Did you follow me there? Don’t let the title confuse you: the bottom line is this: your website is not going to market itself. Just because you build it does NOT mean they will come.
Sorry Kevin Costner. I did love Field of Dreams but that was all it was—a dream.
Our Huge traffic Strategy #2- Create Great Content will only work to draw people in once they’ve already been to your site and have been blown away by your amazingly interesting (entertaining/mortifying/fill in the blank). The thinking here is that they will be coming back.
But how do you get them there in the first place?
We’ve reviewed 2 ways, earlier in our Huge Traffic Strategies Series already, but lets quickly review:
Huge Traffic Strategy #1- Commenting on others blogs, and
Traffic Strategy#3- Google Loves Fresh Content (and WordPress)
2 Great places to start. But now it’s time to kick it up a notch.
There will always be a need for off “site” marketing- techniques you’ll need to employ to attract attention to your site so that they can then see the aforementioned awesome content and hire you/buy your products.
Just like any other business of the offline marketing of your blog or website is essential, and it stands to reason that there will be some cost attached…and should be, if you are running your blog as a legitimate business. Obviously if yours is a hobby blog that you’re not looking to monetize that is a different story. Most of us however, could use a little business and ROI from our websites or blogs.
So treat it like a business and invest in it when necessary. It deserves to be taken seriously, and if you do you will reap the benefits in oodles of traffic. Here are
4 Great Free Ways to Create Traffic to Your Website Using Off Site Marketing Techniques:
- The most obvious: Social Media Marketing. Nothing says expert than you posting and interacting on your social media platform of choice. Always include links back to your website/blog and use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest of YouTube as you would a networking meeting. Build relationships, respond to others, and ask questions. Never just post post post, as now you’re just a one-way street.
The beauty of social media is the interaction capabilities, not just spewing your stuff at people. This takes some finessing but make it your goal and you’ll find that with patience, traffic and conversions will happen. Like any other marketing strategy however it has to be worked smartly to get the most out of it. That may not mean posting daily on every single SM site out there. Does that make you happy?
- Pay attention to your target market and where they are going to interact. That’s where you want to make your presence known. If your market is of a ‘certain age’ and is not out there tweeting in a Twitter frenzy like my 15 year old, then don’t concentrate on Twitter. Go where your peeps go. That’s marketing 101.I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
- Make your signature count on all of your emails, newsletters and blogs you send out. This is such a simple one and yet I can’t begin to tell you how many business people still don’t have a live link to their website from their email correspondences. Come on people, this is gravy.
Most All email services today have the auto signature function where you can create a signature with your blog address, social media links and the catchy and very effective phrase:
“If this has been helpful to you please forward it to someone you think might benefit from it as well”.
Which brings us to #3:
3. Email Marketing: Of all the marketing you can do, most experts agree that email marketing is the biggest kahuna. Reaching people where they go 2, 3, sometimes, (hello) 10 times per day is in your face marketing.
When writing that blog post, creating that special offer don’t just post it on your website! Get it the heck out there in an email with a link back to your site.
Doing this consistently and with permission (Alert! Alert! Read this!!!) will cement you in your warm leads minds and lead them back along their merry way to your blog/website.
- If you are a blogger, share your blog with others, otherwise known as Article Marketing. You know, play nice, share a lot.
There are many sites out there, whether they be online hyper-locals like Patch, or “like” sites- a site where your content compliments-not duplicates-the other, who would be all too happy hosting your article (now that we’re on another site we’re called an article. Whatever. This technique is a win-win for everyone as it offers the host site and you valuable back links, helps build new relationships with the host sites readers and if your stuff is god enough quality, provides fresh valuable content for the host site (make sure it’s either original content for the host site or that you’re providing a backlink directly back to your original post or Google will give you the old duplicate content kabash.) More about that here.
I guest post on a number of sites, including Patch, Founders Space, Create Hype and Over 40 Females and always upload to both Evan Carmichael and Ezine Articles, both of whom have huge SEO juice. All have links back to my website. This is a good thing.
It might seem like a lot of work, but I have my systems in place, not to mention my intern; and we now have everything (almost) on auto- pilot. And the pay off is well worth the effort: Doing this has raised my visibility and traffic by leaps and bounds.
We’ll delve into paid techniques that work next week, but as I always say,
“Free stuff first and foremost”
Great article. I just have one caution: Article marketing via sites like Ezine Articles is no longer the great idea it once was. You used to be able to upload an article to Ezine Articles and have it published all over the web, which resulted in tons of traffic to your site. With Google’s war on duplicate content, this strategy doesn’t work since only the first publication of any piece of content will ever show up in search results.
As long as you publish unique content to all locations — your own website/blog, guest posts, article directories, etc — you are fine. The issue is only when you allow your content to be duplicated across the web.
yes and no Lisa, agree that as an SEO tool article marketing is not as effective since the Google updates, but so long as you are including a link to your own content, it still is a very effective link building strategy, and with the original post cited, the host site does not get penalized…supposedly, by Google.