11 Reasons Why Every Affiliate Marketer Should Learn SEO

 As an affiliate marketer, you probably spend a LOT of time thinking of ways to drive traffic to your site.

After all, no traffic = no affiliate sales.

The two main sources of traffic for most websites are usually:

1. Organic Search

2. Paid Advertising

Social media and other sources will also bring visitors to your site, but these are usually your two best bets for consistent, ongoing traffic.

Why Should You Care About Organic Search? 

Of these two main sources of traffic, search always comes out on top. In fact, a recent study by Experian Marketing Services found that on average, 87% of a website’s traffic comes from organic sources. This percentage of course, varies by industry. However it doesn’t change the fact that the majority of traffic in almost every industry comes from people typing their queries into Google or another search engine and clicking on the links in the results. 

This means if your website is not optimized for search, you are potentially losing out on large amounts of traffic. 

But what do I mean by "optimized for search"? I mean, your website should be created and maintained according to several widely accepted best practices for search engine optimization. You should also implement your other marketing efforts (especially content marketing and social media marketing) keeping your SEO goals in mind.

Why Should You Learn SEO?

OK, so we know SEO is important. But, there are thousands of SEO experts in the world. Wouldn’t it just be easier to hire someone to do your SEO instead of trying to understand it all?

Yes, of course. I definitely think it’s a good idea to hire someone with SEO expertise to help you out. However, if you develop an understanding of how search engine optimization works, your affiliate marketing efforts will ultimately benefit from it. In fact, by understanding what your SEO provider does, you may be able to get more out of the services they provide. 

But if you're still not convinced the additional SEO knowledge will do you any good, here are 11 reasons why every affiliate marketer should learn SEO. 

(By the way, our free lesson, Introduction to Affiliate Marketing SEO, is a great place to get started with your SEO learning.)

1. Understand Search Engines

You get that search traffic is important, but do you understand what it takes for your website to do well on a search engine? How do Google, Bing and Yahoo even work?

When you learn SEO, you don't just learn a new marketing skill. You actually start to understand how search engines work. This is hugely useful when you're in the business of driving traffic to your site.

Search engines consistently crawl the web for new content (links) and index them so when a person performs an online search, Google/Bing/Yahoo can deliver the most relevant results for their search query. The results are ranked so the most popular link for a search term (or the one most likely to give an answer) appears at the top (number 1 position). 

But how does a search engine determine the most popular and relevant site for a search term? 

Well, we don't actually know. Search engines rely on secret algorithms to decide what pages to show. SEO experts make educated guesses about what goes into those algorithms based on common factors in high-ranking websites. And Google occasionally drops little hints about what's important, too. These have led to best practices and general guidelines for SEO that make it possible for website owners like yourself to build sites specifically to get found by the search engines.  

I recommend checking out Google's website on How Search Works to get a deeper understanding of what really goes on behind the scenes of the number one search engine. 

If you're interested in learning more about best-practice recommendations for ranking on the major search engines, check these out: 

• Google webmaster guidelines
• Bing webmaster guidelines
• Yahoo search ranking guidelines

By developing a more thorough understanding of search engines and terms like crawling and indexing, page rank and more, you will become more aware of what it takes to optimize your website and benefit from increased search traffic.

2. Improve Your Website's Design

Once you begin to understand how search engines work, you will see that a good website is not just about a pretty design and some clever content. While the focus of modern SEO is to make websites human-friendly, it's important to remember that how you and I see a website is different from how search engines view it. 

For your website to be truly search engine friendly, it must follow some pretty technical specifications for design and development.

Learning SEO will help you grasp the importance of aspects of website creation, such as:

• Creating quality content.
• Making your content indexable. 
• Organizing your website into a proper structure.
• The proper use of keywords in your site content.
• Having quality inbound and outbound links for your website

Here's some advice from Google on how to create a Google-friendly site.

An understanding of SEO will ensure you don't waste your time making website changes that don't deliver results. Plus, for any new websites you launch, you will also know how to structure your site and optimize it right from the start.

3. Optimize Your Content

You don't need me to tell you this, but... content is king.

