Of late you’ll no doubt be aware I’ve quite forcefully been putting people off the idea of SEO and a very unhealthy reliance on so-called free traffic. While my arguments are sound and have been borne out over and over again, there’s still a lot of resistance to them from many, if not most, business owners.
Why this is I can but guess, but I think the two main pressures are; first:
the SEO industry is big, loud, pervasive and persuasive, and we’ve been indoctrinated for so long with the idea that getting high rankings in the SERPs must be a good thing, it’s a hard habit to break
and secondly:
I think many business owners are a little nervous of truly embracing the idea of ROI and lifetime customer value. They can see it makes sense, but haven’t yet had the experience of having the whole process “happen” for them.
As they say: “pictures, or it didn’t happen”. So what I’m going to do now is share with you some very quick, easy, and low cost ways of getting qualified traffic to your website. Some of them are as close to being truly free as makes no difference, but there is always some cost to it, however small.
Article Marketing
Vastly out of favor nowadays, the truth is article marketing is still effective in certain niches, when a particular set of circumstances come together. In particular your niche needs to be something people are passionate about and will be prepared to read “how to” type information on, and the niche can’t be too saturated so there are hundreds of competing websites appearing in the SERPs. It’s extremely well suited to things like hobbies and pastimes. Direct traffic is very well qualified and converts extremely well and profitably to sales. The key to success with articles is twofold: quality and volume. If you don’t have the quality, then you won’t get the traffic because no one is going to bother clicking through to your website to learn more about you; and you’ll need a lot of articles (typically 100 or more) to get enough traffic to make it truly worthwhile. The good news is you’ll find some of your articles will send you excellent traffic day-in, day-out for years.
The biggest and (still) the best article directory out there is www.ezinearticles.com, and for wider coverage I recommend Steve Shaw’s www.SumbitYourArticle.com.
Solo Ads
A “solo ad” is where you piggy-back of someone else’s email list. They send an email to their list promoting your site. So long as the quality of the host list is good and the owner has a good relationship with his or her readers, you can have a lot of success with solo-ads. You can fi nd websites where you can order these ads by Googling “solo ads”. Just note that many of these commercial offerings are heavily skewed towards the “Internet marketing” niche. But the principle is sound and it’s worth your while pursuing opportunities for strategic joint ventures with people who have non-competing businesses with customers and clients like yours. For example, there are a million and one printing companies out there, and their customers and clients are a perfect match for all the small-business marketing consultancies out there.
There is a similar synergy between:
- Copywriters (of all flavours) and graphic designers and website designers
- Graphic designers and printers
- Accountants and marketing consultants and business coaches
- Tradesmen and women of all kinds (electricians, plumbers, etc.)
- Estate agents and virtually every business out there (because when people move to a new area they need new contacts in pretty much every niche you can imagine)
- Gym owners and sports retail stores
- Hairdressers and beauty salons
- Greengrocers and butchers
It’ll pay you back handsomely to approach as many people as you can in industries synergistic to your own to see if you can persuade them to advertise your business to their email list, either for a small fee or a cut of any sales you make.
PR
If you can get your business mentioned in the press, it can drive a sudden and very large flood of traffic to your website. If you’re smart you’ll have arranged things so before this happens the page they land on is crafted to get the optins and isn’t just a generic “Hi, and welcome to my site” page. The easiest way to do this is to write press releases promising stories that will educate, inform and entertain the journalist’s audience (see the article on pages 4 and 5 for why you need to be educating your market and not just selling to them). Another way to achieve much the same end is to write content and articles for local publications. They’re usually crying out for good quality editorial material and will gladly take it if you offer it.
Guest Blogging
I’m no fan of social media, but there’s no doubt a well-written post on someone else’s blog can be great for driving traffic. Again, as with the local press, many blogs are only too willing to accept guest posts. Some sites like The Huffington Post accept regular author spots, too.
YouTube Videos
These are really a no-brainer because not only is video very powerful and persuasive, but you can get a lot of “how to” information into even a short one, and most people should be using videos on their websites anyway, or at least testing it, so there’s almost no extra work involved in tweaking the YouTube description to send people to your optin pages.
CHRIS KEY TAKEAWAYS
As You can see there’s many ways of attracting free or next to nothing quality traffic. I do recommend them all, even if all you get out of it is the experience of getting your horizons broaden and vision clearer. The aspect of researching for free traffic will enrich you in more ways than one; you will have to outreach, form new alliances and mutual partnerships, and even some new market and competitor intelligence will result from the researching of new channels for communicating your message. Go for it!
Please share here your thoughts on this article about Chris Cardell, share it on social media and express your views. To learn more about Chris Cardell visit his website chriscardell.com or Chris Cardell’s Media Company, Cardell Media Ltd. There is also an interesting video interview with Chris Cardell. His next life changing event is The Sovereignty Summit with Chris and Dan Kennedy on 29th – 30th of September 2015.
