FREE traffic with Chris Cobb

1) Craigslist

Chris Cobb says - This website allows you to place free classified advertisements in numerous cities across the world, thus enabling you to advertise your business at no cost.

According to Alexa.com, Craigslist is actually listed as the 25th most visited website in the world, and it also receives over 4 billion page views per month! With such a large audience, you can clearly see the potential it has for generating targeted traffic to your website.

2) Squidoo

Chris Cobb says - Another highly effective way for you to start promoting your website is via a social content site known as Squidoo.com. According to Alexa.com, Squidoo is ranked in the top 450 sites on the whole of the worldwide web, which shows just how powerful it can be as a traffic generation tool. Completely free to use, Squidoo allows users to create their own web pages, or "lenses" of information.

And within these lenses, you’re able to encourage readers to visit your website. The great thing about Squidoo is that these lenses are hugely popular with Google, who like to rank them very highly in the search results, which is great news for you and your website!

3) Videos

Chris Cobb says - If you search for virtually any subject on Google nowadays, the likelihood is that a video link will appear in the search results. Online video sites like YouTube have exploded in recent years, and the reason for this is because they provide a fantastic opportunity to attract hordes of qualified traffic to your website, at virtually no cost!

In fact, according to Web Pro News, YouTube visitors constitute 10% of ALL internet traffic!

As a result, the use of video marketing as a way of generating free website traffic has become hugely popular amongst small business owners and internet marketers who have fully embraced the medium, with a great amount of success.

Although it may take a little bit of time to make a video to promote your website, it can be completely free to create and upload, and allows you to openly promote your website. For example, if you have an exciting video that captures the viewers’ attention, they’ll probably want to know more. Therefore, you can simply include your website address at the end of the video and ask them to visit.

The key thing is to catch your audience while they’re HOT!

This is directly after they’ve watched your video, and you then need to make sure that you give them a reason to continue on to your website. If you don’t, most people will simply click through to another video or search result.

See, easy!

4) Articles

Chris Cobb says - Another popular and very effective (free) method of directing traffic towards your website is to write articles. It’s surprisingly simple to do as there are many online encyclopaedias and e-zines that provide free space.

Basically, all you need to do is write an article on a topic directly related to your product, and then submit it to an article directory such as goarticles.com or articlecity.com. As well as the two directories above, I also use the following: free-articles-zone.com, amazines.com and isnare.com. (iSnare.com isn’t technically free, but the maximum cost of an article submission is about £1, which isn’t too bad!)

There are many more directories on the internet today that allow you to do this, so it’s well worth using as many of them as you can. After all, it’s a fantastic (and free) method of bringing new and hungry traffic to your site.

As a thank you for providing them with an article, directories such as these allow you to include a link on the page that will direct any readers back to your website. To do this, you simply include a resource (or “about the author”) boxat the end of your article with a link to your website, encouraging them to visit.

I normally have two or three links scattered throughout the article as well, just in case the reader doesn’t have time to finish reading it.

Once people are reading your article you can also ‘direct’ them towards different pages on your website via this resource box on the article directory. You’re normally allowed to include two or three links in this box, so you should use this to your advantage…

5) Press Releases

Chris Cobb says - This is a very similar method to that of writing articles but it can be equally effective if utilised well. What I’ve done in the past is submit my press releases to online public relations agencies, like the following: prweb.com, prleap.com and prnewswire.com. However, these sites can cost money (and that’s not the focus of this page)!

So, if you’d rather not spend any money on traffic generation when first starting out, you’ll be pleased to know there are quite a few sites that allow you to submit your press releases for absolutely nothing!

My favourite press release submission websites are: free-press-release.com and prfree.com. If your press release has original and interesting content, sites such as these will add it onto a variety of different websites and then create links back to your site to boost your traffic levels.

PRFree.com, for example, offers distributions to Google News, Yahoo! Search, Reuters and Lycos News, but there are many more free options available to you so take a look yourself when you come to writing your own press release.

Your objective is to get your press release onto as many sites as you can so that it generates as many incoming links as possible back to your site (make sure you include your website link on the press release itself).

6) Blogging

Chris Cobb says - A blog (short for weblog) is an online platform that allows “bloggers” to post content on virtually any subject of their choice and there are millions of them currently floating about on the internet.

