There is no doubt that website traffic is critical to your business success. And free traffic beats everything else. And where’s the best place to get free traffic? Google and other search engines.
How do we get free traffic from Google?
The process works in a way that you have experienced many many times. You load up Google or another search engine. Enter the words you’re interested in. And click one of the links that shows up. That website owner has just enjoyed the benefit of free traffic. We will be discussing here how to get website traffic to you for free.
Most people only click results from the first couple pages. Actually, almost 100% of the free traffic goes to this first page of results. And what’s more, the first 3 get over 70% of the clicks.
This means that to get any real traffic you need to be on the first page in Google. To do that, you need to be “ranked” in Google’s Top 10 results. Which brings up..
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is a measure of how well Google and other search engines think your website matches the search terms people are typing into their search boxes. The intricate formula Google uses to figure this out is really only known by Google. However, we do know a few things that count.
Getting indexed
Before you can get ranked, Google has to first know your site exists. This is called getting “indexed.” When your website gets indexed, Google stores information about it in their massive database.
To get indexed, you have to help Google find your site. Getting a link from another site will accomplish this easily. Google will actually follow the links on sites it already has indexed to find new sites and index them.
Use your Twitter and Facebook updates to get quick indexed links to your site. Because these sites are indexed multiple times every day. So any new links will be followed right away.
Gaining ranking
Once you have been indexed, you will start working on increasing your rank. Google has billions of pages indexed, so just getting into their database does not mean anyone will see you.
Here’s what’s important in ranking:
- Content
- Links
- Activity
Content strategies
This is the SEO you do on your site itself. And it means that the content on your page matches the keywords you’re targeting. Clearly this article is about search engine optimization. One way Google figures this out is from the fact that it contains the term SEO. Another reason is because there are related words, like website traffic, too.
In addition to the content on the page, other things to keep in mind are the title tags on the page, and the domain name itself. These all play a part in helping Google determine what your website is about.
Link strategy
The second factor is your linking. The links coming in and the links going out are included in this. You want to make sure you have more inbound links than outbound links. The more inbound links you have the better your ranking will be.
One great way to get lots of inbound links is through web 2.0 sites. With this strategy what you do is write an article about the topic you’re targeting. Then you have to create multiple versions of this articles. Because you’re going to post a unique copy of it to lots of different websites. The more sites you can do this for, the more links you’ll get back.
Make your site active
Finally, we know that Google gives you credit for the activity on your site. You can’t just put up a page and leave it alone and expect it to rank well. So you need to update your pages often. One way to keep adding new content it through RSS feeds.
Comments from other people on your page are another fantastic way to keep your content updated. To get comments from others, you need to get others to visit your site. One simple method for doing this is to use forums.
Create profiles on lots of forums about your site’s topic. Visit often and make posts. Then put a link to your site in your profile. This gets you inbound links. And it also gets people to your web page.
Conclusion
Each step listed above is critical. However, writing a bunch of different articles on the same topic. And creating a bunch of forum profiles. And posting your content all over the web is time consuming. And the bad news is that you probably won’t do it.
However, rank builder software exists. And it automates everything we’ve just talked about. So my best advice is to automate as much of this as you can. Otherwise, you won’t do it at all. By taking these steps you practically ensure you’ll get free traffic from Google.