Less than a hundred words but its on the first page!
Have you ever wondered as to why some websites can get first page rankings even with very few words?
One reason – Images!
Images play a very important role in ranking because not everyone searches through the ‘web’ form of search results.
Many people search through the images section instead because they are either very lazy to read, or that they are looking for something specific such as a graph image for research, or images of their favourite actor.
Regardless, images work very well because if they don’t, I wouldn’t be able to rank this way…
Your images play a role in helping your content rank
So how do you leverage images?
Simple, the answer to this is right in front of your eyes – the alt text!
When you upload images, write you titles as how you normally do but when it comes to the alt text, adding keywords there can really boost your chances of getting found.
I managed to rank many of my pages through images and it is something you definitely need to take advantage of.
Strategy #4 – Sharing Your Posts on LinkedIn groups
Linkedin is a huge social media for professionals so when you post your content here, you’ll get a pretty serious audience.
When you first created your Linkedin account, you may not have that many connections so in order to get your content seen by many, the best way to achieve that is by sharing it in communities.
This is an example of how I share my content on How to do SEO in 10 Simple Steps…
An example of how I share my content
Just by sharing that, I was able to get likes and visitors, imagine how many clicks I would get if I share that with ten more groups?
In fact, I also shared this very blog post that you’re reading on LinkedIn too…
This is one of my shares on the SEO SEM Social Mobile group on LinkedIn.
I managed to bag in some huge shares, clicks and comments so there’s no reason not to share because you’ve worked hard on your post and they need to be recognized.
Finding a group is easy!
All you need to do is start with a keyword such as SEO or blogging and from there, you’ll get loads of choices on related groups.
For example, let’s have a look when I search for groups related to “blogger”…
Join groups with a huge database
As you can see, there are hundreds of groups you can join but do make sure that those groups are related to your niche.
For example, if you’re in the SEO line, you might want to join groups that revolves around SEO, blogging and social media but don’t want to get mixed up with the gardening niche.
A good rule of thumb to bear in mind before joining a group is to make sure that there are at least 5,000 members because not everyone of those members will see your post so it’s good to bear that in mind to get the most of what you’re doing.
How to find your joined groups
Once you’ve joined about 10 groups or so, you will reach a point in life where you’ll ask yourself, “Which group did I join again?”
To keep track of that is simple – Simply click on “interest” on one of the Linked in tabs and from there, click on “groups” and you’ll see all the groups that you’ve joined.
Don’t just share your contents, interact with the other members too because it’s called a group for a reason!
Strategy #5 – Sharing on Google+ Groups
The communities tab can be found on the Home dropdown
Similarly to the Linkedin share tactic I just mentioned, Google+ also has a group function which you can totally leverage on.
The group function in Google+ is equally as great as that of Linkedin’s and probably better too because although it looks barren, communities are the real deal.
Not many people use Google+ as opposed to Facebook which explains why you can hardly find your Facebook friends here and that’s because the only types of people who really use Google+ are either expressive people like designers, or entrepreneurs who know the real power behind it.
Just like the Linkedin groups or any other communities in the world, you cannot just simply spam your content – You need to build bonds by also commenting on other people’s posts and create an interaction.
Strategy #6 – The Twitter Tactic
Twitter can give you great traffic if you know what you’re doing
I’m not a pro when it comes to social media but what I do know is that Twitter is one of the biggest traffic bringing platform you should never miss out on.
There is only a limited number of social media platforms that I involve myself in and Twitter is one of them because it’s so easy to get leads.
Unlike Linkedin and Google+ where you can share contents easily, Twitter is great for you to connect with people and chat with them without ever needing to share your content.
The way to build your twitter followers is simple, just be as personal as you can and tweet around 4-5 times a day at least about anything because people will want to follow you even if you don’t have any followers to begin with.
It’s great to share your website content from time-to-time but you need to mix it with your personal lifestyle as well to avoid looking too boring or too salesy because this way, people can relate to you much better.
Being nice can go a long way to getting you traffic
When you follow people, it is very important to follow them back because some people have this annoying tactic of following you and unfollowing you back in the next instant if you do not follow them.
I always go one step further to thank everyone who follows me and from there, I was able to keep my follower retention rate high because once they see those personal tweets, they will be less likely to unfollow you.
Once you get a steady follower growth, another way to further bring traffic to your blog is by sending Direct Messages (DM) to people who follow you and for that, you can use a free service called Crowdfire.
How I crafted my own direct messages
Simply connect Crowdfire to Twitter, start creating your personalized DMs and you’re good to go!
Strategy #7 – Join a Blogging Community – Surround Yourself With Those in the Same Mission as You!
Not just to join, but to interact with its members and comment on their posts so that they will return the favour.
Blogging communities are awesome as you can get to meet fellow bloggers and ask how they reach success, you’ll always have somewhere to go to whenever you’re stuck, and the best part of all is that once your name is known by many, anything you share will get comments and social shares too!
But of course, you need to make sure that the contents you share are relevant lest they will think you’re just simply spamming for your own selfish reasons.
Here are some great blogging communities you definitely need to take advantage of…
- Blokube
- Biz Sugar
- Klinkk
- Blog Catalog
- IndiBlogger (For Indian Bloggers)
There is a fantastic platform for website owners who wish to communicate and get help from each other and it is currently my #1 recommended program called Wealthy Affiliate which is a must-have if you’re planning to go far with your blog.
It is actually an Online Business program but that’s what’s so great about the community – Everyone helps each other out because they all have the same mission as you which is to succeed online.
There are great tools you can take advantage of such as the keyword tool, the dedicated hosting, and the website builder but the feature that you would really want to concern yourself with is the Site Comments feature.
Wealthy Affiliate’s cool Site Comment feature
Did you know that comments are actually part of your content?
Having comments on your page is important because it shows how great your content is so much so that you have people commenting on it – It’s even greater when each of those comments are replied by the website owner which is you.
Site Comments’ first launching this year
Wealthy Affiliate’s Site Comments feature is the first to enter the market and it was just set released last month in July 2015.
If you’ve been in the blogging world for quite some time, you will know that getting comments is actually quite hard.
Blogging communities are great but not everyone wants to comment on every post that people share there and for those that do, how do you make sure that those comments are quality comments?
I used to get really lazy and short comments which are just few words like “Thank you for sharing this” or “This is awesome article Riaz, thanks”
How do you create a conversation with that? The only reply you can give is to thank them but with the Site Comment features, you can get original comments which are of great length too.
After you get several comments on your site, Google will also start to notice that your article may hold great value in order to attract those people so indirectly, you’ll also grow through your ranks!
Strategy #8 – Telling Google of Your New Content
This part is pretty simple – All you need to do is to tell Google that you have new contents published.
You see, the reason as to why you can’t find your website anywhere on Google sometimes is because Google hasn’t indexed your page yet.
No matter how great your content is, unless you publish contents often, you are going to have a very slow indexing speed.
On average, if you don’t post regularly, Google will only crawl your site every one to two weeks so that means your new article can only appear in Google after one two weeks!
Waiting that long means you’ll lose that much time of potential traffic so in order to hasten the indexing time frame, you need to ‘tell’ Google to come and update your content as soon as you finished publishing.
In order to do that, you need to create a Google Search Console account (Used to be called Google Webmaster) which from inside, you can find the “Fetch as Google” under the “Crawl” heading.
Google Webmasters (I prefer calling it that rather than Search Console) is an awesome free tool for website owners created by Google for you to check your website statistics which is pretty cool and is something every website owner should have.
It is so important that it is often taught at universities and colleges as a whole subject could you believe that?
But if you’re still new to this and have no experience whatsoever on how to set up your Google Webmasters account, here’s a video to show you how real quick…
Clicking will open you a new tab to Wealthy Affiliate where the video is stored.