The content posted appears in reverse chronological order so the most recent post always appears first. The use of blogs has increased greatly in the last few years.

It’s free, easy to start, update and maintain, requires no web design skills and it can be a hugely effective tool for generating interest in your website, and therefore free traffic.

Blogging can also be used in conjunction with many of the other methods covered on this page. In fact, when attempting to generate free traffic for your website, the power of blogging cannot be underestimated.

To begin with, they’re very simple to set up and provide arguably the easiest opportunity for obtaining an online presence.

Blogs are also loved by the search engines because of the way they’re structured, the amount of relative content they contain and the fact that they’re constantly updated. Furthermore, blogs are seen as more credible than adverts, websites and sales letters because their focus isn’t normally related to marketing products or services.

Instead, people read and contribute to blogs because they’re looking for entertainment, information or a discussion of some kind. Therefore, make sure you keep this in mind, and don’t use your blog PURELY as a means of pushing your website. You won’t receive any readers if you do!

The best free blogging platofrms to start off with are Wordpress.com and Blogger.com.

7) Social Networking

Chris Cobb says - Sites such as Facebook and Twitter have exploded in the last 2-3 years. At the time of writing, Facebook has around 400 million members, and it’s rising by thousands each and every day...

So how does this sweeping social networking revolution affect the business world?

Well, while websites such as these are still predominantly being utilised on a social level, such as catching up with old friends, event planning and dating, for example, a growing number of online entrepreneurs are tapping into their enormous potential as a powerful ally to business.

Those taking a particular interest in these social networking platforms are independent entrepreneurs and smaller companies (like you and I), for whom each new personal connection is a potential customer.

The benefits for online businesses are clear to see...

Social networks connect people at low cost, which can be hugely beneficial for entrepreneurs and small businesses looking to expand their contact base. These networks can act as a customer relationship management tool for companies selling products and services, while online businesses can also use social networks for advertising in the form of banners and text ads.

I use both Twitter and Facebook to promote my business, and they consistently bring targeted traffic to my websites.

8) Forums

Chris Cobb says - The use of forums is another free technique that’s very easy to get started with. As I’m sure you’re aware, forums are sites where people with a common interest gather to discuss their pet topic, review new products, and so on.

They are also a great way of gaining some free publicity for your site and generating back links at the same time. No matter what the topic or subject matter of your site is, there will be a forum based around it.

To find a forum related to your product, I’d suggest taking a look at bigboards.com to begin with, followed by forumshowcase.com. Like BigBoards.com, this website allows you to search for a variety of forums in a number of different categories.

Once you’ve found some forums that relate strongly to your product or your chosen market, the next step is to register with as many as possible. (Remember, if you sign up to forums specifically related to your website, you’ll benefit from VERY targeted free traffic.)

Before you start posting on any forums, look at their terms and conditions and check what you’re allowed to do. Some forums allow you to post a “signature file”, which is a tag that’s added to every posting that you make.

In most signature files, you are allowed to include a short promotional message and a link back to your site, and this will be the key to your success!

You’ve now found ANOTHER free method of generating sales.

9) Email Signatures

Chris Cobb says - Placing your website address at the bottom of each email you send is a simple, highly effective and a completely free way of boosting traffic to your website.

By attaching your URL to your signature, every email you send will be an advertisement for your website!

The amount of people who see your advertisement can then snowball when the email is forwarded onto the recipient’s friends, and then onto their friends, and so on. In order to make the most from this method, you want to write an email that gets forwarded to as many people as possible, something known as a “viral” email.

Therefore, the email needs to be particularly interesting, funny or controversial, so that people not only read it, but then pass it on. And it obviously needs to be related to your business and product, so that readers will want to visit your website once they’ve finished reading it.

And finally...

10) Hubpages, of course!

But you know all about that!

So there you have it...

10 fantastic ways to get traffic flowing towards your website, and all of them completely free!

It just goes to show that you don’t need lots of money in order to launch a successful advertising campaign online...

You just need to know where to look... and where to start…

Best Wishes,

Chris Cobb

Oh, and if you fancy looking into those traffic generation tools a little more, here are some useful videos to help you out...

Chris Cobb

Chris Cobb

Chris Cobb