5 Simple Techniques To Drive More Traffic To Your Website

There are more than 1 billion websites on the Internet today. Just do any random search and you’ll see how many results you can go through, if you were so inclined:

Thing is, Google and the rest of it’s search engine buddies, know that when someone starts a new website, chances are it will be inactive within three months.

So they’re not going to make your website a priority. And while they don’t make your website a priority, you won’t get site traffic.

There have been cases where websites have not been added to search indexes for up to nine whole months. This is a problem because if you’re not on the index, you won’t get any traffic from searches.

So, you can choose to wait it out, or get cracking by helping search engines find your new blog or blog posts, with the following five simple techniques.

Before we get busy, you may like to understand how search engines and indexing work, and how it impacts how much traffic you’ll get.

Technique 1: Upload new content regularly

Google allocates a “freshness” score to websites that’s based on the date that content was first added to their index. But over time, that score drops as the content becomes stale.

Image Credit: SEOPressor

It must be noted that this technique is not going to bring site traffic crashing through the proverbial doors, but if you optimize the content for SEO, and publish regularly enough, it will be located by search engines faster.

What will work to speed things up, is using new and fresh content, for their link value, to add to social media sites, which we’ll discuss as the the next technique.

What to do

1. Devise a website content strategy.
2. You may need to hire a writer who understands your target audience and niche, as well as who can create SEO optimized content.
3. Try to aim for publishing new content weekly.

Technique 2: Link from social media to your site

If you produce regular content, add it, together with the link to your website, to social media sites.

To make the technique work at two things instead of one, make sure you add the links to your content, on sites where your target audience like to hang out too.

By adding links to your content from social media sites, you’re helping search engines locate your website because they regularly waffle around the big popular sites, and social media sites are part and parcel of those. You may not get tons of site traffic from this technique, but you will help search engines to index your content faster, which results in more organic traffic.

What do do

1. Copy and paste the URL of the post or page with the new content, to the social media page. For instance, here is a new post being added to a Facebook page:

The URL was simply copied and pasted. Take note that your content may not load automatically in the same way; that would be your website settings that may need fixing, or Facebook debugging.

Technique 3: Submit the URL to social bookmark sites

There are cases where an URL was submitted to social bookmark sites like Digg and Delicious, and within 5 minutes, the page was added to Google’s index.

It’s not a guaranteed thing, so don’t get upset if it doesn’t work for you too, but it’s certainly worth a shot, right?

Don’t submit to just any old social bookmark site though, because some of them mark links as “nofollow” so that search engines won’t locate them. Those are a waste of time.

Here’s a list of social bookmark sites that don’t use “nofollow” so you can try submitting to a few of those.

What to do

1. Follow the instructions from each site, as to how to submit an URL.

Technique 4: Write free posts for better websites

You can only use this method if you’re a good, scratch that, a great writer. Or pay someone to write a post for you.

When you guest write for another bigger, better website than your own, you are usually allowed to add a link back to your website. Because search engines pick up links from bigger, stable and better websites faster, they are bound to “find” the link you’ve added that sends traffic back to your site.

Not only will this method help search engines find your site faster, but by adding links to your website from better websites than yours, you kind of “uplift” your reputation by association and this improves your search ranking, bringing you closer to that coveted first page.

But, it’s a prerequisite that you know how to write truly value-add content for their target audience, otherwise it’s not likely they’ll allow your post on their website.

What to do

1. Find other bigger, better websites in your niche.
2. Check whether they allow guest posts, and what their requirements are.
3. Make sure you understand what kind of person reads their content – it would serve more than one purpose if their target audience is the same as yours.
4. Write great content that adds value to their readers lives.
5. Don’t promote your own links in a crummy way. Insert a link back to your site with integrity.

Technique 5: Pay for more site traffic

You can pay for more traffic, either by using search engine marketing like Google Adwords or Bing Ads, or on social media.

You may want to start with social media because it’s super cheap and you may need some “experimental” time, because it’s not as simple as it seems.

Paid advertising also requires technique, so be sure to understand how to successfully advertise via these methods, before you actually take the plunge.

These are both paid-for Google ads:

The image below shows two Facebook ads, with different purposes. The one on the left is trying to get more Facebook “likes”, while the one on the right is trying to get more people to click to their website.

What to do

1. First understand how your chosen method works so that you know what to do to maximize results, or you could end up wasting money.
2. When you do your homework, find out the steps for each method, and compile your ads as you follow instructions.

In summary

You can wait for search engines to crawl and “find” new content from your site, or you can take some action to help them find your URL’s faster. The five techniques to do this, include:

• Adding fresh content often
• Linking from relevant social media sites, back to your website
• Submit the new URL to social bookmark sites like Digg and Delicious
• Write guest posts for other bigger, better websites
• Pay for more site traffic with social media advertising or search engine ads