Strategy #9 – The Bing Conspiracy
Submitting your site to Bing
Just like Google Webmasters, Bing takes time to index your site as well.
But the process to ‘call’ up Bing is way easier than Google as you don’t need to create a Bing account although you still can if you want to.
A lot of people ignore Bing when they’re building a website and everyone targets Google but actually, any percentage counts when you’re dealing with a few billion populations would wide.
Percentage of search engine shares
According to the world search engine percentage, Bing has 9.86% of the total global share and trust me, that is a huge percentage you will not miss out on.
People always target for Google because it’s big but as an entrepreneur, you will learn that putting all your eggs in one basket is something we should never do.
That being said, here’s where you need to go:
Bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url
Once you’re at Bing’s Submit page, simply key in the URL of your newly-published content and you’re done!
This way, Bing will get notified of your new creation and will then index your page much faster.
Strategy #10 – Getting Traffic Internally
Sometimes the answer we’re looking for is right under our noses and in this case – Internal links.
Did you know that internal links can contribute towards the second biggest traffic source you’ll ever get after organic traffic?
Take a look at this…
Direct traffic are those clicks that you get from your internal links.
That’s a screenshot of where my traffic is coming from and as you can see, internal traffic is marked second (Known as direct traffic because it comes directly from your own website).
Although internal traffic brings people who have already been to your site, you need to know that this is actually very beneficial to your website as well because when Google sees that you have loyal readers, they will rank you even better as your website is perceived as having great value to attract those people.
New websites struggle to get returning customers so if you can increase your rate of returning visitors, you get better rankings hence better traffic as well.
To get internal linking is simple – All you need to do is link to your pages! You’ll be amazed at the amount of clicks you’ll get, here’s a screenshot of my internal clicks breakdown…
You’d be amazed at the amount of clicks you get just by adding links!
Have you ever wondered how bloggers can earn money so much that they are able to go full-time?
That’s because they use their blogs to promote products by writing their experiences and thoughts which entices people to buy even more.
In fact, bloggers leverage internal linking to do this by writing product reviews to recommend programs or products or choice and this works very well compared to direct linking to affiliate products directly as people can get a chance to know the product before buying hence the reason as to why there are so many reviews around on the internet.
Conclusion
There you have it, my top 10 free ways to get traffic to your blog!
Although it sounds difficult, the steps are really simple because it depends on how much effort and time you want to do on promoting which is why driving free quality traffic to your site is definitely possible.
If you’re interested in finding out the perfect program for website traffic generation, check out my #1 recommended program here.
What about you, do you have your own methods of driving free traffic? Share them below, I would love to hear about them out!
Wow! This is so packed with concrete explanations and steps on how to REALLY move things forward with the blog. Thank you so much!
Now one thing came up for me. You mentioned that Google like posts with 2000 words. Is this applicable to today in 2017? (I saw you wrote this post in 2015)
You see when I first started writing my posts a lot of them were long and people have told me that they were overwhelming and hard to digest (I fixed my writing style since then). I’ve been told more than once that I need to split the content in two posts because I had too much content.
Now with this internet ADD culture, it seems like people prefer shorter posts as they don’t want to spend time reading. I make mine to be a minimum to 500 words to 1000 words. Any thoughts? Google likes long posts but readers like shorter posts. What do I do? Any advice?
Hey there Vanessa,
In 2017, content is worth more than ever and short contents of 500 or less are going to have trouble ranking within Google. 2000 words is indeed a lot but its not compulsory, a minimum of 1000 to 1,500 is also good but depending on the competition. If you have websites like Hubspot or Forbes on the keyword you’re targeting, then you might wanna up your game and increase it to 2,000 words minimum.
As for whether or not your readers like it, my advice is that more content always wins. Its true that sometimes your readers might have some point on what they’re saying but most of the decisions at the end of the day is made by you so ask yourself.. Do you like reading short articles? There are times when you need to do short and simple, and there are other times when you need to go the most detailed as possible the deeper the topic.
Short articles do not generally explain the full topic so this will push your readers to find answers at another website instead so that’s another thing to ponder on. Long story short, write detailed content. It’s the right move and Google will rank you better for it and if one or two of your readers won’t like it, you’ll get hundreds more coming. Great question Vanessa, hope I answered it right! Thanks for dropping by, hope you have a great weekend 😀
This article was very informative and easy to read and follow. I have been promoting my website with most of these but it was a great reminder of everything I can do to get more traffic. I also read and liked your article about reviews, it made me think that I should purchase more products and do reviews on them. Thanks for the great tips!
Glad you liked the article Danelle, cheers!
How to cook a pasta so good, your girlfriend’s parents would beg you to marry her
mmm, don’t you think the keyword title to be a little long ?
When you update a website with Google Webmaster Tools, do you type in your website domain into fetch as Google or the newly created post link address?
I’m just getting going with Webmaster Tools and I have seen the fetch as Google but never updated yet as I haven’t got to that part of the course.
You are so right about content and I always look for 1,500+ words for every post I write, always write my post title into the top image using the alt text and always share my links on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+. And always get some interaction on my posts, this is important.
How do you rate LinkedIn compared to Google+ as I haven’t signed up with LinkedIn yet?
Thanks for your informative post.
Simon.
Hey Simon,
You just add your site link on the Fetch as Google for each and every new posts you publish on your site. I would say Linkedin is much more effective than Google+ but actually, they are both very similar to each other so I would copy paste the shared post description on LInkedin to Google+ as well every time I publish something. Simple as that 🙂
Hello Riaz, wonderful tips for helping to get that website traffic. I admit that this has been the one thing that has turned out to be a little harder than I thought it would be. I am already utilizing social media and am constantly looking for ways to better use those most popular sites. I was not however using LinkedIn for affiliate marketing networking. just for my former employer networking. I will however start doing so. Thanks much for this particular tip. I also found the tip about internal links interesting and will look at implementing this one a well. Keep up your good work and I can’t wait to read more! Barbara
Hey there Barbara,
You would be surprised how powerful Linkedin can be as a form of content promotion and if one of your contents are really hot, people might refer and start interacting too even more there than in Facebook. Good luck on your traffic building!
Hi Riaz,
You mentioned some very interesting ways to get traffic to your website, like using LinkedIn. Is there a reason why you did not mention Facebook in a similar way? I realise that LinkedIn would be ‘more professional’ and Facebook be more ‘social’, so I am wondering is there a reason why Facebook did not make it to your list.
Kind Regards,
David
Hello David,
you are totally right on Facebook being more social than professional. The reason why I didn’t put it up as one of the steps is because Facebook has long since changed – They used to be very effective even for free bit now, you need to pay in order to advertise and get more traffic.
You can still share posts and links though, just that it won’t be visible to everyone and since this post that I’m writing is on free methods, I exclude Facebook. Awesome question by the way, do let me know if there’s anything I could help out with.
Your website made me break open the comments section in WA! It is extremely informative in all aspects of what I am looking for. Everything from what works and what doesn’t all in one place! You show great content and kept me clicking around looking for more! I am following your steps on how to drive traffic as we speak. Thanks for all the information.
Wow kind words like yours i what drives me to help people Jason, thank you! I’m glad that I was able to give you insights on traffic building, those are the things I personally apply on my blog too. Do let me know if there’s anything I could help you out with, hope you have a great Friday!
OMG Riaz, I have Pinned and Googled, Facebooked, Tweeted and Instagrammed your new Blog just now.
I am so very impressed with the information that I have just learnt from you. Big Thank you for that!!!
The reason behind me doing all of that, is not only to Thank You but because it makes me extremely happy to know that I am already half way there by already using some of your tactics.