On your site, on your blog, on social media... everywhere you look, the web is overflowing with millions of pieces of content.

But, how much of it is actually good quality?

In the early days of the web, it took very little to get your website to do well on a search engine. In 2015, that has completely changed. The major search engines are heavily focused on the quality of your website now, and your content has a lot to do with it. 

Quality content is not just about creating a great blog post or a fun infographic. It's about building an entire website that delivers that same quality. For search engines, good content is a sign of a site that is considerate of its visitors; one that tries to anticipate and answer questions. It's all about a good user experience.

Check out this really helpful e-book by SEO.com on 11 Types of Content You Should Be Creating For SEO Right Now.

Here are some guidelines from the major search engines on how to create quality content for your site:

1. Google guidelines on valuable content

2. Yahoo content quality guidelines

3. Bing on how to build quality content

If you're hiring people to do your content, it's important that they create something that won't get you penalized by search engines. When you learn SEO, you also learn what makes for good content so you can guide your writers, designers, bloggers and other content creators in the right direction. Or, if you're doing it all yourself, you'll know how to produce content that will impress your site visitors and search engines.

4. Figure Out What to Do with Keywords

Most people, even if they don't quite get SEO, understand that keywords play a big role in the world of search engines. This is true.

Keywords are fundamental to the search process. It's how users communicate what they're searching for. The search engines deliver results based on these keywords. 

Search engines measure how keywords are used within your website. This helps them determine how relevant your website is for particular search queries. So, it's essential that you use specific, highly relevant keywords to maximize your opportunities for appearing in search results.

But, be careful of keyword abuse. In the early days of the web, stuffing as many keywords as possible onto a page was a common practice. This no longer works and in fact, will count as keyword abuse and will probably get you penalized. Now, it's more important to use your keywords in a relevant, natural way.

Don't be this person! Write naturally so your visitors feel you're having a real conversation. 

Understanding how keywords work will be very helpful for you because:

• You can identify which keywords are relevant for you.
• When you do keyword research, you now know what to look for.
• If you hire a writer for your web content, you can guide them on proper keyword usage.
• You will understand where keywords need to be used, e.g., on page content, in title tags, in meta descriptions, etc. 

5. Understand How Link-Building Works

Links are another big part of the SEO puzzle. 

Search engines use links to analyze a website's popularity, trustworthiness, authority, and much more.  However, not all links are made equal. A trustworthy site is likely to link to another trustworthy site — not to spammy sites. This often helps a search engine determine the quality of links.

The more popular and trustworthy a site, the more significant it is to have a link from them. 

So, to make the most of your link-building efforts, you need to make sure you're acquiring links from other relevant, popular and trustworthy sites. These will be helpful for your website's SEO. Paying for 1,000 irrelevant links will do you no good.

Link-building is an important task for SEO. Whether you're doing your own link building or hiring someone else to do it, you need to understand how it works to make sure you're only building quality links. 

6. Build Your Online Reputation

When you learn SEO and do it right, your site will start to show up in more search results, thus boosting your brand's online visibility. 

How does a boost in your visibility help you? When you start to show up in the results for all the relevant search terms for your industry, your audience and customers will start to think of you as a leader in the industry.

I'm not making this up. People trust organic search engine results more than paid ads.

On average, people believe organic results are more likely to be current and relevant. They want the most authoritative sources. In short, they believe they are getting the best information via search engine results. 

So when you understand SEO, you can figure out how to optimize your site to appear in the results for more queries that are relevant for your customers. The more they see you, the more they will start to trust your site. 

7. Get More Traffic to Your Website

A website optimized for search engines is definitely going to start getting you more traffic.

An eConsultancy study found that an overwhelming 94% of clicks are for organic search results. 

Another experiment also found that 60% of "direct traffic" reported in your data may actually be attributed to organic search.

With people more likely to click on search results than paid ads, it's only natural that if your website is more visible online, you will start to see more people visiting your site. 

Search engines are the first point of contact for most people looking for information. SEO helps you understand how to make your site more visible to the right audience, which in turn results in more traffic to your site.

8. Make More Money

Say your website currently gets a 100 visitors a day. Let's also say that 2% of your visitors click through to your ads and this makes you $2 a day. 

