Traffic is the lifeblood of your website. Check out these ways to get free targeted traffic to your website.

1. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
In reality, website traffic is almost never free. You either pay directly
for the click or you spend some time doing something that
generates clicks. But – ignoring the fact that it costs you time to get
free traffic – I’m going to talk about some methods that can help
generate free traffic to your website.
Usually that involves some kind of content that includes a link
(directly or indirectly) to your website.

2. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Depending on the type of link and the site it’s placed on, the free
traffic may be almost instant or it may take a while to work its way
through the system.
The amount of traffic you get – and the quality of that traffic – will
vary considerably.
As a general rule, large quantities of traffic are usually relatively
untargeted and the clicks to your site are generally worth less than
fewer (but better targeted) clicks.

3. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Short term traffic
Sites like Twitter and Facebook are usually short term.
Sure, your Tweets can get retweeted or your posts can get shared.
But most of the time the effect of the traffic is short lived.
That’s OK – it doesn’t take long to compose a Tweet or put up a
post on Facebook.

4. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Over time, you can build up followers on those platforms and they
will be more likely to see your future posts.
It helps to include hashtags with your Tweets and posts to help
other people to find them. Some people search that way, including
owners of newsletters and online sites who are constantly looking
for relevant content to include on their own site. I’ve had quite a
few of my Tweets found by that kind of site and, over time, the
traffic builds up.

5. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Much like paid-for traffic, short term traffic dries up soon after
you’ve posted it. Which means that you have to continually come
up with new things to entice visitors back to your website.
You could also create some kind of giveaway product to encourage
at least some of your visitors to join your list and stay in touch with
you.
That’s a good idea regardless of how you generate traffic to your
website.

6. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Medium and long term traffic
Most other traffic generation methods are medium to long term.
Often you won’t know ahead of time how long you’ll get clicks from
a link you’ve created.
That’s partly because you won’t know how long a topic will stay
popular and partly because you don’t know how long a third-party
site will stay around.

7. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Even popular forums can stop – an active UK forum I was a
member of a few years ago changed ownership (that’s not
uncommon – it’s not particularly easy to monetise a forum – and all
the posts went when the domain wasn’t renewed. In the self help
world, Steve Pavlina closed down his forum near the start of this
decade and put up quite a long post explaining why.
My gut reaction on forums is that they will stay for quite some time
but that their popularity is waning as other ways of interacting with
people take over – methods such as Twitter, Facebook and even
Skype groups.

8. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
That means that you shouldn’t rely on just one method of
generating your free traffic.
Content on your own site – one where you own the domain name
and hosting – is still the best traffic generation method in my mind.
All other methods should support that – Tweeting, putting up a post
on Facebook, etc.

9. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
The content on your site should typically be fairly long and detailed.
That may not be what you’d like me to say but it is the best way to
weave in the long tail keywords that will be responsible for most of
the traffic you get via Google and the other search engines.
You can help tip the balance in your favour by making sure to set
your page titles, headlines and meta descriptions so that they are
in your favour. That’s basic on site SEO and there are plenty of
articles on the web to help you – but take them with a pinch of salt
as not all free advice is good advice!

10. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
After your own site, other popular sites are a good way to generate
extra free traffic.
YouTube is one of those sites and it can generate clicks.
As with everything else, it depends on the topic and there’s no
direct correlation between a highly viewed video and traffic
generated to your site.

11. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
For instance, one of my videos shows you how to create links in
the video description that point to specific times in the video
(basically just put in a time in minutes and seconds with those
separated by a colon). That gets a lot of views but most people
don’t click through to my site from it because they’ve already got
the information they need from the video and have maybe tested
whether it works in one of the many comments that get added to it.
So the video is good for the overall strength of the channel but
doesn’t directly help my site.

12. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Indirectly, because it helps my YouTube channel, it probably helps
my other videos come slightly higher up the results so I probably
get a few more clicks than I otherwise would have done.
But without knowing the ins and outs of the various ranking
algorithms I’ll never know for certain.

13. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Which makes this a slightly weird “how to”
Things on the web are rarely black or white.
They’ve got more shades of grey than a popular novel.
In turn, this means that you need to experiment and figure out what
works best for you.

14. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Just because someone else claims to have made money – usually
very specific figure in a very specific, short, period of time – doesn’t
mean that you will be able to replicate that success or even come
close to it.
And if you manage to do something that generates a lot of good
quality free traffic, there’s also no guarantee that you can replicate
that.
Often it’s just a combination of a specific set of circumstances that
combine to create the result.

15. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
But equally that doesn’t mean you can’t get something close to
average results for most things you do.
The time you spend creating content in the hope of getting free
traffic is your choice.
I’d suggest an hour a day, most days, is a good use of your time.
As you grow, you can delegate or outsource that work.

16. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
But by that stage you’ll know what works most of the time and what
doesn’t. And what’s hit-and-miss and almost pure fluke.
If you’d like more help with getting more free traffic to your website
and getting money from those visitors once they reach your site,
affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to start.
It’s relatively straightforward and relatively quick.

17. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Two things that don’t always seem to be the case in a lot of internet
marketing.
Of course, you’ll need to put in some effort. But unless you’re the
type of person who believes you’ll win the lottery or that there’s a
pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, I hope you already
understand that.

18. How to Get Free Traffic
to Your Website
Resources
Content creation:
● Creating your own content
● Getting free content for your website
Creating videos like this one
Affiliate marketing – one of the quickest ways to start your internet
marketing