Now, I am able to move forward with more confidence in my work and to carry on working a little harder and with more gusto than I have previously.
Knowledge Is Power.
Andi.
Hey Andi,
I’m so glad to hear that, you just made my day 🙂 . Those tactics seemed normal which is why many people tend to leave them but in reality, they can do wonders for your blog. Implement them on your posts and I can assure you, you’ll definitely see a positive boost on your blog. Good luck !
Hey Riaz,
This was a really well written article and i have bookmarked it for future reference. I’m new when it comes to online marketing/blogging and every tip here has been note worthy. I personally have seen a lot of my traffic coming from direct links and organic traffic. Which makes me really happy.
Personally, i haven’t touched social media yet but i do think it’s time to jump on board. Thank you for the really helpful information and i will defiantly be acting on these.
All the best
Vinnie
Hey there Vinnie,
Social Media is very huge and every entrepreneur should definitely take advantage of that platform. Glad my article helped gave you insight, hope you have a great weekend!
A lot of cool tips Riaz.
You’re incredible. Keep sharing such a wonderful article like this man.
Thanks for sharing!
Why thank you Marvin, thanks for dropping by!Hope you have a great day
Hi,
Thanks for your awesome post mate. I sure learn a lot from it. I never realized that Google+ can be such a great platform to drive traffic to my site. Plus, I always wonder why sites always not index. It usually take almost a week to get index. Thanks again for your very informative post. I learn a lot from it.
Cheers
Sure thing Hadri, the reason it takes so long is because your website is still new and you haven’t posted your contents as frequent. Use the Fetch feature and post your content as you normally should and you’re golden. Good luck!
When I first started out online several years ago this was achieved by writing irresistible headlines on posts, paying attentin to On-Page SEO and targeting Long-Tail Keywords. Guest Blogging was also up there but that seems to be a little bit dangerous these days. Now I just concentrate on banging out as much content as possible (4 posts a day). The frequency of publishing keeps me on the first page of google 🙂
Wow 4 posts a day is really something Chris, hats off to you my friend! Writing one post a day is a crazy challenge for me too seeing that I have to juggle between my day job which is 12 hours already, loving how you blog your way to success. Cheers!
Hey Riaz, this is truly an awesome article. I love reading your articles, they are always very informative and help answer a lot of questions I’ve had swirling around in my head. I love how you say to use images to help rankings. I recently went back into prior content and added about 5 pictures into each article. I hope that will help me increase my rankings! I need to start networking a bit more so I can start to get some relevant backlinks for my site. Thanks again for everything!!
Networking is a great idea for making awesome connections Bimmer, especially with fellow bloggers as there will definitely be some people who are willing to help you grow. Glad to know my article helped you, cheers!
super informative, one of the more detailed blogs I’ve read, thanks for the tips! Love the point on titles and how much of a difference a good one can make – in fact all your points on ways to drive traffic, I’ll be using them for my blog also, which can definitely do with more traffic!
That’s great news Ilona, I’m so glad you found my article helpful! I try to be as detailed as possible because I understand firsthand what its like to be finding information all over the internet just because you can’t find it on one page. Cheers!
Great post!
I’m mostly focusing on content creation myself. My search engine rankings are slowly climbing up. But hey, it’s still progress!
I’m using a lot of your other tips as well. I’m making sure to add alt tags to my images, sharing on G+ and Twitter, and submitting to Google.
Glad to know you’re implementing these tactics Alec, you will definitely rise up in ranks after long-term and your website will be ranking on the first page slowly, one page at a time. Good luck on your site growth!
Nothing like getting back to fundamental actions that work if you take the time to implement them. You havve given straightforward information that one can implement and actually get a legit increase in traffic without becoming a dedicated spammer. I appreciate your content…keep it up!
Thanks Sylvester, nobody likes to be labelled a spammer and I experienced this firsthand when I first started online. All courses teach us to spam but in order to succeed online, we need to do more than than all those conventional marketing. Thinking ahead and giving good valuable content is definitely the way to go. Glad you liked my article, hope you have an awesome Monday!
Another great article here Riaz! As bloggers we have a lot of work to do don’t we? I like your suggestion of joining blogging communities, to be honest I hadn’t looked down that route. I guess there might be some guest blogging opportunities on those sites?
Personally I try to concentrate on lengthy, quality content as I know you do also. It’s quite obvious that Google doesn’t like short articles anymore!
Hello again Andrew,
You’re definitely right on that one, a real business needs effort to build. There is no easy way to success except for hard work. You’re part of WA already so you don’t have to worry much about the community though, we have a huge database here already.
And yes, most of my articles are all lengthy nowadays compared to last time. I remember back then when my articles were 200-300 words short, no wonder it never ranked! Google actually likes lengthier articles better than shorter ones but you can still write them nonetheless. I usually mix mine with blog updates, kinda balance it off.
Hello again, Riaz.
Great stuff in this article as well, I am happy to say that I’m implementing every technique here, and I’m starting to see some growth in all the areas of my website. It requires a lot of work and dedication to make it work, but it’s totally worth it once you start seeing results.
I can’t help but wonder about the title, looking like a jerk? Why is that? There aren’t any black hat methods here, on the white techniques that we’re learning inside Wealthy Affiliate.
Anyway, great information here. Keep it up, man.
Regards,
Imad
Hey there Imad,
Good question lol, “Jerk” in the title actually was meant for spamming. Conventional methods to get traffic if you read every other blogs out there will tell you to spam spam and spam. Not many people fancy this method because they’ll end up looking like a jerk you see. Glad to see you’re doing well, best of luck on your site. Cheers!
Hi Riaz,
Very helpful and I can say I was right about subscribing to your blog. You provide valuable information to your readers especially for a newbie like me. I did not know what “direct traffic” is until I read it from this post. I am still working to get organic traffic. I only have around 16 percent of organic traffic from my 4 months of work. How long does it usually take to get that kind of organic traffic like yours? Thanks
Pitin
Hey Pitin,
Thank you for the kind words, so glad my article helped you out. When I first started, it was hard for me to find detailed information online so I ended up reading blog after blog after blog. So when I started my own blog, I decided to make my articles as detailed as possible so that my readers won’t have to go to other sites to find info that they require.
Actually, your traffic should be able to increase drastically after 3 month as you’ve just finished Google’s probationary period. After 2 or 3 months more, your site will definitely reach this state as long as you’re keeping consistent on creating content. Thanks for dropping by, appreciate your feedback! Hope you have a lovely Friday.
All of your strategies are very comprehensive and I can tell from experience they do work. Content, like you mention, is the key. I have been creating content for six months now and I have seen wonderful results. It all comes down to how much effort and time people are willing to put into their websites. Thank you for your tips!
Totally right on that one Juan, effort is what’s giving you the success. Lazying around and pushing a button hoping everything is on autopilot is definitely not the way. Glad your content has been growing, good luck on your site!
Riaz, you provided excellent excellent traffic-generating ideas in this post! Strategy #3 was a surprise to me; I never thought of images as a way to boost a website’s ranking. I’ll certainly be paying attention to adding more images to my work now that I know that they do more than make the posts look interesting.
You’re not the only one surprised by traffic from images Laurie, I too was one of the many. I didn’t know how beneficial images can be so the moment I realised that, I quickly wrote this post along with the screenshots. Glad you liked my article, cheers!
Wow this article is packed with useful information. I will definitely bookmark this article to use as a refresher. I haven’t been taking full advantage of all of the tools and social media sites out there.
The Google Search Console seems to be one of the more important tips because if Google doesn’t crawl your page then you can miss out on a lot of traffic.
Thanks for sharing this! And keep up the good work!
Hey Ian,
Google does crawl your page automatically but they take their own sweet time in doing so which may take weeks if you don’t post regularly. So fetching is basically giving the signal to come to your site. Appreciate the feedback, glad you find my artticle helpful. Cheers!
