5 Free Things You Can Do to Get More Traffic Immediately

Just because you have a new site, it doesn't mean you have to wait months to start getting some traffic. Most site owners are so focused on search engine traffic that they neglect other sources of traffic that can pay dividends immediately and help their search engine rankings in the future. Below are five ways that you can bring quality traffic to your site today that won't cost you a penny:

Write an article

You don't need to be a professional writer to write a quality article. If you've got a site, you likely have knowledge in a subject related to your site that people will find value in. Spend some time brainstorming topics and then choose one or two that you think people will find interesting. A good article takes time to write so make sure you take ample time to research and proofread.

When you've finished your article, you can submit it to article directories like Ezine Articles and iSnare, but to get the best results (and the most traffic back to your site) you should seek out publications in your industry. News sites, email newsletters, and blogs all appreciate quality content and most will gladly link back to your site in exchange for something that their readers will get value out of.

Start social bookmarking

del.icio.us, digg, Furl, and StumbleUpon are all highly visited social bookmarking sites where users “bookmark” web pages that they enjoy to share with others. Sign up for an account and start bookmarking your site, blog, articles that you write, and any page that links back to your site that you think others will find value in. The power of social bookmarking sites is unreal – the more people bookmark your site, the more users see it, and pretty soon you can find a link to your site on the homepage generating thousands of visitors!

Social bookmarking sites can be hit or miss so you have to be patient with them and not expect to see results every time. I've had the same article published in two different publications and “dugg” both on digg. The first time it got less than 10 “diggs”, the second time it got over 2,000!

Join social networks

Creating a profile and interacting with other users on social networks like LinkedIn, Ryze, and MySpace can do wonders for your business. LinkedIn and Ryze are great for connecting with other business owners, but MySpace presents the largest opportunity to drive a substantial amount of traffic to your site.

Depending on your business, MySpace might not be for you, but you'd be surprised at who is on MySpace and how easy it is to communicate with them. MySpace lets you search users by demographics and by common interest. Want to only interact with Honda enthusiasts? Or single females between 28 and 30 that live in Boston? MySpace makes it easy to find them. With the advent of tools like Badder Adder for MySpace, you can automate your friend requests and bulletins to make sure you reach your target audience with as little effort as possible.

The key to a successful MySpace campaign is keeping your “friends” coming back to your profile. If you've managed to get a friends list of 1,000 Honda enthusiasts, provide them with weekly car tips so that they don't forget about you, your profile, and most importantly your business.

Join Forums

Regardless of what your site is about, there's probably a popular forum out there that's filled with the enthusiasts that you want visiting your site. To be successful with forums, you need to become a part of that community. Regular posters can smell someone who's there just to sell something. You should almost never specifically mention your site or your product. Instead, create a signature with your contact information and a link to your site. Curious users who value your comments will click through to your site and provide you with a steady source of targeted traffic.

I've even seen businesses take it a step further and start “expert” threads on forums. I know of one online business that sells car detailing products that generates almost 100% of their sales through “Ask a professional detailer” threads on popular car forums.

Become a blogger

Every site owner should have a blog. Blogs are an amazing tool to express your opinions on your industry in an informal way. Not only will it generate fresh, quality content for your visitors and give you practice writing (which should help your article quality), it's also another great tool for networking.

As you’ve probably been reading, there are basically three problems many webmasters have with web feeds (that is, among those who are already familiar with them on a basic level).
The three concerns I hear the most are:
“How do I deal with the bandwidth hit?”
“Is there a way to include information that isn’t in the automated resource I use to populate my feed without touching any code?”
and
“Where can I find a cost-effective, simple way to display feeds on my site?”
Say Goodbye to Bandwidth Overages with FeedBurner

If you’re a publisher, chances are, you’re familiar with the bandwidth increase that occurs every time your audience reads the latest update to your feed that for some webmasters lead to the possibility of exceeding monthly bandwidth limitations. There’s an easy solution.
Burn your feed with FeedBurner. They’re happy to take the burden off your server. (And yes, they say, FeedBurner is one word.)
Whether you’ve just created your news feed or you have been RSS-ing for years, you can create a free account at their site. Their service will also:
translate your feed from Atom to RSS or vice versa,
make a browser-friendly page that explains what web feeds are to the new user,
allow you to splice any link into your feed using some of the more popular social bookmarking services. FeedBurner also allows you to study your demographic by giving you statistics on how many request have been made for your feed contents, down to the item if you like.
Though I offer both the burned version of my feed and the original to my audience, they love the extra information my FeedBurned link provides them.
Social Bookmarking -Share More Info with Less Hassle

Social bookmarking allows you to create a bookmark online, and share those bookmarks via RSS.
Some services even allow you to share your collection of links, as you can do with the service from del.icio.us . Furl.net, newly acquired by LookSmart, also adds the capability of saving an old version of a page you have visited with the bookmark feature. And at Bloglines, you can get ezine subscriptions via feed by subscribing through a special address they give you.
All three of these services can be coupled with FeedBurner to splice external links - or other internal links from your own site - into the “burned” version of your feed.
Display links on your site for free with RSS Digest
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