No one can deny that you need traffic to your website in order to succeed online. And the best kind of traffic is free traffic. So where do we get free traffic? Google and other search engines.
How do we get free traffic from Google?
You’ve experienced this process a lot of times. You load up Google or another search engine. Enter in a word or phrase you want to research. And then you visit one or more of the sites that show up. Well, the link you clicked on just send free traffic to that website owner. What need to figure out is how to get you free traffic.
You probably only visit a link or two from the first page of results. The truth is that this first page of results receives nearly all the clicks. And what’s more, the first 3 get over 70% of the clicks.
So to get any significant amount of free traffic from Google, you really need to be on the first page. To do that, you need to be “ranked” in Google’s Top 10 results. And this bring us to…
What is search engine optimization?
Search Engine Optimization means that Google thinks your site matches what people are typing into their search box. The formula Google uses to determine this is known only by Google. But there are several things that we know for sure.
Getting indexed
Before you can get ranked, Google has to first know your site exists. This is known as being “indexed.” What this means is that Google visits your site and records information about it in their database.
To get indexed, you have to help Google find your site. Links from other sites are the easiest way to accomplish this. Since some of these site will already be indexed, Google will follow the links on their pages and find you.
Use your Twitter and Facebook updates to get quick indexed links to your site. Google visits these sites many times every day. So any new links will be followed right away.
Gaining ranking
After this first hurdle, you need to start gaining ranking. Google has billions of pages indexed, so just getting into their database does not mean anyone will see you.
The 3 factors in getting ranked:
- Content
- Links
- Activity
Content strategies
This is the SEO work you do on your page. You need to make sure your content matches the search terms you’re going after. The topic of this article is clearly SEO. Google knows that not just because the words search engine optimization show up. But also because other related words like traffic generation show up in it, as well.
In addition to the content on the page, other things to keep in mind are the title tags on the page, and the domain name itself. These all play a part in helping Google determine what your website is about.
Link juice
The second factor is your linking. The links coming in and the links going out are included in this. With inbound links, you want to have more coming in than going out. The more inbound links you have the better your ranking will be.
One great way to get lots of inbound links is through web 2.0 sites. To use this technique you write articles related to the topic of your websites. You have to also write several different versions of your articles. And post unique versions to lots of websites that accept articles. And the more you do the better.
Make your site active
Finally, we know that Google gives you credit for the activity on your site. You can’t just put up a page and leave it alone and expect it to rank well. Regular content updates to your site are expected. One way to keep adding new content it through RSS feeds.
Another great way to keep your page content fresh is to enable comments on it and allow others to discuss your page topic. To get comments from others, you need to get others to visit your site. An easy way to do this is from forums.
Create profiles on lots of forums about your site’s topic. Then become active in the forum. And link back to yourself in your signature file. This generates even more links back to your site. And it also gets people to your web page.
Conclusion
It’s important that you do everything listed here. However, writing a bunch of different articles on the same topic. Creating profiles on a ton of forums. And posting your content all over the web is time consuming. And the bad news is that you probably won’t do it.
Fortunately, you can get rank builder software to do all the grunt work for you. So my best advice is to automate as much of this as you can. And then you’re sure to get it done. By taking these steps you practically ensure you’ll get free traffic from Google.