Now, your website is getting a 1,000 visitors a day thanks to solid SEO. You have the same 2% click-through rate. This means you're now making $20 a day!

If you experience a jump in traffic thanks to your SEO efforts, this is eventually going to boil down to increased revenue from your website — especially if your website is optimized to make your traffic convert to sales. Who doesn't like more money?

But to make this extra money, you really have to develop an understanding of what SEO is, how it works and how you can make it work for you.

9. Market Yourself for Free

SEO is free marketing.

Pay-per-click advertising requires you to set daily/monthly budgets that you are willing to spend to buy advertising space on search engines. Each click on an ad will cost you money, and if you're in a particularly competitive industry, clicks can sometimes cost $40-50! 

Clicks on organic results don't cost you any money. All you have to do is maintain your position in the rankings, and the traffic you get is completely free.

Of course, you will be spending time and energy optimizing your site in the first place. It's going to cost you some hours, even if it costs you no money. You can also hire someone else to do the initial work, which will put a dent in your budget. But then you can save money by doing your ongoing SEO maintenance yourself — because you'll understand how SEO works! 

10. Protect Yourself From Sketchy SEO Practices

If you're working with an SEO expert, it's doubly important to at least have an idea of what they're going to do for your site. 

There are thousands of SEO providers out there, and while a lot of them are very good, some will engage in sketchy practices. Their aim is to show you results right away, but there's a few problems with that:

1. These results will be short term.
2. Your site could end up with a penalty. 
3. Google could de-index you for spammy SEO practices.

By learning a bit about search engine optimization, you'll learn the difference between what is good (white hat SEO) and what is bad (black hat SEO). Avoid black hat tactics, and if your SEO provider tries to suggest anything sketchy that falls into this category, you know to send them packing straightaway. SEO takes time, so don't be frustrated if you don't jump in the search rankings overnight!  

11. Become a Better Affiliate Marketer 

Your end goal is not to become better at SEO, but to become better at affiliate marketing...right?

By gaining an understanding of SEO, you will:

• Make better, more SEO-friendly websites, right from the beginning. 
• Get better at driving traffic to your website.
• Create better, more relevant content for your site.
• Build high quality links to your site. 
• Improve your website's authority in the industry. 
• Outdo the competition (especially if they're not doing SEO).
• Spot more opportunities for growing your site and business.

Nobody knows your business better than you, and SEO will only help to enhance that. 

Does this make you want to learn SEO to improve your affiliate marketing efforts? 

If you already do SEO for yourself, what do you think has been the number one benefit of learning SEO for affiliate marketing?

P.S. If you're looking for a tool that shows you whether your SEO efforts are getting you anywhere, we have something for you: AffiloTools automatically tracks your rankings in great detail and in multiple search engines so you can see real results.

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The Right Way to Think About Google

 Oops, they did it again.

Our friend Google caused a panicked rumble through the tech world late Monday afternoon, when they announced they’d be restructuring under a new holding company called Alphabet.

Never mind that this is something companies do all the time. Never mind that there’s no reason to think it will change what’s happening with search in any way. Never mind the weird, April-Fools-looking new domain.

Google can’t really do “normal things,” because every time they make even a small visible change, most of us wonder,

What will this do to my rankings?

Why the collective jumping at shadows? Well, because if your business depends on your search rankings — and we’ll talk about that in a minute — you probably have a certain amount of Google-induced stress disorder.

Key elements change. Abruptly. And secretly. And you’re left scrambling to pick up the mess.

And to be honest, it can get right on your last nerve.

But if it causes you more than a few moments of irritation, you may benefit from shifting the way you think about the web’s favorite 800-pound gorilla.

Here’s how I’ve learned to think about Google (courtesy of advice from Copyblogger’s founder, Brian Clark). Which means when they pull stunts like this — and they do, with some regularity — my pain is limited to a few curse words and some moderate tweaking.

I have five rules for keeping my sanity when dealing with Google.

Rule 1: “What’s my plan if this goes away tomorrow?”

Any time you use a tool from Google (or from any third party you have no control over), this question will help you.