Hey you have a really great website here with a lot of helpful information. Anyone trying to make it online could benefit greatly.
This is a really good list and tactics everyone should be using. I like how you back everything up with personal experience and show a lot of stats to prove everything you are saying.
Do you use Photoshop to help with all your graphics? Thanks for all the info!
Believe it or not, I have no idea how to use photoshop Dylan. I use Snagit to screenshot my images and that’s how I was able to show you my stats. Thanks for the feedback, appreciate that. Cheers!
You have a lot of really good information here and you have clarified a number of things for me. I am bookmarking your site so I can read it over again when I get a bit stuck. One thing I do have a problem with is the alt text in images. I fill it out as you have shown but them the search engines tell me I don’t have alt tags. Why aren’t they showing to the search engines? I found your our site easy to read and I enjoyed it very much.
Good question there Margaret, Google will in time detect your images, but not instantly. It will take time for your site to get indexed and along that, your images as well, don’t worry. Glad you liked my article, hope you have a good Monday!
Hi Riaz,
That is totally Awesome..with capital A. I really must read this a few times to internalise how to drive traffic in the proper and correct way.
Now, got any more tips for linked in? I think that is something that I really have to dig deeper in to. (I had no idea linked in has groups!)
Hello again Derek,
Awesome to know you liked my post! LinkedIn is pretty useful when it comes to driving traffic. The sharing on groups are great and there are more ways on how to dig deeper but as far as traffic and conversions go, making use of groups is the best one yet.
Hi Riaz,
I’ve bookmarked this page to come back to later because it’s just so jam packed with some amazing tips I’m going to use it as a checklist. The thing that really interested me – but I hadn’t thought about – was joining other blogging communities, so I’m going to get on that ASAP!
I’d heard generally about almost everything you talked about, but I’d forgotten a lot of it honestly, by the time I got to writing content and developing and growing my website.
Thanks again for all the tips, I’m going to make sure I use every single one of them!
All the best,
Katia
Awesome to hear that katia,
These tips are common but bloggers often forget the power of these methods. Guess I’ll be seeing you here again soon and if anything, I’m always here if you need help with anything. Good luck on your site!
Nicely done.
Your page is very informative, and has many great points. I like how you include certain headings, colors, images, graphs, and so on.
Each step was very clear and had great blocks of information as well. I didn’t really thing about how much of an impact LinkedIn or Google+ could have on driving traffic to a site. I will keep all of this in mind as I continue to build my website and continuously striving for more traffic.
Thanks for all the knowledge you have shared.
Keep up the good work!
Glad you liked my guide Derek, Linkedin and Google+ are powerful platforms for traffic generation indeed. Thanks for the compliment, do let me know if you need help with anything!
Riaz,
Well said article. I always enjoy reading your article. I learn from you that engaging in social media like Linkedin. I always thought Linkedin is meant for people looking for jobs and I didnt realise it is another social media tool to promote your web site as well. Do you linkedin will have a better reach than Twitter?
I can’t give an answer on that Stanley,
They both work as fine but Twitter is more consistent then LinkedIn because you are constantly using Twitter as compared to Linkedin. Personally I only use Linked in when I have a new post to share and I do post to those groups, the traffic spike that I get is huge. My advise, take advantage of both, you can never have too much of a good thing. Great question by the way, thanks for dropping by!
The number 1 key to getting targetted website traffic is to write quality content for low competition keywords. This has two great benefits. If you target very low competition keywords, you are very likely to get on page 1 of Google. Secondly, these keywords are usually very specific, so anyone arriving on your site after searching for one of these keywords will be extremely well matched to the content you have written.
Well done for mentioning Fetch As Google as well. I only started doing that recently, but it has made a HUGE difference to how quickly my content is ranked in Google. I will have to start doing it with Bing too, though.
Hey Marcus,
Fetch as Google is great at increasing your indexing speed, you would most definitely need to take advantage of that if you wish you boost your blog growth, so glad to know its working well for you. And you’re definitely right on the content part too, the more specific it is, the higher the chance for conversion. Thanks for sharing your feedback, wishing you a very Happy New Year!
Hi Riaz,
This post is fantastic!
I could say, I’ve learned a lot, just by reading this one post..
Great Job!
It’s very helpful to a lot of readers and visitors on your site. 🙂
Actually, I’ve written down note a lot of things that you’ve shared, so that I can easily apply them into my own blog.. 🙂
You’re really very helpful.. and I believe there are lots of success coming to you more, because you are really providing value to your visitors and readers.. 🙂
I’ve already bookmarked your website.. 🙂
I’ll be coming back for more.. ^_^
Have an Awesome Day, Riaz. 🙂
Cheers,
Andrian
Wow thanks a bunch Andrian, helping people like you is what’s driving me to write on late nights and judging by your comment, I’m guessing that my article is not too bad!
Awesome to know that you’ve even taken down some notes for your website, do let me know if you need help with anything as I’ll be more than happy to help. Thanks for the kind feedback, I wish you a very Happy New Year!
It looks like you have a whole arsenal of ways to get traffic to your website. It will be hard to master them all, so I guess that you should start with only one.
Content marketing is my favourite because this method allows me to get a passive stream of traffic. Once the article is written, then you never really have to rewrite it and it will make money for you.
True that Viljoen,
content is the main and most powerful source of traffic but to let it grow you need to boost it by doing content promotion first which is why social media will be of great help. Best of luck on your online business, hope you have a Happy New Year!
Hi There,
Thank you kindly! That is a lesson in traffic generation and some great tips in SEO. I defo need to make some 2,000+ word articles. Pretty much all of my article and in the 600 word range as I try to keep it short and sweet!
How do I check the length of my competitors articles? any software (free) for that?
Thanks in advanced..soo good I book marked this for reference!
There are no software to check your competitors’ lengths Derek, you actually need to do that manually by copying their article and looking it up on Word to see the word count. Good luck on writing more, it’ll be fun and you’ll get used to it pretty fast after an article or two.
Riaz, thank you so much for writing this article.
I am fairly new at internet marketing. I have taken notes on your entire article and plan to implement them on my future articles to help start driving traffic to my websites.
I have bookmarked your website so I will be able to refer back to it for your latest articles that will help me move to the next level.
Would you suggest signing up for your emails to get the latest information directly to my inbox?
Thanks for all you do.
Bob
Definitely Robert,
I let my subscribers know of each and every one of my new posts so do sign up if you’d like to be in the know. Glad to know my guide helped you out, I guess I’ll be seeing more of you here eh? Merry Christmas!
Good golly! I wanted to respond to this article but now I have read about 4 of yours already, your internal linking is priceless!
You really covered the topic well, and I have even stashed some of your points like submitting to Bing, I did not know that site was out there.
Let me guess, that tip was not on this page? lol, but it did link to it!
Nice work!
Shawn>>
Thanks Shawn, internal links are indeed a powerful source of traffic as it boost your site’s SEO since Google will see that your site is engaging to readers. I often link my posts and pages with each so you might have seen that tip on one of my posts. Glad you liked my article Shawn, thanks for the feedback! Good luck on your site.
Nice quest, quite the adventure doing what it is that we do. Don’t you think? Constant obstacles and obstructions to over come, then as soon as you think you have it all figured out your website crashes and/or you lose information. Happened to me, luckily the guys a Wealthy Affiliate fixed it when it happened to 2 of my sites. Praise be, I thought I was screwed. You ever deal with this on your quest?
Online Job Market Secrets
I face obstacles many a times especially when I just started as I was still fresh in the online industry. The WA guys are a friendly bunch, you can always rely on them when you’re stuck. Glad to meet a fellow member here, thanks for dropping by man.
