While there are ways to jumpstart your traffic flows, many sites don’t have the resources that others have to generate more traffic for your site. Well, you don’t have to spend a cent; all you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You also must have the drive and perseverance to do hard work and research to generate more traffic for your site.

How sweet it is to have more traffic for your site without spending a single cent.  Now it’s a sure thing that many sites have articles that offer tips and guidelines in how to generate traffic using only free methods. Because it is possible, you don’t need to speed a single cent, it may take time, to say honestly, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. You get better chances by paying for your advertisements, but at least you get a fighting chance with some of these free methods I’m about to tell you.

Take advantage of online forums and online communities. The great thing about forums and online communities is that you can target a certain group that fits the certain demographic that you are looking for. You can discuss about lots of things about the niche that you represent or offer.  Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and you will be prepared.

With online communities and forums you can build a reputation for your company. Show them what you are made of and wow them with your range of expertise about the subject, with that you can build a reputation and build trust with the people in your expertise and knowledge.

You can also make use of newsletters. Provide people with a catalog of your products and interesting and entertaining articles. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who signs up for your newsletter, the more people there will be that will go to your site increasing your traffic.

Another great idea is trading links with other sites. You don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With exchanging links, the efforts both sites do will benefit both sites. Every traffic that goes to the site could potentially click on the link of your site and visit your site as well. This works well especially when both sites feature the same niche.

Write articles that could pique the attention of people that have interest in your product. Try writing articles that will provide tips and guides to other aficionados. Writing articles that provide good service and knowledge to other people would provide the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs.

Many sites offer free submission and posting of your articles. When people find interest in your articles they have a good chance of following the track by finding out where the article originated. Include a link or a brief description of your company with the article and there’s a great probability that they will go to your site.

Write good content for your site. Many search engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases your site uses and how they are used. It is not a requirement that a content should be done by a professional content writer. You could do your on but you have to make content for your site that is entertaining as well as informational. It should provide certain requirements as well as great quality.
Generally, internet users use search engines to find what they are looking for. Search engines in return use keyword searching in aiding their search results. With the right keywords, you could get high rankings in search engine results without the costs.

All of these methods and more will drive more traffic to your site for free. All it takes is a bit of effort and extended man hours. Learn all you can about the methods depicted here and you will soon have a site with a great traffic flow without the usual costs that come with it.

I had to make a few changes to a couple of my websites tonight as I had noticed some had been dropped by Google completely, I don’t mean just slipped a few pages, I mean not indexed.

One of them is The Forex Brotherhood which was riding high for “forex brotherhood” terms. It was a holding page and list builder during the pre-launch period and the end of August. Then I decided to redirect it with a hoplink to the Forexbrotherhood.com site, so when someone clicks on theforexbrotherhood.com it goes to the official site. I did this using a php redirect script on the index page.

This worked fine for a while and the site still ranked well for my keywords for several weeks giving me lots of hops and a few sales.

Then suddenly Google updated and the robots then found nothing, no meta tags, no content, no keywords etc etc. All of the links I have built obviously still remain, but they mean nothing if google finds nothing on the site. DOH!

I have reverted to a landing page with some keyword rich content and a list builder. Lets hope Google finds it again quickly and I can get back to where I want to be on the SERPS.

So my tip is, do not use php redirect on the index page if you want it to rank in Google, if you just want to use it as a direct link for ezine or adwords etc then fine, but I want search engine traffic too.

This might not be news to a lot of experienced marketers, but if one of you learns something then I am happy enough.

JZ

Signature links are a valuable commodity on DigitalPoint and other forums which have the “do-follow” setting activated. They can provide direct traffic from people drawn by the Anchor Text, but more importantly for me they are links respected by Google that improve the Search Engine Results Position or SERPS.

There is an almost daily debate on DigitalPoint about whether forum signature links are good or bad and whether too many too quickly can damage your rep with Google. All I can tell you is that they have always been great for me, I have had sig links on my own profile ever since I could and more recently I have bought links from medium level posters.

I do believe the theory that too many links, too quickly can actually go against a site so I have not looked to buy from high post count members. I focus on buying at least 6 months from members with between 1000-2000 posts and who are averaging 5-10 posts a day. I have actually made what I consider to be good deals, I bought one link for 12 months from someone with 1800 posts for just $40 and this week I bought 3 links and an avatar from the same person for 12 months for just $12! They only have 400 posts at the moment, but that is still more than I have!

I verify all my sites with Google’s Webmaster Tools as this is the only way I am aware of that gives you the accurate number of links Google has trawled and one of my Forex sites is currently showing over 2500 links, almost all of them from digitalpoint. I assume if they were worthless then they wouldn’t list them!

There are risks involved with relying on either your own or another member’s sig links. The biggest threat is that you or the person you bought from gets banned by dp, when you are banned, even temporarily, then your signature is removed and therefore your links are not displayed and picked up by search engines.

You also have the risk that someone you bought links from could remove the links, especially if they got a better offer from someone else, this should not happen if they worry about their reputation or “itrader”, but I keep checking back to see that the people I bought from don’t remove the links. You must check that the links are correct and that they haven’t just put up your anchor text with their link.

The best way to protect against this sort of thing is to check their history, check their itrader and reputation. You will also get a feel for them by sending a PM to discuss the possible trade.

DigitalPoint have various rules about sig links, I have quoted them here for convenience, in case you are not aware of how they work and the minimum requirements to have one.

Our system has automatic signature guideline enforcement. Currently the restrictions are:

Up to 250 characters
No more than 3 lines
No more than 4 links
Images are not allowed
Adult links are not allowed
Signatures and live links within posts are not available to users until they have been a member at least 7 days, have positive (green) reputation and have at least 10 posts.