Digital marketing in 2015 is easy, right? All you need to do is invest thousands into a flashy-looking website, PPC, great authors and top quality videos.
What do you mean you don’t have the budget?
Not to worry, help is at hand. Here are 6 traffic techniques you may not have thought of that don’t need to break your bank.
1. Create Link Bait
Link Bait is all about creating content on your website that attracts links and potentially goes viral to help increase brand awareness.
This can be all types of things – Data (you can collect data for free; put them in charts, infographics, tables, videos (more on videos below) etc.
Making your content attractive is hugely important to make it successful – it’s the modern way of the internet. At the same time, creating content that is beneficial, in demand and generally awesome is at least as important, if not more.
If you’ve heard the terms ‘Flagship’ and ‘Evergreen’ content – these are also versions of Link Bait. It is content people are going to want to read, share and link to. Great content always serves as Link Bait.
Something that may be a little more difficult on a small budget would be creating apps/widgets/gadgets that are useful. This could be a calculator, a quiz or a database for example.
Sites that can help you create all of the above are Fiverr, Freelance.com and PeoplePerHour.
All of these could do with some effort in marketing them. It’s very rare something goes viral without a push.
A press release, Twitter (sharing on your own profile and interacting with others), Facebook (same as Twitter). Reddit, Pinterest, Bloggers are all places to seed your Link Bait.
2. Videos
You only need a camera phone or a webcam to create a video that can go viral. A single video that costs no money and only a little time can easily pick up several thousand views on YouTube.
A bonus about YouTube traffic is that it is the social king of post-click engagement. Traffic from YouTube also tends to stay on your site for much longer than other traffic sources.
The popularity of your video plays a part in YouTube visibility. The more often your video is seen = the more visibility you will get on YouTube.
YouTube videos also appear in Google for search results – another opportunity to gain additional viewers.
Embed your link in these videos or use these videos for branding so that viewers will search for your brand and you have additional traffic for what could have been minimal time and money.
Self hosting your videos on your site might be something to think about. You will benefit from the links instead of YouTube but you’ll want to make sure you can afford the bandwidth and you have a good player that's cross-compatible. Moz Blog covers many other scenarios for self hosting videos.
3. Invite Guests to Post on Your Blog
This one works better if you have an established blog or are at least a well-respected company/website in your industry.
Inviting bloggers with an audience, or if you can, an authoritative figure(s) as well to contribute on your blog is a really useful way to increase your traffic.
In turn for giving them an opportunity to publish on your blog (perhaps you can offer them a link back to their website from your blog and/or a monthly/quarterly/yearly prize for the best blogger) they are giving you additional traffic that can be shared on your newsletter, social, picked up in Google SERPs etc. You can also ask your contributors to share the content they produced for you with their social following, perhaps in their newsletter, perhaps on their blog too.
This works well when your contributors write on a regular basis for you and aren’t in it for a one-off post solely for a link back to their website.
4. Contribute to Other Blogs
The reverse of inviting bloggers to contribute on your blog is to go contribute on theirs. Sites with a reasonably sized audience give you the opportunity to raise brand awareness. These posts go out on their social networks and in their newsletters too if they have one, often saying something along the lines of “written by your name”. Think of the branding opportunity here.
Regular, targeting writing slots on more than one website in your niche or in front of an audience will increase your chances of raising your brand awareness if you find the right ones to contribute to.
This can also give you the opportunity to create connections with top figures in your industry – either those who run the blog or those who also contribute on the blog.
5. Connect with Other Bloggers
You can’t not get in touch with bloggers these days if you really want to. Every sensible blogger has a contact form or email address on their website and the majority of them are on social networks too.
There are many reasons you may want to get in touch with them too – compliment their work, tell them you’re a big fan, perhaps you spotted an error or typo on their website or latest post that you wanted to correct.
It doesn’t take long to send an email or a Tweet, but creating that connection can lead to lots. Perhaps this is how you start your relationship that leads to either or both of you contributing to one another’s blog, sharing each other’s content etc.
6. Team Up with Other Blogs
If you’re happy to share another blog’s content to your audience then it’s worth considering teaming to scratch each other’s back. Of course you’ll want this blog to have a relevant audience, but at the same time not be a competitor. After all, you don’t want to be giving your competitor your customers and vice versa!
The SEO industry is a great example of this – we help each other out by guest posting on each other’s blogs, and by sharing each other’s articles on Twitter and other places. We’re such kind people to one another you see.
Use any or all of these six tactics to start increasing traffic to your website today.
Do you have any successful tactics of your own that you’d care to share in the comments section below?