Sooner rather than later, ask yourself what your backup plan is — if and when the tool (or your search ranking, for that matter) dissolves overnight.

You’ll notice that Brian asked and answered this question publicly about the Authorship program way back in April, 2013 — making us all look like Big Damn Heroes when Authorship did, in fact, blow up.

Did we think that would happen? Actually, we didn’t.

Were we prepared when it did? You know it.

Ask yourself right now what you’ll do if Facebook disappears tomorrow, or Twitter, or your Google search results position, or your pay-per-click campaign.

When tools and programs disappear in the online world, they often do so literally overnight. You need a solid plan in place for when that happens.

Rule 2: Google owes you nothing

Ranking in the search engines is not a civil right.

You don’t “deserve” to have your content found by Google. (Or Bing, or Yahoo, or anywhere else.) That’s not a service that Google has promised you.

Weirdly enough, Google won’t even promise you that they’ll accept large amounts of your money to run advertising on their AdWords platform. They can take that away any time as well. Without necessarily giving you a reason.

Too often, we think that because we put a ton of work into being found on the search engines, that we are somehow entitled to that juicy position on the results page. It doesn’t work that way.

The greater your sense of entitlement about what companies like Google owe you, the more frustration and anger you’ll feel when you get smacked. Which you will, if you’re in the game long enough.

Rule 3: You owe Google nothing

You also don’t work for Google. They don’t send you a paycheck or have you under contract.

Whether or not you want to abide by their thoughts on best practices is completely up to you — and you should make that decision like an adult, weighing the pros and cons and keeping Google in its proper perspective.

Spending hours picking apart every syllable Matt Cutts may utter, trying to understand what he thinks the definition of is is, and making violent changes to your business model because Cutts mentioned he likes or doesn’t like something, is a sucker bet.

Refer back to Rule #2. It doesn’t matter how many hoops you jump through. Whether or not you do everything “the way Google wants,” (which you usually have to guess at, because they have no interest in telling you), they don’t owe you that search result.

As I’m fond of saying, Google is a lot like that really mean girl from high school. Your best shot at getting her to like you is to ignore her while you go about getting social sharing, links, and publicity because you’re trying to reach people. The less you care about what she thinks, the better light she tends to see you in — because real people already like you.

(And if she never gives you the time of day? Meh, you don’t need her anyway. Truly.)

Rule 4: Use the tool for what it’s good for

None of this is to say that having a good search result isn’t helpful. It can be, especially for some topics and business models.

We earlier recommended including the Authorship markup on content because it was quick and easy to do with Genesis, and the potential looked promising.

All of our SEO recommendations work that way. If you can tweak your content without messing it up for your human readers, and without putting every hour of your day into it, go ahead and do that. Use a few simple tools that will let you get your content optimized efficiently.

And if your company has the resources to hire a strong team that devotes all of its time to search, that’s fine as well. But don’t do it if you can’t genuinely afford it, and don’t do it if you can’t weather the inevitable storms.

Recognize that search is a long game. Put it in its proper place. Use other ways to connect with and engage your audience. And if a great search placement shows up over time, that’s terrific.

Rule 5: Serve the audience first

This is the granddaddy of them all.

Google robots don’t have credit cards. They can’t buy your product or service.

Instead of trying to serve Google, serve the people who will eventually become your customers. Create content that interests them and meets their needs. Make it useful. Make it entertaining. Give it some real time and attention.

The audience is where everything good comes from. Google is just one way for that audience to find you.

P.S. Same as it ever was

A slightly different version of this post was originally published in September 2014, when Google had just killed the Authorship program. And it might get republished later, when they do something else that causes a collective heart attack.

We created a new image, and I wrote a new introduction. After the words “you’re left scrambling to pick up the mess,” the only edits I made were changing the word this to it and adding a quick clarifying phrase in the first point.

Why do I point this out? Because nothing’s changed, and nothing is likely to change.

Google is going to shift. Sometimes abruptly. That doesn’t mean you need to go along for the ride. Develop a sustainable approach, and leave the panic attacks and the dysfunction behind.

