Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

Hi Mark, you need to provide a lot more information if you are going to get any kind of productive answer from this forum.

But, before you do, head on up to the search bar at this top of the site and type in "SEO". Those results are GOLD and will answer most of your questions. I just took a look myself, and the first article listed (after the topic/category result) was titled, "10 SEO Tips to Improve Your Search Rankings". If that is not exactly what you are looking for, I don't know what is!

You don't have to be a pro member to take advantage of most of those (but I DO recommend you become a pro member. From my experience, it more than pays for itself).

If, after reading through some of those articles, you still need help from the forum, edit your question to include what your site is (even provide the URL so we can take a look), what SEO tactics you are currently using, and what your goals are.

Giving that kind of context is the only way you are going to get any helpful response that you can use.

I want you to understand that the concept of free website traffic may not be cost-effective. Now that may sound counter-intuitive. My point is do you want traffic - or sales? Because just getting lots of people visiting won't necessarily bring you buyers. What's more, free website traffic can take a lot of time. If you are clever, it won't be wasted as many of the techniques can be extended to paid traffic sources, especially PPc and my favourite, the display network.

If you rate your time at $35 an hour (not unreasonable for a skilled user of the internet) paid advertising in PPC and display networks will save you massive amounts of money. This is something you should bear in mind for the future - especially if you are successful.

Basic techniques.

You need a website. not any website, but a website tuned to the thoughts running through the heads of your buyers - not just traffic, okay? Unless you have a method of generating money by visits, there is little use for traffic as such! You're selling drill bits. Nobody goes looking for drillbits on a Thursday afternoon they have free, right? If they do, they want them to do something, and usually that means a hole. Why do they want a hole? To put a plug in for a screw to fix up a lamp. So you're selling drills - and advertising on lamps, pictures, door frames ... anything that can have a hole drilled in it. Make a page on your site for each describing how your product - a drill - can help in each case. That way people searching through Google will find their question posed. Google doesn't do answers, it can only reflect the question put into the box. Put a question there, and you are part of the top 3% of marketers. Believe me, the ability to do this will make you a living if you are able to use your imagination effectively. This is the essentials of searchengine optimization (SEO) - there's a lot in this, and much of it is applicable to PPC.

So that's the search (often called organic traffic) dealt with. They hit the enter button and your site comes up at number 1 (hopefully) and on number 10 if you're not so good, and at number 10,000 if you've chosen to answer the question and not pose it (see above).

Blogging - you can comment on popular posts and by including the address of your website, people can click through and visit if they are interested in what you have to say. The important bit is to be original, funny, witty and engaging. When people laugh, they want more.

Forums usually have a footer where you can put links to your website. This one sadly doesn't, so it's not a good example of the usual style of a forum. You can change these links and find out which are popular and which not. When you make an interesting comment, people will read through and check you out.

You can sign up for directories, although these days they aren't used anywhere as much as previously. I used to get lots of traffic to my old website through directories, these days if I get one click a month it's a good month. Plus you have to give your email address and it winds up on the spammer's lists. I still get 20+ spam a day to one of my old email addresses that is still active (just in case, you understand!).

What else is there? You can write your website links on concrete walls with spray cans - although the local police may not share your enthusiasm. You can have it glued to the back of your car as I did mine. use flyers with your internet links pasted to them - only these ideas are way less effective than the ones mentioned above. I'm sure there's something I've missed - there's enough to keep you busy for the weekend.

Have fun!

How can you get more free search engine traffic to your website?

That depends on what you want the traffic for. As you've given the scantiest smidgen of detail, it's hard to tell. What is your site about? Who is it for? What content does it offer? What offer does it offer? Why is your site worth visiting? By whom? How often?

What category, niche, sub-niche, and micro audience does your site serve? Where is your traffic coming from at the moment (how often, in what volume, from what kinds of sources, in search of what, and linked from where)?

Once the traffic lands on your site, what kind of page does it land ON, and on that page, what kind of content do people see? How well is the content of that page aligned, optimized, relevant, salient, and
connected to the link or search term that led people to that page to begin with?

How well aligned are the pages of your site to specific search terms (branded terms, contextual, and directional)? How well tagged are headers, titles, and descriptions of your pages? What's your strategy for and how actively are you engaging in creating in-links and back links? How often do you add new content to your site, and how relevant is it?

I could go on, but you get the general idea.

Adding to what the others have said - "free" means doesn't cost money. But there is still a cost, and that is someone's time. As mentioned, it involves optimizing your web site for search engines (SEO). Much of that is upgrading and improving your web site, but it also is helped by other actions (writing byline articles, certain activity on message boards, etc.). This takes time (or money, if you pay someone to spend the time).

The other route is to pay for ads that run on the search engine (Google AdWords or the like).

As mentioned, there are sometimes easy ways to get traffic, but it generally is not quality traffic. Run a contest and lots of people will come to enter, but that doesn't mean they are people who you necessarily want to come and enter (not potential customers). So doing this really doesn't add value.