How to get free visitor traffic to your site

[Andy]

After reading some posts about webmasters trying to bookmark their own sites on social bookmarking networks I thought it may be an idea to steer webmasters away from this crazy idea with a few tips:

1. Add your own original content to your site. Add many short pages or posts including the key phrase in the title. You are sure to get visitors to your pages for a variety of search terms that match stuff you typed into your page content. You can tell by checking your web stats.

2. Get a link or two to your site from places like your forum signature to get search engines spidering your site. You have to get at least one inbound link to get listed in search engines.

4. Link out to relevant web pages. This may seem like a sure-fire way to lose visitors but it is necessary to get page ranking. Just look at the number of outbound links on the top ranking sites for confirmation of this rule.

Well, this should get you started 

[Menard]

1. Add your own original content to your site. Add many short pages or posts including the key phrase in the title. You are sure to get visitors to your pages for a variety of search terms that match stuff you typed into your page content. You can tell by checking your web stats.

Do that regularly. I presume you've read some of my articles. I also farm out some of my articles to article sites which provides an additional link on the article site, plus one on any iste picking up the article. I have had a few articles picked up this way with backlinks to my site. I also openly give permission to any webmaster visiting my site to copy my content to their site so long as the copyright and link remain.

2. Get a link or two to your site from places like your forum signature to get search engines spidering your site. You have to get at least one inbound link to get listed in search engines.

Every forum of which I am a member has my sites in my sig. On one forum I have over 1600 posts. (that number is small potatoes to Andy )

  Where's number three?

4. Link out to relevant web pages. This may seem like a sure-fire way to lose visitors but it is necessary to get page ranking. Just look at the number of outbound links on the top ranking sites for confirmation of this rule.

That's always a work in progress. I get approached for link trades on my traffic and adult sites, which helps. But, what is a relevant site for the CargoShip? It defies explanation.

One advantage I do have in having several sites already ranked is that I have several pages to frontpage a link to new sites of mine.

[Andy]

what is a relevant site for the CargoShip

Simple, a cargo ship company with a high ranking site. You could link to one with some text stating your site is in no way affiliated with them for instance 

Some of my pages that I linked out from seemed to get good PR as opposed to pages stuffed with content but no links to authority sites that had no PR. So I am trying to get into the habit of linking out more.

Tip #3, leave the tip blank to encourage traffic (replies) to your post 

[john846]

After reading some posts about webmasters trying to bookmark their own sites on social bookmarking networks I thought it may be an idea to steer webmasters away from this crazy idea with a few tips:

4. Link out to relevant web pages. This may seem like a sure-fire way to lose visitors but it is necessary to get page ranking. Just look at the number of outbound links on the top ranking sites for confirmation of this rule.

Well, this should get you started 

I have always known it to be get links from related sites and pages linking to yours that has good PR and has some authority and not to link to other sites to gain PR. If this was the case then everybody would be linking to everybody on the web that is the same as their's just to increase their rankings.

That's the reasons to trying to get one way links also.

[Andy]

Why should anyone want to one-way link to your site unless you pay them?

If you look at sites that link out alot, other sites will one-way link back in the hope that they get the web master's attention. Whatever the theories are, you only have to look at the top sites and spot that they link out alot.

Linking to another site is like  standing outside a lonely bachelor apartment with a megafone and shouting "wake up, there is a party going on over at my place and my girlfriends want to meet you!"

[john846]

You have definately got it all wrong. A site will get a much better ranking and PR if it has 500 incoming links and 0 outgoing links rather than 500 outgoing links and 0 incoming links.

It all makes sense and this is how it's been for years. I have been doing marketing online for 5 years.

Anybody can link to sites small or big, but when it comes to getting your site on other sites it is a much harder job and the better sites your site is on the more important your site will look to the search engines.

This is a known fact.

I find that getting a 1 way link is by far much easier than doing Link Exchanges. That is the reasons why I don't do much link exchanging anymore. Infact I only do a little bit on 1 of my sites and don't do link exchanges on my other 3. It is not worth it I don't think.

People give one way links to quality sites, interesting sites, sites that look important. You can get one way links from web directories, writing articles about your sites topic, from forum signatures, etc.
 
There are 100's of ways of getting one way links and it doesn't have to involve money.

Look at Wikipedia for example, they have had 100's of sites ad content and include links to other sites on it. No Wikipedia has taken measures and is cutting down on the links going out of their site and trying to link directly to more internal pages of their own site. If outgoing pages where that important then wouldn't you think Wikipedia would have just kept them linking to external sites.

Although saying this, I must admit that it is good to have a few links pointing out from your site as it is likely to help your visitors out. But I don't think it will gain you PR or that much PR nore will it damage it in anyway. If you could gain PR from having links out of your site, then every site would be linking straight to Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc. The main top sites.

[Menard]

You have definately got it all wrong. A site will get a much better ranking and PR if it has 500 incoming links and 0 outgoing links rather than 500 outgoing links and 0 incoming links.

I don't even recall Andy arguing against one way links, just stating a simple fact of how difficult it is to get them. Yes, 500 incoming links without a reciprocal link to any of them would be great, even better if they were on relevant websites, and even better if they were front paged; but do you really expect to find 500 webmasters that altruistic, or I guess you have the money to pay for all those one-way links.

There are a few options for getting free one-way links to a site.

One is free directories. Of course, you are probably going to be buried deep into the directory and may have to start out with several no rank directories that will grow over time.

Another is http://www.freerelevantlinks.com/ , and there are probably a few more sites like them. You submit your site to them and place a line of code somewhere, usually the bottom, on your page/pages, which has a few links to other sites. As new members join the service, they will pick up the code and some of them will have your site included in the links. It is slow to build, but you can build up one-way links at the rate of 1 every month or two.

I have been doing marketing online for 5 years.

That would make you relatively young compared to how long Andy has been doing this.

That's okay, you'll eventually get some experience under your belt.

 

[Andy]

My online business is based on content and people naturally linking back. I don't go out looking for link partners or bother submitting to directories.

My own sites tend to be PR6, 5, 4

Even though it has been generally accepted that you need inbound links, the sites such as problogger.net link out more and more and make 6-figure incomes. So I think times are a changing.

The web is a network of sites so it is nonsense to encourage people to only link one-way. It doesn't work in practice.

The large income earners online are now all linking out to other sites. What worked 5 years ago is not working today which is evidenced by the decline in earnings of adsense sites for example.

ask yourself: Have your earnings increased in the last 2 years?

It is good to get some different ideas bouncing around though 

A site will get a much better ranking and PR if it has 500 incoming links and 0 outgoing links

I don't think it's possible to get that kind of ratio and that is not correct, show us some examples...

[john846]

Sorry, I guess I read your post wrong.

[Andy]

No problem, it's always nice to get some debate going on 

[Menard]

Aww...now no hugging, kissing, and making up. That's just too.....girly.

[Andy]

I guess I should be more strict and administer slaps and karate kicks liberally as and when the urge arises?

[Menard]

I guess I should be more strict and administer slaps and karate kicks liberally as and when the urge arises?

That's the spirit.