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Growing your traffic to over 100,000 visitors a month is something all us website owners fantasize about, whether it is a blog, ecommerce store and so on. I even remember that first YouTube search... “How to get more traffic to my website”. The anticipation for some groundbreaking method that allowed me to sit back and let the money roll in was nothing short of wishful thinking. Video after video clicked and watched I was left with one conclusion. “Dang, people love Facebook ads, this should be easy!” Welp, $3000 dollars spent later I was still glaring over a flat line in my sales chart.
It’s time I modify this YouTube search….
“How to get more traffic to my website for free”...aaannnd search.
Video after video I began to see a theme once again….. YouTube, YouTube and YouTube. But, I hate cameras. What could I possibly make videos about? I just simply was not a fan of the idea. There has to be a something else. There just has to be. I couldn’t possibly do SEO, that’s way too hard. There’s way too much competition…..
Or is there…?
The SEO Monster
Search engine optimization, organically ranking on Google and Bing? “That has to be impossible. There’s just way too many websites out there, I’ll stick to paying for ads.”
Don’t be this guy.
This guy was me. That fact of the matter is, getting organic visitors on Google and Bing is not rocket science. The tools available to help you get the job done are immaculate. In fact, you only really need two of them. Those tools are Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster.
Hold on, people use Bing?
Yes! Bing generates around 12 Billion monthly searches. Bing is the most commonly overlooked source of traffic.
So what is Bing Webmaster and Google Search Console?
This is where the magic happens. This is where you submit your website pages to the search engine themselves and you review all your traffic reports. Here are some steps you can take.
Add each url type of your website to Properties
You will see this “Add property” option in the top right corner of both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster. Here you want to add all variations of your url. This includes https://www.yoururl.com and https://yoururl.com. This will make it easier for google to crawl your entire site and all variations of your site.
2. Add sitemaps for every page of your website.
This seems much more confusing than it actually is. Simply click on the “Sitemaps” tab on the right. Here you will add the url of each page on your site (that you want to be crawled by Google) and add: /sitemap.xml to the end and click submit.
Submitting sitemaps makes it easier for Google to crawl your site.
3. Request for each page to be indexed.
Getting your pages indexed into Google can take a few days or a few months. Here’s how you can speed up that process.
Simply type each url within the property into the “Inspect any URL in yoururl.com” search bar and click enter. You will then see a page similar to this:
All you need to do is click the “Request Indexing” button on the right. You have now requested Google to index that page of your website!
If the request is approved your website will be visible on Google!
Repeat this same process on Bing Webmaster, the platform is near identical!
Tip: Make sure each page you want indexed is Mobile Optimized. Google's algorithm crawls and ranks your website based on mobile.
Now… you aren’t going to start getting a million visitors within a day. Here are some important factors which affect the rank of your website.
Mobile Usability
User Experience
Page Loading Speed
Keyword Ranking
Does Your Page Bring Value?
Backlinks: your websites link on other websites
Backlinks maybe one of the most important factors in ranking your. You may be asking “How do I get these backlinks?”
It’s not as scary as it sounds!
Here are a few tricks to get backlinks.
Reach out!
Simply google “Your Website Niche” + “Blog”. Start looking through different blog pages and look for places where you believe a link to your site could bring value to the viewer. You can now email the author.
Now… don’t let this scare you!
Write a good, simple script and mention how you enjoy their content and how your link will bring value to the viewers. They will not get annoyed. It’s part of business! That very author/blogger you are emailing has most likely sent hundreds of backlink requests him/herself, so just go for it!
Don’t be shy and use power in numbers to your advantage.
There are most likely thousands of blog sites related to your niche. Send as many emails as you can. I mean as many as your fingers allow you to. It was found that only about 5% of backlink request emails result in your backlink being placed on the website. This is why it is important to email as many valuable bloggers as you can.
You can also write guest posts!
This is the most common way to obtain backlinks. This is where you publish an article on another bloggers website and link back to your website. Most blog sites accept guest posts. You can search “your niche” + “write for us”. Blogs accepting guest posts will show up in the search results.
It is important you submit guest post requests to websites with high DA (domain authority). This is a website score of 0-100 that google uses to rank its sites. Shoot for websites with a DA of 60 and over. You can use this tool to search website DA: Ahrefs
Utilize Free Ad Credit!
Advertising platforms such as Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads) and TickTock Ads all offer free ad credit when you sign up.