I learned so much from this post. I have always wondered how to get traffic to my website. I read several blogs about this, but none of them are as concise as yours.
Regarding the post length. I have been told that it is okay to have a post more than 500 words. I didn’t know that the longer the post, the better it is ranked!
It is not easy to monetize a website. With your consolidated info here, I know how I can improve my site!
Great thanks for contributing this post and share with us! Keep up the good work!
Longer posts rank much better Alex, so make sure you write your heart out on your next content. It’ll feel much better and you’d definitely feel more relieved in doing so too. Glad my article helped you out, cheers!
Very good way of breaking down everything in this article. The title does matter…I wanted to read your article because the way you worded it….”…without looking like a jerk.” I’ve been with my website close to 4 months now, but I’m kind of caught up in between should I be worried about getting more traffic or just focus on creating contents to develop my website. I’ve been having sudden drops of visitors since this month and I’ve been wondering what happened. Or should I even worry about it. Still debating this in my head..
You shouldn’t worry about it Joon, just focus on writing content as traffic going up and down is a normal thing. The more content you publish the better your SEO will be. Good luck!
Hi Riaz,
This information is priceless. I took three pages of notes.
As a relatively new blogger there is so much I do not know. Social media has been my biggest hurdle, because I never did much before blogging, so your advice about that has been most useful.
The most important thing that I have learnt since I started is that a lot of time and effort will have to go into setting up a successful blog. This is definitely something that I am prepared to do though.
Thanks so much for these great tips. I will definitely refer to this article several times during my journey.
Love and light,
Vivia
Hey there Vivia,
Wow 3 pages, glad my article is of great help to you! Time and effort will definitely pay off in the long run. Social media isn’t my strong point either but after a few shares, it’ll start becoming like second nature to you. All the best in your Online journey, if you need help whatsoever you where to find me!
Hi Riaz,
There is so much useful information here! I am new to website creation and just learning about the importance of traffic. What I learned most from this post is that I have a lot to learn 🙂 but I am willing to put forth the effort. Do you mind if I ask how long you have been blogging. Thanks again for all the advice. I will definitely be back!
Su 🙂
I don’t mind at all Su, ask away!
I’ve been blogging since last year July so I would say a little over a year now. Blogging is fun when you’ve been at it for a while, you start to think more creatively too as you struggle to find ideas to write about.
Everytime you start your day typing away at the keyboard, you’ll get a thrill like never before, it makes you feel alive. I’m sure you’ll do fine if you persevere, as an Online Business takes time and patience. All the best in your online journey!
Fantastic article, I really appreciated reading that and it gave me some food for thought. 1) the alt text on images – I’d half been paying attention and half not, so it may be time to go back and change all of those. 2) I need to focus more on social media when I can – I have recently logged into linkedIn and I think it sort of confused me slightly, so I quickly left! Lol, but the way you explained it sounded really simple, so I think I will give it another try soon. Many thanks for your article!
Hey Netp,
It was a tad confusing at first especially since there are so many things to think about on the interface as LinkedIn is meant for professionals. But after a while you’ll get the hang of it. You won;’t be using all of the interfaces though, only a simple thing or two so you’ll get by after a day or two. Wishing you the best of luck on your social media efforts! You’ll surely nail that LinkedIn traffic.
Hello!
This is a really great article. Very useful tips. Being affiliate marketer myself I have never done some of these steps, like Bing. You are absolutely right when it comes to LinkedIn, but on the other hand it rases the bar for quality and you can not post there just about anything.
Thanks for great tips, I will definitely do some of them!
All the best!
Hey Igor,
You do have a point there on LinkedIn having a bar on quality. LinkedIn is a platform for professionals so there are a lot of people there who are meticulous and have attention to detail so before sharing, make sure your post is related to that group.
For example , I share my blogging tips on SEO and content creation groups and marketing on marketing groups only. As long as its related, you should do fine and don’t forget to mingle and comment on other people’s posts as well as that will make them know you more as a person rather than a spammer.
Hey Riaz,
I have learned a couple tips and tricks from your article that will really help me in getting my site ranked in Google. I am also on Wealthy Affiliate and am learning something new every single day.
Right now I am mostly focusing on other traffic methods to help boost my ranking. I may start out with Facebook because Facebook is related to my main page/website. I just got started with Google+ and I will see how that goes. I am still struggling to get traffic to my website and am trying to find another traffic source.
Glad my guide helped you out Max, just implement these steps and those traffic will be yours. Good luck!
Wow!!! I’m so glad I found your website. I needed to see that post. I had no idea Google had the console. That is huge for me… I never even thought of joining blogging communities. I know you recommended a few, but which one do you believe to be the best for newbies? Thanks for the great post.
Hey Trevor,
I personally spend most of my time on the “Digital Marketing” Group and “SEO SEM Social Mobile” group as there are always people sharing great content and advice there and you can literally ask any questions whatsoever as people would be happy to reply and help you out. A lot of big shots in the Blogging industry like Neil Patel are there so its quite happening. Good luck!
LOL. I am loving the heading to your post Riaz… How to Drive Traffic to Your Website for Free Without Looking Like a Jerk?
I couldn’t help but laugh!
Sharing content on linkedIn is a great idea. I have done the facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and G+ thing, But am definitely going to have to have a look at sharing my content on LinkedIn Groups now.
Also, thanks for the reminder about Bing man… I had completely forgotten about submitting my url’s there.
Thanks for the awesome info Riaz.
Cheers,
Marc
Hey Marc,
Glad you liked the title, I wanted to give out the message that my methods are the non-spammy ways of driving traffic which is what many of us are looking for. All the best for your LinkedIn shares, they are quite fun to do! Cheers
This is exactly what I need, a lot of ways to start a blog without spending money. So, far I’ve just spent most of my time writing content. What exactly is the meaning of organic traffic and how do you get that little graph thingy that gives you all that data?
Anyways, I’ll have to follow your advice and write longer articles. Mine are only about 800 words.
Your idea about using Google autosuggestions to write blogs is very interesting. I think I will try it. But really, how do you get all these little data things that show you what words you are ranking for and all that?
Wow. I’ll have to start doing all the things that you suggested! I’m going to spend the rest of the day doing all of these things!
Hey John.
Organic traffic like I mentioned in the article is the traffic you get solely from search engines like Google. For the graph, you can find it on Google Analytics or Google Webmasters.
For Analytics, its under “Acquisition” –> Search Engine optimization –> Queries.
For Webmasters, its under Search Traffic –> Search Analytics.
Hi Riaz… I like your niche and the way you presented it.I learned something more about affiliate marketing especially on how to use social media efficiently.After reading your posts, I got a some fresh ideas on how to move forward with my website.I was not knowing about how images are helping to build the google rank, so now even I have to try it as well.
Really it helped me a lot.
Thank you
You do that Arjun and I can assure you, your site will definitely gain a boost of traffic, especially if you implement it on all the posts that you write too. Cheers!
Wow my mind was totally blown by your post. I am also a blogger and a newbie and after I have read your post it opens me a lot more ways on how to get traffic. And that’s what I am struggling for right now. Your tips definitely will serve my guide on things that I have to check and do to achieve traffic on my site. This is very helpful so aI shared it in my G+ as well 🙂 thanks!
Your welcome Jezza, these tips are meant to help beginner bloggers to get an edge in the online business world,I’m glad I was able to give you insight on how to boost your site traffic better. Good luck on implementing it!
This is great infomation.
This is very important information for anyone who has interest and business online.
If you have a website you would know the importance of website traffic. Other than being noticed by our search engines and rankings, its the only thing that really matters. Within internet marketing, If we dont have visitors we dont make sales.
