Five Free Newbie-Friendly Traffic Methods That Still Work

Getting website traffic is a top priority for every marketer, but for the beginner marketer who doesn’t know all the best ways to get traffic, nor has a big ad spending budget, it is the biggest task they struggle with.

I know there are a lot of new marketers out here who have built their own website or have had one built for them and these are good websites which would be profitable if they could simply get good targeted traffic to it.

So below are 5 different traffic generation methods that beginners can use to get a flow of traffic.

Remember, at the start of your online career, it’s unreasonable to expect a server-melting tsunami of traffic (no matter what any over-hyped sales page says) with one click. Every marketer starts with little amounts of traffic and builds it up gradually. This is true whether they buy traffic or get free traffic.

Generally speaking, imagine getting traffic is like you are a spider building a web. You build one strand at a time, and after many strands, you have a massive web through which people can reach your site.

Too many times, a newbie will try one method, get a few clicks and maybe even a few subscribers but then give up because the results are not coming in fast enough for their liking. Have patience and think of that spider’s web-building analogy!

1. Facebook groups

Find and join groups that are on the same niche topic as your niche website. If you’ve got a blog about rose gardening, join rose gardening groups. You get the picture.

After you have been accepted into the group(s), start by getting involved in the conversations. The aim at the start is to make yourself known and become a familiar face. If you start posting your links on day one you’ll have a very short stay in the group.

After a while you will start to gain credibility and perhaps even some authority if you can contribute useful info on the topic. Once you have some credibility you should start writing posts for the group. Make posts on the FB group feed itself. Then, when you feel you have a good following in the group, post links to content on your site.

If you become a bit famous and hold some authority in those groups, then you can start your own FB group and become the star of your own FB show.

2. Youtube with faceless videos

Most beginners don’t like to get in front of the camera and talk but you don’t need to because there are several types of videos you can make without showing your face or talking.

Explainer videos are perhaps the easiest to start with. Think of some “How to” topics related to your niche. You should go to Google Keyword planner to get a list of some “how to” keyword ideas you can use for video titles. These keyword ideas will also give you an idea what people are searching for. You want to try to use popular keyword terms for your video titles so you can actually get a decent number of views, etc.

The next steps is to create a powerpoint slideshow covering your “5 Steps To Bigger Biceps in 7 days” (or whatever title you choose) and record it with your screen-capture software like Camtasia or the free OBS studio. You don’t even need to speak on the video. People can read. Get some royalty free pics to throw on it as well as some music to go with your slideshow to spice it up a little. There you go! You’ve got your first video to upload to Youtube. Put your website link in the description box under the video while posting it. It’s a good idea to also have a call to action at the end of your video to tell people they can get more info at your website.

3. Instagram

Instagram is a lot of fun and it’s an amazing traffic resource. Here’s how to use Instagram for free marketing without you needing to create content yourself or taking selfies.

Create a new account for your niche. You’re going to be posting a collectionmish-mash of other people’s content (this is all cool if you tag and mention the original creator) so give your account a catch-all type, generic name like “Golfers Worldwide” or “Gym Addicts”. The first thing is to brand up your IG account page. You should create a logo or get one made on Fiverr for $5. Put your website link in your profile.

Now, find the top accounts and influencers in your niche and follow them. Your feed will start to become very full! Then it’s a matter of reposting the popular posts, while giving credit to the creator. You can do this by taking screenshots of the post and doing it all manually, or, to save time, get the Repost app on your smartphone which makes reposting much, much easier. Again, this will be a long-term strategy and it’s a numbers game. The more you post, the more followers you’ll gain. The key to getting the most bang for your posts is to add a dozen or so relevant hashtags to each post.

Wait until you have a decent following before you post your own stuff, and make sure you tell your readers that your link is in your profile because, you know, you can’t post clickable links on IG.

This same basic method can be applied to sites like Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn etc. You’ll be busy if you try to do this on all social media platforms so you might want to stick to just one or two, or get a VA to help you post on a daily basis.

4. SEO & Blogging

Search Engine Optimization aka “SEO” is the term which means making your website optimal so the pages rank high in the Google search results pages. Ultimately, if your page was in the top spot on Google for the keyword “how to make money online” then you’d get thousands of visitors to your site every month. (10K to 100K people search for that term monthly – thanks Google keyword planner 😉 ) And those visitors would be completely free! Amazing right Don’t discount SEO because Google search traffic is up there with the best quality traffic there is.

Here’s how to SEO your site. I highly recommend you use WordPress to run any type of blogcontent rich site. There are so many plugins and themes and WP experts who can work with WordPress, it’s just going to be the best for you.

After you’ve got WP installed on your domain, run through this SEO for WP checklist:

1. Have speedy hosting
2. Install a mobile-responsive theme
3. Install an SEO plugin (i.e. Yoast or All in One SEO plugin)
4. Set HTTPS on your site’s preferred domain (You can get a free SSL cert through Cloudflare)
5. Enable SEO friendly permalinks in WP settings
6. Verify your site with Google Search Console and Submit your XML sitemap
7. DO KEYWORD RESEARCH! (Get a list of keyword suggestions from Google Keyword planner)
8. Write custom URLS for pages & posts when you post to your site (by default WP will use your blog post title as the URL)
9. Use optimized page headings in your post (e.g. sub headings)
10. Use internal linking (link to other posts on your blog from within your post)
11. Use optimized file names for images

Steps 1 – 7 are the initial set up steps. Steps 8 – 11 are the steps to follow for each time you post to your site. Of course, you can do keyword research any time you run out of keywords or want a fresh list to work with.

After having your site up and running with good content, Google should start indexing your pages and the traffic will start to flow. Regular posts to your site will let Google know your site is active and getting new content.

The next thing you want to try to do is get backlinks. If you have Social media profiles, they are the best places to start. One more way, is to do link exchanges with other site owners, which is the next method.

5. Link trading with other marketers

This is a forgotten method that still kicks butt as far as bang for buck free traffic goes. It’s a 10 minute job that can have you getting long term traffic. Here’s how you can set up link exchanges. For this to work best I recommend you have a blog or other content-rich type of site.

First, go join a bunch of newsletters (email lists) in similar niches to yours. You want to read these emails and try to build relationships with them. Reply to their emails and heck, get wild and buy one of their products! Get your foot in the door because these are the guys that you can work with to build your business.

Once you’ve got some communications going and are friends with a few marketers, ask them if they’d like to exchange website links. I.e. You put their site URL on your site and vice-versa. You’ve got to make sure you’ve got a good website because they will not want to link to a site that is utter rubbish. If they say yes, awesome! You can score a link on their site which will send traffic and also help with your SEO, assuming that their site is not rubbish either.

The real gold here though is that you’ve made a contact and friend that you can do other work with in the future. You could do blog post exchanges, banner ad exchanges, email ad swaps or anything you can think of that will be mutually beneficial.

The internet is great for connecting with people easily, but we sometimes overlook building real meaningful personal relationships on here. We’re all too busy doing our own thing to get ahead of the competition and don’t realize that working with others can be fruitful too.

In conclusion, these are 5 of the best free methods for generating website traffic even if you’re just starting out. These are doable for anyone of any skill level. There is nothing too complicated here. As I said earlier, traffic will come little by little, so don’t become discouraged if you don’t get 1000s of visitors on day one. Stick with just one of these methods and you can see traffic start to snowball.

Take care and let me know if I can help you with your online marketing

Gisela Beckermann

skype: gilaworld