8 Free and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

8 Free and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website

When it comes to driving traffic to your website, doing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and PPC (Pay Per Click) truly reign supreme from everything else. And they are things you should be doing every day to always improve your ranking positions in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

But as a small or new website, you may not have the budget to do these things on a large scale, so you have to do them yourself in ways you know how. Talking of DIY, here's 8 Free and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website which will guaranteed work and be a heck of a lot cheaper!

1. Author Informative and Interesting Blogs

Your blog is probably the best way to drive traffic to your site. Through your blog posts you'll be able to target long tail keywords within the content and drive traffic to the other parts of your site. You could blog about your sites products and how they are useful to people and why they should buy them. But more than that, a blog is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your niche.

2. Commenting on Other Peoples Blogs

Commenting on blogs is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your own site or blog. I'm not talking about just putting one liner comments like "great post". But actual thoughtful and meaningful comments that are valuable to the blog post itself. So much so that the blog owner falls over him/her self to publish your comment. This is a great way to make connections with bloggers in your niche and although the link you leave might be no-follow, it can still get clicks by people reading that blog post and your comment on it. You can also pick up links from related sites doing this which will further improve and solidify your rankings in the SERPs!

3. Participate in Discussion Forums

Participating in forums in your niche is another great way to establish yourself as an expert in your niche. Again, I'm not talking about just leaving 2 word replies like "great post", but actually leaving meaningful and valuable comments and replies to peoples threads and being helpful to people. It takes time but the more you post, the more people will come to trust and respect you. And since most forums allow you to have a signature link, each post you create will create a link to your site and that can get people clicking on it through to your site.

4. Participate in Tweetchats

Have you discovered and taken part in a Tweetchat yet? Tweetchats are basically group driven conversations on Twitter who are talking and tweeting about a particular subject or niche topic. Tweetchats can get very very big! Sometimes they can have up to 500+ participants in them and by engaging and participating in them, you can find opportunities to plug your blog or business and content through them. To find Tweetchats, just search Twitter for scheduled based Twitter chats and find one that matches the type of niche or content your blog is about.

5. Use Social Bookmarking Services

Social bookmarking sites can provide an insane amount of traffic to your blog. But only really so much through the really biggest social bookmarking sites. Not every social bookmarking site is equal and some have more users than others. But since they are free to use and you can use #hashtags and tags on them, they can be effective at reaching people that are using them to search for the things your site has or blog is blogging about. I wont spend too much time on this and telling you about the benefits they can bring. But you should make sure you have accounts on all the top social bookmarking sites and always bookmark your new blog posts to them each time you publish one.

6. Support a Good Cause

Another great way to drive traffic to your site is to support a good cause! Usually you can find a local cause in your community which you can support on your blog by making a blog post about it. People and businesses in general usually have a good view on blogs that support local causes and events. And blogs that do usually find they get a lot more shares on social media by people who also support that cause and want to share it on to their friends, family and colleagues. This can be a great way to attract a lot of attention on your blog and show your philanthropic side.

7. Engage in Local Events

Supporting a good and noble cause is one thing, but engaging in local events that are taking place in your local area, town or city is another! By blogging about local events on your blog, you can pick up visitors that are searching for it and also show that you have a community side to your blog which people really appreciate. If possible, try to cover local events going on in your area by blogging about them, stating interesting facts about the event, speakers and highlights of the day. Whether for up and coming events or events that have recently taken place.

8. Answer Questions & Be Helpful

If you truly want to establish yourself as an expert in your niche and win peoples trust in your brand or blog, then answering peoples questions online and being helpful to them is one of the best ways to do that. Using sites like Yahoo! Answers and Quora, even LinkedIn and Formspring, you can answer peoples questions that you are knowledgeable in. Other than getting a warm and fuzzy feeling for helping someone, you'll also be able to leave your blog URL or a link to a blog post you've written that has covered what they want to know about in more detail.

Conclusion

While not exhaustive, these are some of the most popular and best ways to drive free traffic to your website, blog or even online ecommerce store. And since all these ways are proven and reliable and FREE, there is no reason not to do them if that's what you're looking for!

Do you use all of these methods to drive traffic to your blog?

Do you have any questions about any of the methods mentioned here?

What other free methods of driving traffic to your site/blog do you use?