This infomation is great. I like the fact that your xoncepts and elements needing to encorporate to you site is all free.
Glad to know you find my article helpful, thanks for dropping by!
Hi,
This is really an awesome article about driving traffic to your site. It is very informative and how you have outlined the 10 point are superb.
I have just started my site some days ago and I was wondering how I can drive a lot of visitors there. Have really done a good job on this article. I have bookmarked it and will read through when I have difficulty directing traffic to my site.
Thanks. Cheers!
Hey there Daniel,
You will definitely get that traffic boost if you implement these steps. Have a go at it when writing your posts, doing it religiously will bring you more traffic boost than you ever thought possible and your website will definitely have a steady growth if you do. Good luck!
This is a very well written article and I’ve already bookmarked the site. I look forward to reading more articles from you.
This article can be a standalone training or useful as a refresher. Keep up the good work!
I definitely love WA’s SiteComments feature. It allows me to comment on others’ websites and receive a comments in return.
Right you are Ian, its a give and take feature so quality is definitely assured unlike those cheap short comments they often sell at Fiverr.
Wow, great post here. Just started my website and honestly have been struggling alot to get traffic. Attracting traffic To your site is not easy and that is why one should learn various ways to do it successfully. Your post helps with that and am very sure this particular post is going to help alot of people just like me. Thank you very much.
Always a pleasure Barrack, I know how difficult it is to get your website off the ground. Google do not take kindly on new websites so you have to persevere because eventually, your site is going to lift off if you keep working on it. In the Online World, its a game of time.
Hello and thank you for the tips,
This is definitely worth the bookmark!
I have been looking for free ways to gain more traffic to my website for those who would be interested in it.
Also I had no idea what direct traffic in Google analytics were, thanks for clearing that up for me.
Hello there Jason! Awesome to know that my article is helping you with traffic, if you implement them all you can definitely see a rise in traffic at the end of the month. Cheers!
This really helped me out a lot. I’ve been trying to figure out more wways to get traffic without spending any money but was running out of ideas. Some of the tips you’ve written here are very creative and I can imagine they work very well. I am going to try posting in a LinkedIn group if I can find one relevant to my niche and Google+ groups.
Thanks for the tips!
Hannah.
Glad I could be of help Hannah, LinkedIn is very powerful and you’ll certainly gain that traffic boost if you share your posts on those groups. Best of luck!
Great article Riaz. I’m applying almost all these strategies and results are not bad. To be honest, my favourite method is driving traffic from search engines and Youtube because I’m not a big fan of social media. But driving traffic from search engines is extremely difficult because of the competition. I agree that all these steps are simple, but good results are hard to achieve. One of the best methods to drive traffic is email marketing. I haven’t started using this method as I should be but I’m getting visits from my subscribers very often. I’m planning to start using this method soon.
YouTube is awesome too Rufat,
they can give you huge traffic but not many people are confident enough to utilize it as many people are camera shy. Email marketing is amazing, my list keeps growing everyday and every time I post something and share it with my list, I get a huge boost to my website just like that which is something we definitely need to take advantage of. Thanks for the feedback, hope you’re having a lovely day!
Wow Riaz, this is so comprehensive and helpful. Its such a big help for people like me who are just starting out. Didn’t even know some of these! Have started in G+, but I know I need to utilize it further. Will work on Google search console and Bing too. Picked up so many goodthings here! Thank you again! 🙂
Glad I could help Raquel, best of luck on implementing these techniques on your site! I’m sure you’ll definitely be able to boost your site tremendously.
Great information on driving traffic.
Some of these ideas I have seen before, but others are new and I have bookmarked them so that I can use them!
I will be back and review your lists on how to drive traffic to your site …
This is great! Where did you learn all of this stuff?
B
I learned all of these the good old fashion way – Trial and error and a lot of reading. Glad to know my article helped you and thanks for bookmarking my site, guess I’ll be seeing you around
Hi Riaz, thanks for this very informative post on how to get free traffic.
I have not really venture to LinkedIn social media as I thought it is for professional connection for job hunting or being head hunted.
I now know that there are groups to discuss any topics too. I will venture into it asap!
Thanks for your advice!
Hey Edmund,
Linked in is in fact a social network for professionals but online entrepreneur is also considered one too. Whatever your work is, just fill in your bio as detailed as possible because people just want to know who you are and they would definitely want to look at who they are talking to or whether or not that person is legit. They are a great source of traffic to tap into, good luck!
I appreciate this website. I learned a lot of tips that I really didn’t know. Writing 2000 word post is going to be difficult for me I must say. But if that’s what it takes then I may need to start adding more content to my older post. I also need to sign up for LinkedIn. I think that may be effective for me.
You do that Brandon,
Spending more time to work on your website will only bring it good so don’t be afraid to give it your best shot and before you know it, all of those pages will be on the first page of Google already. Adding more content to older post will also boost SEO as Google will notice that you care about those old posts instead of just leaving them be after you have new ones. Best of luck on your website!
Hi, I love all the tips that you have on your site and I’ve bookmarked it. It’s true how some websites are ranking on page 1 of Google although they have very little text. Question about using keywords in the alt text. Do you use the long tail keyword or short ones? If I have a few images on my post, is it better to use a different keyword for each image or to use the same? Thanks for sharing your post.
Hey there Yvonne,
If you have a few images on your post, it doesn’t matter really as you can still use the same keywords on all of those photos. By doing this, those photos will rank together under the same keywords when someone types those in the search engine. Hope that helps!
Hey Riaz , what a title is that , very funny.Who wants to look like a jerk , right?
Very good initial point as content is really the foundation , how can a website get ranked or bring traffic without it?…You decide to blog , you have to commit.
I have not yet used LinkedIn as I did not have the time to prepare.Are you using it for a long time?…
Your list of the blogging communities is something I have to focus right now.
That submission inside the Bing webmasters is something you do every time.Is not there a limit like in Google’s tool? (4 per month is not it?)
Very good job as always , in depth article.I have some ideas now to implement on.Cheers.
Hello again Tasos,
Great to see you here again. Lol a lot of people tend to spam their way around to get traffic hence making them look like a jerk so the methods I’m sharing here are ones that won’t make you look like that. Totally true, a blog is all about content but many people tend to stop halfway as they eventually lose commitment.
The blogging communities are also awesome, they are plenty to go about and you’ll have a hard time trying to keep track with all so don’t worry about resources. As for Bing, so far there has been no limit for submitting your link, I submit around 6-8 links a month and they have no problems with that so no worries! So glad to know I could help you out in terms of traffic, cheers to you too.
Traffic tips are always great and you can just never ge enough of them. I myself have like 4 or 5 lists/posts on my site offering tips on traffic generation with plenty more to come.
I greatly appreciate these traffic generating tips as it will help not only myself but our entire community. You have truly done an excellent job.
MM+
Thanks! Glad you liked the article, I try to make it as detailed as possible so that people can implement it easier when they know what they will be facing, how hard is it to carry out, and how beneficial it is to implement these tips to their website. Thanks for dropping!
Hi there Riaz,
Wow what a site you’ve got going on here! Content and instruction galore! I am really impressed at the knowledge base you’ve collected and are sharing with the world! Great and actually very important SEO information and social advice. You’re absolutely right about becoming more personal to your followers by at least an appreciative response. People get a bit leery when someone is too robotic to do something as human as saying hey, thanks! lol.
Great Job and keep up the good work!
Brian
Hey Brian,
Wow thanks a bunch for the kind words! Being personal is definitely much better than spamming the same message to everyone, they feel much better especially when you take the time to type in their name specifically. I know i would. Thanks for dropping by, cheers!
Hello Riaz,
What a great article, all the steps you mentioned is so logic and I believe that content plays a big role in your ranking by google, but I am little confused in the first area what is organic search actually means? and how you know that your website image ranked also in google? thanks for sharing this informative post.