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Quality Over Quantity: Repurpose Your Best Ideas and Distribute Them Far and Wide

I hate to be the one to break this to you, but …
Your audience does not need your ideas.
Sorry to disappoint you.
It’s true though.
Your audience is exposed to plenty of ideas. Everywhere they turn online and offline, they are bombarded with ideas. Ideas, ideas, ideas. Mostly filler and fluff.
Think about yourself. Do you need any more ideas to consume and consider?
No.
What you need are someone’s best ideas. And what your audience needs — in fact, all that your audience needs — are your best ideas.

• The ideas that cut through the crap and clutter to make a difference
• The ideas you’ve thought through, spent time with, and sculpted
• The ideas that are closer to finished products than initial impressions

And you should invest more time distributing these premium ideas further and wider, in different ways and in different places. You shouldn’t simply hit Publish and then run to the next idea.

This way you can meet more of your current audience members where they are and you increase the likelihood of reaching potential audience members with your best work.

Let me show you an example of how I’m doing this on one of my sites …

It all starts with a blog post

Given my responsibilities here at Rainmaker Digital, and being a new dad, I don’t have a ton of extra capacity for side projects.
So when I do have an idea worth sharing over at The Assembly Call, I want to maximize the impact and distribution of that good idea. I can’t afford to spin my wheels.
In the immortal words of Sweet Brown:

“Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

This is why I’ve shifted my strategy and begun taking one well-thought-out idea and repurposing it into several different types of content, distributed in many different places.
The idea is given birth in a blog post. Why? Because I do my best thinking when I’m writing.
Writing forces me to clarify my thoughts in a way that I’m never able to by simply ruminating, or even talking.
I need to sit down, think, write, edit, think a little more, edit a little more, and chisel the idea from rough stone into something smooth and polished.

A lot of the fluff, filler, clutter, and crap gets removed, and then I feel much more comfortable turning the idea loose in the world.

(This process also makes me more prepared to speak extemporaneously about the topic in the future — a very useful side benefit for a project that involves a podcast and radio show.)
You may be different. You may thrive working it all out in your head. You may find that you clarify your ideas best by talking them out. I urge you to learn what works best for you and follow it.
But for me, it starts with writing. Hence why I began a blogging series titled “3-Point Shot” — where, basically, I take a topic of interest to IU basketball fans and come up with three useful observations about it. Simple. Consistent. Repeatable.
Sometimes I know what the observations will be before I start writing. But usually the process of conducting basic research, and then synthesizing it into three clearly articulated ideas, reveals new insights that are useful to me and, in turn, to my audience.
I write the first draft. Sometimes I rewrite or rearrange parts. Then I edit and proofread. Soon thereafter I hit Publish. The entire process usually takes 60–75 minutes.
Now I have a blog post, usually in the 1,000–1,250 word vicinity, that I can distribute via social media, use to attract search traffic, and send to our email list.
One piece. One format. A few distribution channels.

All done? Hardly. I’m actually just getting started.

The beautiful part of this strategy is that the most difficult and time-intensive part is now done. I developed a high-quality idea — it’s not just something I slapped together in 15 minutes as a cheap traffic grab.
Next, it’s time to leverage this fully-formed idea into a blitzkrieg of distribution.

The blog post becomes a podcast episode (and video!)

Keep in mind as we go through this example that the specific steps and channels that work for me over at The Assembly Call may not necessarily be the steps that you need to take.
That site is built around a podcast, and we’re also trying to grow our YouTube audience. Therefore, getting content out to our podcast audience and publishing more content to our YouTube channel are priorities. That might not be true for you.
But the big idea that I’m describing here — combining the power of quality over quantity with repurposing and smart, widespread distribution — will work for you. Just take the basic principles and apply them to your situation.
The next basic principle for me is this: turn the blog post into a podcast episode … and there just so happens to be a way that I can do that while simultaneously creating a video version too. Score!

When time is of the essence (and when isn’t it?), you have to take any chance you can to work smarter, not harder.

