Site Smart

There are all kinds of tricks and gimmicks out there that promise to increase traffic and even Page Rank if you throw enough money at them. People spend endless amounts of money buying links on high traffic sites, high page rank sites, and combinations of both.

Is this the only way to succeed? If you’ll take the time to finish reading this article I’ll show that the answer is no.

If there are less expensive and even free ways to launch your website then why do people spend so much money?
That’s a good question. Some would answer that buying your traffic and page rank is faster. I say, not true. There are plenty of ways to get traffic and establish your site’s authority that are instant and won’t cost you a nickel.

Buying your way to the top is easier.
With this I would have to agree (although that depends on how hard you worked to get the money in the first place). If you are looking for a magic solution that requires nothing from you then this article is probably not for you. But if you are willing to put in as little as 15 minutes a day into getting traffic and linkbacks for you site (not including the time you need to spend creating content for your site, that is a whole different ball game) then I’ll show you how to succeed. I won’t even ask you to buy my ebook either (not that I have one).

Alright, let’s begin. I am going to assume you have a brand new site or blog that has some content. First off, to really succeed you need quality content. You should strive to post at least 75% original content not just a summary or copy of something someone lese has already written about.

You have your content now how do you get people to read it?
You can have the greatest website or blog in the world but if nobody ever reads it it’s not really a success, is it? So how do you get traffic to your site? We will look at 3 ways to drive people to your site.

1. Article submission
Article submission sites are great ways to get traffic from other sites and build linkbacks at the same time. Articles that you submit are free for others to repost on their own sites as long as they leave your footer intact. You can place links in your footer to link back to your site(s).

This is probably the easiest method to get traffic and linkbacks because you write the article and submit it once and then others do the work of posting it on lots of sites for you. The amount of traffic you get and the quality of the linkbacks depend on the sites that post your article. Try writing articles for popular niches to increase your return.

2. Contribute to other blogs
Most blogs allow you to leave comments and they include your url. You should find blogs on topics you like and contribute quality comments to those blogs. Hint: look for high traffic blogs in your niche or blogs that have a lot of RSS subscribers. Your link will be posted with your comment and you will get some traffic from other readers, especially if you present interesting points and comments.

However, almost all blogs include rel=”external nofollow” on that link. What does this mean? It only means something to Google, all other search engines ignore this detail and record your linkback. Google does not record these types of links as linkbacks.

Despite this fact it is still worth it for the traffic you will get and the rankings on other search engines.

3. Help people in a forum
One fact that most people don’t realize is how useful your signature is on forums. You can place a link to your site in your signature and it will get attached to every post you make giving you linkbacks.

As far as traffic goes, the same principles as commenting on blogs apply. If you are helpful and provide quality feedback other users will follow your link to your site.

Also, forums won’t add rel=”external nofollow” to your link so it is picked up by all search engine however forum threads usually don’t reach as high of a rank as blogs and articles do but every little bit counts.

Summary
We have looked at some free ways to promote your blog that don’t take up too much time. You may already read blogs and comment on forums already so there is no extra work involved for you to take advantage of these techniques.