Patricia's Planet

In my first article I outlined the Basic Steps For Getting Traffic To Your New Website Or Blog and in this article I will outline the ongoing steps that you can take to continue to build targeted traffic and all of them free.

Add Content

The search engines like regularly updated content, so I try to add something to each site at least every couple of weeks. If I don’t have time to write my own original content I either outsource, use guest bloggers or republish free content from article directories but always include the author’s and directory links.

Some people only want unique content and won’t use article directory content because they believe that their site will be penalised by the search engines. I think that view is wrong, Google wouldn’t give high page ranks to any article directories, or indeed send as much traffic as they do to them if sites got penalised for not having unique content – and most directories don’t have unique content because the authors syndicate to more than one directory.

If you still don’t agree with what I say you could always add an introduction to a syndicated article and perhaps a paragraph at the end adding your thoughts on the article at the same time as giving it some uniqueness. At the end of the day you might as well leverage somebody elses work to help build your business as long as you are playing ball and they are being credited for it.

Videos and pictures are also content and they help to make your posts more attractive and interesting. There is plenty of free images and free to use videos on the internet, just make sure that they are in the public domain and that anybody can use them. There is a free plugin called Apture that you can use to add videos, images and information from such as Wikepedia, it also adds your Amazon links so worth trying out.

With blogs or such as XSitePro sites you can schedule content to be published whenever you like which is a great bonus. I try to visit all of my niche blogs at least once a month and set up scheduled posts while I check traffic stats and deal with comments. The vast majority are spam from auto commenting software and not worth approving, but every now and then a decent comment can be found that is worth approving and that comment will add a bit of fresh content to your blog. Ideally you want a continuous dialogue between yourself and visitors but that doesn’t happen often.

I also tend to add a category RSS feed from my article directory to the home page of my new site according to whatever niche it’s in. When a new article is submitted to that category my new site is updated too. You can use category feeds from any directory to do that, but it’s best to use feeds from article directories where you feel that the articles are of a good enough quality for your site. I would never use a feed from a directory that accepts spinned articles – by that I mean multiple versions of the same article, or junk articles produced from bad spinning. I care about the quality of content on my sites.

Article Marketing

The favourite free method of getting traffic used by Internet marketers is article syndication. You basically write informative articles of a decent standard and submit them to article directories – but get them indexed on your own site first please! You get an author bio where usually you can place at least 2 of your own website links. This gives backlinks to your sites and readers may even click on the links.

Article directories have a dual purpose. Apart from providing backlinks they also offer your articles free to publishers to place on their sites or in their ezines providing they retain the author bio with your links. Some writers are so good that their articles will often be chosen for republishing and get what is called the viral effect. Some of us aren’t that skilled, but as long as we strive to produce informative, useful articles we increase our chances of being republished on authority sites within our niches.

Some article marketers swear by submitting to just one or two of the top directories, some submit the same article to hundreds of sites. Some think that you should spin articles but you honestly don’t need to.

I also repurpose my articles by adding to them and turning them into PDF files, then upload to sites such as Scribd.com

Video Marketing

There are free and inexpensive ways of making videos to be found on the Internet and your videos can be used in the same way as articles. There are a growing amount of video sharing sites around and in particular Youtube. I use Youtube videos on some of my sites and I am providing backlinks to the channels of the video producer’s which usually has their website link on display.

Pad Submissions

Basically you seek out rebrandable software and brand it with your links and use the free software Padgen to distribute it to hundreds of free software download sites.

Guest Blogging

There are quite a lot of authority blogs out there that use guest bloggers. If you find high traffic blogs in your niche you can offer to become a guest blogger and in return your links included. This is probably one of the best ways to get your links on authority sites.

Blog Commenting

I search for blogs in my niche and if commenting is available read at least one of the posts and leave a decent comment that is relevant to the post. I wouldn’t use software for blog commenting and I never spam other people’s sites. I want my comments to stick and provide valuable backlinks to my sites.

Forum Commenting

Most forums allow you to have a signature with your website links in. To make it work properly you become a member of a forum in your niche and add value to the discussions with helpful information. Apart from getting valuable backlinks you could become known as an expert in that field and get business from other members of the forum. Never start off one line threads or post for the sake of posting, you will become known as a spammer and likely thrown off the forum.

Link Exchange

This was a popular method way back when I first started building sites in 2000. Done so much it’s been devalued and Google won’t think much of the link swaps. Three way link exchanges are said to work better, but it’s not something I do much myself.

Web 2.0

You can build free Squidoo and Hubpages that link to your sites, one for each niche site is a good thing to aim for. I also have blogger blogs in different niches and several other free blogs where I can repost content with links going back to my sites. You can build link wheels using free web 2.0 properties too.

Social Bookmarking

Was mentioned in part one, but you should continue to bookmark new content. Posterious is quite good because you can set it up to automatically post to a growing amount of other bookmarking sites.

These are all good ongoing ways of getting targeted traffic to your sites and they do work. Of course as your sites start to earn you can use that money for paid for methods of getting traffic like PCP, but there are so many free ways that with patience and commitment it isn’t really necessary.

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Related posts:

1. Basic Steps For Getting Traffic To Your New Website Or Blog