So here’s what I do:

• Double-check my microphone cables and settings, and do a test recording. (Always, always, always do a test recording!)
• Open up my Assembly Call episode template in GarageBand, so I can record locally.
• Create a YouTube Live Event to broadcast the recording live.
• Open up the blog post in a web browser, so I have it ready for reference.
• Tweet out the link to the YouTube Live Event, so anyone who is interested can watch the live recording. (For what it’s worth, I’ve never had fewer than 16 people watch live online, and occasionally that number is up in the 50s and 60s.)
• Hit Record in GarageBand, hit Start Broadcast on the YouTube Live Event, welcome the audience, and start reading the blog post.

From time to time while reading, I’ll interject something extra — the kind of comment that might have been a footnote to the written piece. But for the most part I just read the blog post verbatim, trying to sound as casual and conversational as I can.
I was worried when I first starting doing this that our podcast and YouTube audiences wouldn’t be too enthused about this content since it’s just me (without my co-hosts) and I’m basically just reading something they could get on the blog.
My worries proved to be unfounded. The response has been unequivocally positive.

I’ve received numerous tweets and emails thanking me for finding a way to deliver this written content in the preferred consumption medium for podcast listeners, which make up the majority of our audience. These folks would never get to see or hear the content otherwise.

And it is so easy to do. The entire time investment to record and post the podcast is about 30–35 minutes:

• 5 minutes to set up
• 15–20 minutes to record
• 10 minutes to publish the podcast (the YouTube Live Event is automatically archived on our YouTube channel for on-demand viewing)

Furthermore, while our blog posts only publish in one place — our blog — we are set up to distribute our podcast episodes far and wide, with only a few button clicks required.
Every episode goes to:

• iTunes
• Google Play
• TuneIn Radio
• Stitcher
• iHeartRadio
• Spreaker
• SoundCloud

This doesn’t even account for the many individual podcast apps that scrape places like iTunes for podcast feeds. (For example, I use Podcast Addict on my Android device, and The Assembly Call is available there even though I never signed up or submitted it there.)
And here’s a fun, little side benefit …

One of my favorite bonuses about tweeting out links to podcast episodes over blog posts is that people can consume the content right there in their Twitter feed.

Look at this tweet. All someone has to do is hit the play button, and the episode will play right there in the Twitter feed. Less friction, less distance between my audience being intrigued and then actually consuming my content.

Turn one quality blog post into a traffic and attention engine

So if you’re scoring at home, we’ve now gone from one blog post, one distribution channel, and a few traffic sources to:

• A blog post
• A podcast episode
• A video
• At least 11 different distribution channels
• Countless traffic sources

And here’s the crazy thing … it could be more.
I could:

• Repurpose the blog post someplace like Medium, or as a guest post
• Create a slide presentation for SlideShare
• Find additional video channels besides YouTube
• Extract clips of the audio for a service like Clammr
• Make clips or GIFs from the video to post in visual channels like Instagram

And on and on.
The main reasons I don’t do those are a) time and b) because I’d get diminishing returns.
I’ve tried to be strategic about investing the limited time and effort resources I have for this project into the channels that will deliver the best and most immediate returns. SlideShare, for example, isn’t going to do much for a sports audience, but it may be a great option for you.
What’s been the impact of all this? It’s only been a month, but already:

• I added 400 new email subscribers
• We doubled our YouTube subscribers (in just a month!)
• Traffic to our blog increased by 31.91 percent
• Podcast downloads in just March of 2017 (the majority of which was during the off-season, when attention is usually lower) were nearly equal to the combined total of January and February

What you should do next

Ask yourself if you’re maximizing the distribution of your best ideas.
Not your best blog posts, but your best ideas.

Because if you have an idea that’s a winner, but it’s only distributed via text as a blog post, then you’re missing out on a wide range of additional attraction options.

Can you turn your blog post into an audio recording? Can you then turn that audio recording into a video — even if you just use a fixed image rather than filming yourself (like I do here)?
Or, if you have a great podcast episode, can you go the other way and turn it into a blog post? If you already create transcripts for your podcast episodes, this is incredibly simple to do.
The bottom line is that rather than focusing on the quantity of the content you publish, you should invest more time in creating fewer, higher quality pieces of content … and then find efficient, scalable ways to distribute these high-quality pieces to as many nooks and crannies of the web as you can.