Bing offers a deal where you receive $100 in ad credit when you spend your first $25. Essentially, you get $125 dollars worth of advertising on Bing for just $25. This is a great way to test out your ad campaign, bids, keywords and truly optimize your ad campaigns to their best performance.
Google has a very similar deal.
Google Ads gives you $150 of ad credit when you sign up. That is incredibly valuable!
Spend this money wisely and as I said earlier, use it to test out your campaigns, ads, bids and keywords.
If you are interested in creating video ads, TikTok gives you advertising credit as well.
With tick tocks minimum CPM (cost per 100 views) being just $10, you can develop some crazy brand awareness with $2300 in ad credit. This is a limited offer which you should take advantage of!
Answer Questions On Quora
Quora is an incredibly underutilized marketing tool. If you are unaware of what Quora is, it is the 345th most used website in the United States. It is a question and answer platform that gets millions of daily visitors. Over 38 million questions have been answered on Quora amongst thousands of different niches.
So, how does this help?
Your website niche is most likely on Quora. There are always questions that need to be answered.
First,
make an account and fill out all of the profile sections. You can then search your niche in the search bar and click “Questions”. You should see something like this:
Here we used “Digital Marketing” as an example. These are all questions recently asked about digital marketing which you can answer. The key is to actually provide them with a ton of value and link back to your site.
Let me repeat, YOUR ANSWER AND SITE MUST PROVIDE VALUE.
If you just start spamming links to your site you are going to get suspended.
The great part about Quora is that Google shows Quora answers on the first page of search results if they answer the searchers question with value. This is an incredible opportunity to drive some free traffic to your website!
Tip: Click on the “Past Hour” or “Past Day” to show the most recent questions and try to be the first to answer. This will up your chance of getting more views and upvotes.
Get Answering!
Of course, we all know about Instagram. But, are you sticking to it? Are you producing continent daily? I’m talking at least 2 posts a day, 7 days a week with proper hashtags while staying consistent with non-spammy comments and engaging with potential followers. That seems like a lot, but that’s FREE marketing for you. If you don’t want to pay for those pesky Facebook ads you need to really stay on top of your Instagram.
So, how do you make the most of this?
As I stated before you need to be posting VALUE at least twice a day. You should also have an Instagram story running 24/7. This shows your audience that you are fully engaged every day and that will make them more likely to follow.
In this chart you can see the optimal number of hashtags is 9. After 9 you see a sudden decline. This is due to your hashtags starting to look spammy and…. well…. desperate.
So that Instagram story...
As I said earlier, you need to have at least 1 Instagram story running 24/7. A way to increase traffic to your site is adding a link to your site in your story posts. If you have a link to your website in a story post 24/7 your audience is always being exposed to it and the higher the chances that it gets clicked.
Tip: You can use freelance websites such as upwork or fiverr to hire a social media manager for as little as $3 an hour. This is incredibly cheap because you can hire overseas. This is a great alternative if you are too busy or don’t think you have what it takes.
Email Marketing
When you begin to consistently get traffic it is essential that you build an email list. Those who opt in to subscribe are showing you that they are interested in your product and want to hear more, so sending weekly emails highlighting updates, new products, blogs or anything on your website will help increase your traffic and your customers brand loyalty.
First, you are going to want to add a “subscribe to our newsletter” tab or form onto your website. It should look something like this:
This could be a pop-up, a section in your footer or both.
Once you have that done it is essential you create an account with an email marketing software. You can take a look at our top picks for email management software here.
This makes managing your email list significantly easier. Here are some benefits of using an email marketing software:
Manage your subscribers
Automate emails
View your marketing statistics
Stay connected with your audience for a low cost or for free
Increase revenue
Super easy!
Any blogger with a large audience will tell you just how important email marketing is. Take advantage of this incredible opportunity.
So now you know all the secrets to free or low budget digital marketing. The key to success is execution. That means sitting down, opening up that computer and ACTUALLY PUTTING IN THE WORK. This may have been a lot of information to digest, so take it all one step at a time. You WILL see an increase in results in traffic. You WILL NOT regret the long days of hard work you put in to make your audience grow.
Once you start executing these free traffic methods and see your revenue grow, you now have money you can reinvest into paid advertising. You already have your Google and Bing Paid Search ads optimized, you can now continue those and continue to watch yourself grow.
So….GO DO IT!