Hey Ehab,
Organic search are those searches you get when you type in something from Google. In other words, they are the random people you get to your website from the internet. Regarding the images part, there is no way to check the percentage of people coming to your website through images.
Although I do agree that it can be very important for photography websites. It is possible though, and there should be a plugin or two regarding that but I won’t advise installing them as it will take up space and you won’t be using them as much. Hope that helps!
Hello, my name is Patrick. After reviewing your site, I think that it’s coming along great. I really don’t know what to say. Really, I don’t have anything bad to say about your website. Everything I have to say is positive.
I like the theme of your website. It looks pretty cool. Your content has a lot of great information and is easy to read. You Social Media network looks great. Also, I like the name of your site.
Your sidebar is clean and neat. The ads you have looks great.
If I was you, I would not change a thing. This is one of the better websites i have seen. So Professional looking. Good luck and keep up the great work.
Wow Patrick,
thanks so much for the kind words! It wasn’t initially looking like this though, it was way messed up before and I had to keep changing themes and placing for a year before finally settling down on this one. The blog name My Internet Quest was a spur of the moment thing as I like to play games and the word ‘quest’ is something I really like hearing so i made that into my site name. If you need help with anything at all Patrick, you know where to find me 😀
Hi Riaz, your article is very informative! Honestly I don’t know that Bing (and Yahoo) hold a significant portion in search result piechart 🙂 I just submitted my homepage but unfirtunately Bing services are down right now.
I have a question regarding the Direct (Internal) Traffic. In the screenshot above (or maybe in Google Analytic), can we tell how people arrive to that particular landing page within our website?
I’m curious about this status because I want to know which content that drive the most internal traffic from my website. Thank you!
Hey Alblue,
You can find out how many people visit your page through internal link from Google Analytics easily. From your Google analytics, go under “Acquisition”, and click on “Channels” and you’re good to go! You’ll be able to see which post s getting how many clicks. Hope that helps!
Riaz-
Your post is amazing! It helped me so much and it helped me understand so many topics that I didn’t understand. I am going to go step by step down the list for each one of my sites and see if this helps them! This way I am going to take all of your advice because this is seriously one of the most helpful pages I have ever seen! Thank you for putting so much work into something that is so helpful!
Hello Envlizard,
So glad to know my article helped you out! I try to put as much info and be as detailed as I can because I know how hard it is to find valuable info on the web these days. Wishing you all the best for your site and if you need help with anything, you know where to find me!
Very informative site…
Thanks for sharing these info. I’ll take on board the advice on internal links and sharing your site url on social media. I need to add more content and ads, though, before I do that. I have also submitted my site url to bing as per your advice. And I agree, ‘Content is King’.
Hey there Mylu,
That is so kind of you, thank you so much! Content should be your number one priority though, so don’t think too much on ads and the rest because once you have free time after pasting, you can spend as much time on beautifying your site as you like. Cheers!
Great post Riaz.
These really are some great tips. I have tried some in the past, but have had trouble with my consistency.
I definitely need to get better at tweeting, but with a broken smart phone I don’t always have the chance to do so when I would like.
Content really is key and something I am continuously working on improving.
I can clearly see you follow your own advice in your post. I am bookmarking your page for future advice and tips!
Thanks for sharing!
Hey there Sarah,
Lol I need to try those techniques first before I can take the screenshots to show you so they do in fact work. Tweeting is something I often do on my computer because Wi-fi is really unstable here in Malaysia so you could always tweet when you’re at home no pressure. Plus I prefer to Whatsapp and Telegram on the web too instead of my phone when I’m working on the computer, it makes everything all the more easier 😉
Very informative post! I knew some of what you posted but the way you convey it all in such a concise manner is amazing! I am going to have to bookmark this if anything for reference! I like how you described how to rank (with) images! I guess you could really say a picture is worth a thousand words huh!?
Good one Aaron!
A picture is worth a thousand words, visual play a very important role in igniting our senses. Not everyone likes to read but there is also noone who doesn’t like to have photos in articles as that makes reading all the more interesting. Thanks for dropping by!
Riaz,
What a great site. This site is so informative I’ve learned so much. I especially enjoyed the page about ranking on google. I had no idea that youtube was owned by google.
If I were to advertise my website on youtube. How do you suggest that I’d go about doing that?
Hey there Theresa,
Youtube is indeed owned by Google, that’s why you can embed their videos on your site with ease. If you were to advertise your website on YouTube, I suggest you start with creating your own channel first. Create your profile and from there, slowly build your followers through your own personalized videos because if you start paying for ads before you even have any content, your followers are not gonna stay long. Its basically like blogging if you think of it from a broader picture 😉
Hi, this is really a good text, I like what write here. Though, I was laughing after seeing your example of the title, in title-trap. It cannot work, it is too long. Meta title is the one that appears first when people search and this has 60 characters limit, with site title included. So there is no much freedom. But I guess you were thinking about post title. Pity that the image with keyword for which you are ranked although you did not target them, is not readable, this is very interesting fact. Once again, good text, thank you.
Thanks for your feedback Jovo!
Hi Riaz. This is a great article because there are two strategies that I wasn’t aware. 1. The importance of getting ranked with images, and 2. Telling Google of my new content.
One thing I was surprised to read is the content length should be at least 2,000 words. I know this is debatable by many people, and I know users generally don’t like reading very long article.
You have tremendously improved your website since last time I visited. Keep up with the good work!
Hello again Tina,
Images and content fetching are the two of the most common things we often forget about and even I myself tend to forget sometimes. As for the content length, don’t worry about because not everyone actually reads everything, especially if its that long. I am guilty of that myself.
However when people come across blog posts which are that detailed, they tend to trust that blog even more and they would be more inclined to read if they have time hence the increase in engagement. Its good to see you again after so long, hope to see you again here anytime soon!
Wow. Good stuff in there. I especially liked the part about ranking pictures. I’ve never given that much thought before but it’ll be something I check into.
How long was it for you before you began seeing traffic from your social media efforts? This way of generating traffic interests me and I’d like to learn more.
Hey there Matt,
If you increase your social media efforts, you should see some positive results almost immediately when people click on your post. Do that continually and people will come from all sorts of places to check you out so you’ll have double growth a few days after but make sure you post consistently as you want to give the impression that you’re hard working and updated to give people more reason to follow you and get more news. Its pretty much like YouTube actually, once they like your quality and the kind of things you post about, they’ll subscribe. Hope that helps!
Wow, this was really an eye-opener. Really informative and helpful.
I always knew that images were important, both for visitor readability and I also saw somewhere that it is important for SEO, and that is why I always utilize images. However, I never considered the possibility that people would find my website by searching in the images section of google, instead of the web section. I also never really knew what the “alt text” was all about, and that it actually tells Google keywords associated with that image.
Now I will start doing that. I am also extremely new to Linkedin, I’ve got to check that out.
You’re not the first one who told me that Ben,
The images part is a really great way to earn traffic because not everyone likes reading through texts, even on search engines. From Google, these people would usually go through images first to see which ones click with them and from there, they would decide to check out the website or not. linkedin is pretty cool to and you should definitely check it out, glad I helped give you more insight on SEO Ben.
YES!
I love that you have a website dedicated to online success because I have one as well.
I also love your most recent post about how to get FREE traffic to your site. This is where most people have trouble finding success! Including me. Like most, I don’t have a lot of money to spend.
The only thing I would suggest is to keep posting things about how to be successful!
Hey Karissa,
Traffic is what everyone needs but many people have this perception that we need to spend in order to get more visibility. Though that is true in some manner of words, it is still possible for us to get quality traffic without spending a single dime and the methods I share are the ones that have worked for me. Glad to know you find it helpful, cheers!