You’ll reach more people with your best ideas in the way they’re most comfortable consuming content.

And there’s no better way to build an audience and authority, brick by brick, than that.

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Get Traffic Without Paying For it

DID you know you can increase website traffic without marketing?

I know, I know…It sounds too good to be true. But, it is.

Marketing is one of the most important aspects when it comes to business, and should be a primary focus from the very start. However, if you only focus on the usual traffic generation tips and tricks, then you’re going to be missing out on a lot of audience reach and potential customers.

Check out these simple strategies for increasing your website’s traffic without having to do a single bit of marketing:

Types of Website Traffic

Before we can focus on ways to jumpstart your traffic, we should first cover the various types of traffic. It’s a pretty well-known fact that having a high volume of traffic coming to your site is one of the signs of success in the online portion of your business. It means there is content that has drawn people to your site, and more visitors means more potential sales.

There are four types of website traffic you need to be aware of before you can implement strategies to increase your website traffic:

• Organic traffic
• Referral traffic
• Direct Traffic
• Social Traffic

Of these four types, the organic traffic is definitely the most important. This type of traffic comes from search engines, and brings in more valuable, targeted users. After that, referral traffic is high up on the list, but that really depends on what type of website is sending you referrals. If they’re coming from popular websites, you’re more likely to get quality traffic. Low-quality sites will bring in less than stellar traffic and, as such, won’t benefit you all that much. Direct traffic comes from a user visiting your website’s URL directly from a browser – They either bookmarked you or typed it in directly. Finally, social traffic comes from (you guessed it) social media networks.

Increasing Website Traffic

When it comes to implementing the following strategies, it’s best to keep your actions repetitive. Keep doing these things as often as possible, and you will really start to notice a significant (and steady) increase in your website traffic. It won’t happen overnight, or even within a single month, but it will happen. It will pay off, and you won’t have to spend a single cent on buying traffic or advertising your business.

Things to Do

Network, Network, Network!

This one really can’t be stressed enough, which is why it gets listed at the top. Social network traffic is extremely important for business and is pretty easy to get when compared to the other types – especially organic traffic.

Get active on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, StumbleUpon, and even Snapchat. Don’t spam your followers, but make sure your clickable links are prominently displayed. Share their content, comment on their posts, and start a discussion. The more you network, the more connections you will get. Once you build a community or become part of one, you will see a steady increase in website traffic. Leave valuable comments on other blog posts and social media posts, and others will click on your link to check what you’re all about.

This is why you need to make sure your website’s pages are shareable, too. If they aren’t designed to be shared, you may want to consider adding some social plugins to your site in order to make it easier for readers to share your posts across social networking platforms.

Collect Those Emails

From the very first day, you start your website – especially if it contains a blog – make sure you are building your email list. Don’t force visitors to subscribe, but offer a valuable incentive for them to do so. This lets them subscribe willingly while getting direct benefits out of it. If they subscribe willingly, you will be able to send them posts directly to their email without them unsubscribing and considering your emails to be spam.

If you want to get more blog readers, one of the best things to do is to link your email list to the RSS feeds on your blog. This ensures your readers are notified as soon as you publish a new post. Your readers will stay in the loop, see your newest content, and keep your business fresh in their minds. They will be more likely to think of you when they need the type of product or service your brand offers.

Expert Tip: Use this cutting edge tool to collect emails!

Optimise Your Content

Pages and posts that are search engine optimised (SEO) are going to rank higher in search engines and, as such, will help you increase website traffic without marketing. If you have, say, 60 posts that are ranking even fairly high within search engine results and they each get 10,000 clicks, that means 600,000 clicks per month and millions of page views for your website.

How exactly do you do this? SEO can be pretty complicated and involved, but there are some basic practices you can implement right away to boost website traffic:

Conduct keyword research

1. Summarise your product or services
2. Highlight the keywords and phrases within that description
3. Take that list of words and create as many combinations as possible
4. Find more ideas via Google Keyword Planner
5. Test out all of those ideas with the Keyword Planner by using the “See how they perform” option.
6. Pick the options with the highest volume and lowest cost per clicks. These are your “Target Keywords”
7. Implement these into the content on your page, or hire an experienced freelance writer who is able to do it naturally

Optimise the entire site

• Use a unique meta description for each page, making sure to incorporate one or more relevant target keywords. Keep this under 155 words.
• Put a target keyword into the URL of each page/tab
• Optimise the images by using ALT tags with related keywords.

