There is no doubt that website traffic is critical to your business success. And the best kind of traffic is free traffic. So where do we get free traffic? Google and other search engines.
How do we get free traffic from Google?
You’ve experienced this process a lot of times. You load up Google or another search engine. Type in something you’re looking for. And click one of the links that shows up. Turns out that the website you visit just got free traffic from the search engine. We will be discussing here how to get website traffic to you for free.
If you’re like most people you only click links on the first page or two. In fact, the first page of results receives almost all the free traffic. What’s even more amazing is the the first 3 links get more than 70% of the free traffic.
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 search engine optimization?
SEO means that your website is clearly about something specific, Google knows that that is and thinks others will agree and find your site useful. It’s a complex formula that only people working for Google know exactly. But there are several things that we know for sure.
Getting indexed
Before you can get ranked, Google has to first know your site exists. This is called getting “indexed.” This is when Google looks at your site and take notes about it, which are stored in their database.
In order to get indexed, Google has to be able to find you. Getting a link from another site will accomplish this easily. Because Google already knows about these sites, it will follow the new links to you.
A couple of great places to do this are in your Twitter or Facebook profiles. Google visits these sites many times every day. So your new link will get indexed very quickly.
Gaining ranking
After this first hurdle, you need to start gaining ranking. Just getting indexed does you almost no good, considering that Google has billions of pages in their database.
There are three components of gaining ranking:
- Content
- Links
- Activity
SEO content
This is also called on-page SEO. And it means that the content on your page matches the keywords you’re targeting. Clearly this article is about search engine optimization. Google knows that not just because the words search engine optimization show up. But also because other related words like traffic generation show up in it, as well.
The title of the page, the domain name and other pages on your site are also important. Google uses all of this content to figure out what your site is really about.
Link juice
The second factor is your linking. The links to your site, as well as the sites you link to are important. You want to make sure you have more inbound links than outbound links. So the number of inbound links is important.
One great way to get lots of inbound links is through web 2.0 sites. To accomplish this you start by writing an article that targets the keywords you’re after. You have to also write several different versions of your articles. And then upload a different versions to a bunch of sites that allow you to add content. And quantity is the key here – so do lots and lots.
Getting activity
The last thing we know for sure is that Google likes to see active sites. Static pages that just sit may rank at first, but will fall off over time. 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. This means you need to get real live people to your site, as well. One simple method for doing this is to use forums.
Set up forum profiles with the ones related to your website. 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. Creating profiles on a ton of forums. And visiting all the sites to post up your comments and articles takes a really long time. Which means you probably won’t end up doing it.
However, rank builder software exists. And it automates everything we’ve just talked about. So, use your time wisely and automated to tedious tasks. Otherwise, you won’t do it at all. And not doing it means you will never get free traffic from Google.
