Setting up a website alone can be costly, whether it’s paying for hosting fees or the domain name itself. I know personally that building a site, getting quality website design, and getting it to look high quality costs more than what most people think. It’s stressful knowing that the main way to promote the site that others enjoy teaching involves costly upfront investments. Marketing strategies like pay-per-click advertising or even Facebook advertising all cost a ton of cash. However, I know that there are better methods that require zero upfront cash to do successfully.
Forum Marketing
Forum marketing has always been considered an old marketing tactic, but it will always be a reputable and worthwhile technique for getting free traffic. Forums are filled with people who are passionate about their favorite niche. To find a forum that will best suit your website, I recommend typing into Google, “your niche + Forum.” You’ll find there are tons of different forums on a single topic or niche.
The key to succeeding with forums is to create an account, provide useful posts without spamming, build a name, and eventually out your site into your forum signature after a few days. You don’t want to come off as overly promotional, but when you make helpful posts on a consistent basis, people will respect you and believe whatever you’re trying to teach. Don’t forget to place your URL in your signature after being on the forum for a while. Join multiple forums to promote to as many people as possible.
Press Releases
Press releases have always been an effective way for the media to take notice. It’s through press releases that any new product gains attention before releasing. I highly recommend using one of the many free press release sites on the web. Create a quick release in a very newsworthy format. You cannot create an article and label it as a news article. You need to make sure you use a third-person style of speech and that you write as if it was strictly a news article. Reading previous news articles can give you an idea on how to write this.
I believe that the title can dictate how many people will be visiting your site. Be sure to be highly specific with your release. The title, “Vocal Coach Releases Services”, may not be that effective. However, writing something along the lines of, “California Vocal Coach Teaches Technique Legends Michael Jackson Have Used” may draw a bit more attention. Consider using multiple press release sites to get as much attention as possible.
Article Marketing
Article marketing has remained to be one of the most reliable forms of marketing because of the short terms and long term benefits of having these articles on the web. The way this works is simple. All you have to do is create an article on your site’s topic, publish it on a site like Ezine Article or GoArticles, and you’ll place your website URL at the bottom of the article. It’ll play as a backlink in the search engines. If you wrote one article a day for a year, you would have 365 articles all pointing to your website, so this will help you a ton with ranking higher on Google.
Link Exchanges
Link exchange programs are very valuable. They can help you get more traffic from other people within your niche. For example, a catering company could locate a wedding planner and decide to place each other’s websites on each other. Your website URL will be on her site and yours will be on hers. It all works out since you aren’t losing clients since you both aren’t competing against each other. All you have to do is know how to properly find people in your niche who aren’t directly competitors.
This kind of advertising requires almost no payment to do. You can find other sites for free. I would just shoot them an email with a proposal talking about how both sites benefit. In the end, everybody wins and gets more traffic to their site. It’s nice to be able to market your website for free through other websites.
Yahoo Answers
Yahoo Answers is one very popular site that could give you some quick monetary traffic. You will most likely encounter thousands of different questions being posted. Just find the category that fits into your niche, find a question that may relate to your site the most, and then give them a quick answer. It could be very basic or very long, but I always tell people to give really helpful tips so that you get voted “best answer.” Don’t forget to put your URL in the “source” box. If you give a good answer, people will want to know where you got all that information.
I recommend answering questions in your topic no matter what even if it doesn’t completely correlate to your site. As long as it is within the same niche, you should give it a quick answer. Some answers may end up being ranked on Google, so you could be getting traffic from that in the future.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is by far one of the most unique and useful ways to get traffic. However, you shouldn’t just write guest posts on every blog you see. Matt Cutts, head of Google Webspam, recommends only doing a few guest posts. Too much is not going to help you. The way guest blogging works involves submitting a guest blog to another blog of similar niche with a link of your URL at the bottom. Oftentimes, the other blogger would have a piece written to post on your blog. You are both receiving strong blog traffic from each other. It’s a simple little way to get some quick visitors to your site. There are many ways to do guest blogging, but the basic idea involves working with another blog.
Stay Up To Date With Social Media
Social media has always been a strong way to growing any website. Make sure you have a Facebook account, Twitter account, and almost every social out there about your new website. You want to engage your readers and build a following. It isn’t too late to get started. Very soon, another type of social media site will pop up. Join in right away and get into the world of social media when you can to get traffic.
Optimize Your Site
Optimize your site with basic SEO. After several months, you’ll see your sites ranking for many high search volume keywords. Just be sure to target slightly longer tail keywords on your site throughout your content and articles. You can also research different ways to get backlinks for free. There are many ways to get fast free backlinks, like through article marketing or even Yahoo Answers.
When trying to get a website more traffic, you need to be creative and step out of the norm. There are many ways to use the traffic sources and ideas above. I am simply giving you the stepping stone to getting on the right track. You can market your website for free if you know how to properly use the sources above. They all can come together and get you massive free traffic. The only thing you’ll need to do is be consistent every single day to utilize all of these sources. They will all come together to get you unlimited amounts of traffic without spending a single cent.