Hi Riaz,
Thank you for this great post. I actually saved the post, because I think it can very useful, especially the part about photos ranking. I’m that kind of person that always scrolls through images on google. Sometimes you find that special thing what you are looking for. Well, I do. I’m already using the alt text, but now I know what it is for.
Another thing what suprised my was Linkeldin. I’m not using Linkeldin, but I will look in to that. It sounds helpful.
Hey Cherish,
Glad my article helped give you better insight on the use of images. I can totally relate to you on the image search thing because I myself do a lot of image searching too for my work and most of the time we would release that we are already clicking on the “Visit page” button which leads to the website of which that photo belongs to.
This was an article that I desperately needed to read! My posts and pages on my website are only about 1000 words or less so I guess I need to beef that up. It’s hard but it looks like it’s worth it. I learned so much from reading this I can’t thank you enough for writing this article! I’m excited to write a new, and much longer, post on my site today! Thanks for the inspiration and guidance.
Anytime Tera,
Writing lengthier is actually quite fun because you’ll start to notice more things as we look for more ideas on what to write about. We’ll learn how to write in more detail, how to make better use of internal linking, and also generate more ideas to write more content and eventually, we’ll be writing 1,000 words in less than an hour! It gets pretty thrilling after some time, I wish you all the best on your blog.
Hey Riaz. Thank you for such a comprehensive article! I got so much value and information from this. With regards to social networking I just don’t really have the time to interact at the moment. I am putting my main focus on getting quality content on my websites for now.
What would you say I should make my secondary focus if I have a time shortage?
Hey Lynne,
Thanks for the feedback, I totally understand the time shortage part as I too am currently juggling my day job handling events so writing blog posts is a real challenge when you work 10 hours a day. A great solution to that is to reduce the amount of content we post to about one per week, but doing so you have to make sure the quality is your best one yet! Contents are meant to last forever so its always a great idea to give each and every one of your articles your best shot, your heart and soul.
Content promotion makes up 60% of your blogging efforts especially for new blogs so since you have a week of free time to not worry about writing, you can focus on your free time about 10-15 mins a day building comments or sharing on social media. Long-term speaking, it is a very effective way to build up your blog while spending lesser time becasue after a week of consisent promotion, your post is definitely going up through ranks and you’ll get more visibility. Hope that helps!
“Very nice article Riaz!” Ha ha just kidding. This has been a great article for learning about traffic methods. I also use the Wealthy Affiliate Comments tool and it is amazing! It always good to be able to help people and know you will also get good help in return. I did not know the alt text on pictures helped SEO, so now I will have to try that.
Almost got me there Bryan!
Glad you found my article helpful, traffic is something everyone is looking for ways to improve on. The alt text is a pretty neat trick, something many of us tend to miss out on as we usually focus more on writing content more than finding images. Hope it works well on your end, thanks for dropping by!
Hi Riaz – What a fantastic post. i have to admit that generating traffic has been my major bugbear. After reading this post I now have tons of ideas how I can move my websites forward.
Your advice about joining social media groups makes a lot of sense and something I will be putting onto place
Really big thanks for sharing this information
Mark
Hello Mark,
Social Media sharing is great but its not very effective if we don’t have an audience to reach out to. Finding our audience through groups is the way to go, its pretty fun and if you do it long enough, you’ll even forget that you even have a personal account to begin with lol. Best of luck in your online endeavours!
Great post Riaz. I can’t say I learned a lot because I’m already applying most of these traffic strategies, but for those that are starting out this post can be very valuable. You outlined all major traffic strategies and you did it really great. Which method works best for you? And do you experience traffic fluctuations? Do you recommend to focus on one method only or apply all methods at the same time?
Rufat my friend,
Hello again, it’s good to see you here. Its hard to say which methods work best for me because I implement everything. Although content creation plays a huge role in your blog, content promotion on the other hand, needs a considerable amount of time to be carried out because you need the word to get out and you need your post to be found. There are many more methods out there which I have not explored like Press Releases but these 10 steps are the ones which have worked and I hope they work for you too. Good luck on your website, cheers!
Wow. Another great post from you Riaz! I am amazed as I have actually learned so much from here. I have just bookmarked it!
You mentioned about writing an article with more than 2000 words. I just wonder if my post is now under 1000, and I want to update the post from time to time to make it to 2000. Will that do the same trick?
Thanks for the great tip on “Image” to drive traffic to the site. It is true that I myself also constantly look for images to be included in my blog. That simply means there are people like me do look for images on google. That will direct the internet users to the site! Brilliant!
Keep up the good work!
Alex Y
Wow thanks a bunch Alex!
Always a pleasure having you gracing my site :D. If you have a post under 1,000 words, you can definitely go back and increase your content. A lot of bloggers tend to forget this because we’re too busy focusing on creating new content but actually, refurbishing our ‘old’ posts is also a great way to boost SEO. This is because Google will see that you care about your website and posts to update them even when they’re old when many other sites just leave it be.
Images are cool too, I never actually cared much about them as I love writing but after finding out that part of my blog visibility comes from my images, I come to know that I can’t live without it. Thanks for dropping by Alex, hope to see you again here in the near future!
This is an absolutely brilliant post, with so much information. I didn’t know half of these things to drive traffic. It’s easy to read and very informative. I know we are tend to focus on Google, but if I am a newbie in the internet business, should I forget that and just focus on Bing? IN fact, I don’t really even know how to do that!
Hey there Ruth,
No shouldn’t focus sole on Bing although that is a profitable market. A good marketer takes advantage of every opportunity he gets and that includes Google because that’s the main game everyone’s playing. It may be a bit hard to penetrate and master but it is just a game of time and slowly but surely, we all will get used to it and from there, you website will also get noticed by Bing pretty quick. I used to hate the internet because its all so confusing (I had no background on website development) but now I still can’t believe I have a blog of my own haha. If you focus on Google, Bing shouldn’t be a problem as it is much simpler to handle and less strict. Hope that helps!
This is great Riaz. You always create a very detailed and clear picture that’s easy to follow. Many points here that I need to follow up. Thanks!
Regards,
Eric
Your welcome Eric, thanks for dropping by!
Hi Riaz,
Thank you so much for this! I hadn’t even thought about using linkedin or even half the stuff you’ve talked about!
I’ve made sure to favourite this article so that I can go back and take a closer look at it all.
You find a lot of sites that give pretty generic sort of instructions but this isn’t one of them, I’m happy to say!
Thanks again!
All the best
Katia 🙂
Hi Riaz,
Wow, I learned so much from this post. Thank you for sharing your tips! It is true that we cannot take the power of social media lightly. I arrived your blog through Google+ 🙂 I am glad that I decided to quickly check G+ before making lunch as I found this valuable article of yours!
I have one question. You mentioned about keeping the LinkedIn communities specifically to your niche. I currently have one account with my other profession (teacher). If I wish to promote my quite new website through LinkedIn, do you think it is necessary to create another account as an online marketer? Do you know if it is even possible for one to have multiple LinkedIn accounts under the same name?
I will apply the tips you share here to my website. Look forward to more helpful articles to come 🙂
Yuko
Hello Yuko,
Awesome to know that you arrived here through Google+! Actually, all you need is just one account and you can spend hours just promoting using that one account as it will really take up a lot of your time so I do not really recommend creating multiple accounts. It is much better to focus on one thing and put all your efforts in it rather than focusing on multiple things at once especially when you’re still trying to get the hang of things. Hope that helps!
Thank you Riaz for responding. I will take your advice and focus no one place for now. Thank you!
Yuko
Anytime Yuko, sorry for the super late reply! I was out taking care of my grandparents for a while and there was hardly internet