Use quality content

• The content of your site should have enough value to keep your readers engaged. This means your site should have at least 300 to 400 words of unique content on each page.
• Start a blog for your business, and publish a post as often as you can. A couple times per month is good, though more would be ideal.
• Promote your content across various social media platforms.

Use Power Words in Headlines

Using power words is one of the best ways to compel a user to click on your post and read the content of that page. A headline like, “Best marketing automation software you should buy” is likely to get more hits or clicks than one like, “Marketing automation software you should buy.”

It’s recommended that at least 70% to 75% of your time should be spent on the title of your web page, blog post, or article. You want to ensure it uses power words and is catchy enough to snag the reader’s attention.

Build Your Backlinks

Backlinks are basically hyperlinks that connect a single webpage to a full website. Not only are they incredibly important for search engine optimisation, but they also make it easier to increase website traffic without marketing. Backlinks will bring referral traffic to your website and/or business’ blog. This will boost your search engine ranking and domain authority, which will result in you getting more organic traffic.

Utilize YouTube

According to Fortune Lords, roughly 300 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube each minute, with nearly 5 billion videos being viewed each day. In fact, roughly 900 million hours of video are watched on YouTube each month.

If you upload quality videos to YouTube and then link back to your website, you are likely to receive tons of referral traffic to your website. If a video happens to go viral, then you are likely to receive millions of traffic! There is also the added benefit that, assuming none of the Terms of Service is being violated, your videos will remain online indefinitely. That means that source of referral traffic will never go away.

Remember to Use Long Tail Keywords

Long tail keywords are a bit longer (hence the name) than specific target keywords, but they drive specific traffic to your blog and have far less competition. One of the best ways to find these is to check the related Google searches below the results. For example, a search for “find long tail keywords” brings up the following results:

Targeting these long tail keywords within your content can boost your organic traffic by more than 50%.

Focus on Building Your Brand

Increasing website traffic without marketing can be pretty difficult, but one of the most powerful things you can do is to focus on building your brand. Place an emphasis on providing quality, value-driven content to your readers and monetize your blog when possible.

A website that has a strong brand that stands out from the masses will have returning visitors and dedicated readers who place their trust in your authority. This helps you to stand out within your business niche and will bring in continuous support for your business without you having to spend oodles of money on marketing efforts that may or may not pay off in the end.

Things to Avoid

The following actions are pretty common mistakes. This list of “Don’ts” will adversely affect the value of your website and brand’s authority, and will decrease your website traffic.

Spamming Your Followers

This seems pretty common sense but is a huge mistake a lot of people make. Spamming of forums, social networks, and other websites should be avoided. It won’t drive traffic to your website for more than a short period of time, and will just annoy the other users, followers,  and website owners. It’s best to stick with the “80-20 rule of social media networking.”

Publishing Poor Content

You’ve undoubtedly seen this before: A website owner or blogger wants to get has many click-through rates as possible, so they post something once or twice per day. The content is of fairly good quality at first, but then just goes downhill from there.

Posting often may get you some great click-through rates, but it will tarnish your brand’s image to have poor content on your site or blog. Maintaining a solid reputation and brand authority within your nice will bring in the targeted traffic you want.

Buying Traffic

While there is some benefit to buying traffic now and then, it generally brings in non-targeted visitors who are probably not very relevant to your brand. There is also the added drawback of the traffic mainly coming from websites that are considered to be of low quality, which would affect your website ranking. If you want to keep a high-quality website, it’s best to avoid buying website traffic.

Final Thoughts

The above tips help show you what to do, and what to avoid when it comes to finding ways to increase website traffic without marketing. After a few months of regular implementation of these techniques, you will likely start to see your traffic climb.

If you put all of that effort into your content, but don’t see the result you’re looking for, you may want to review your content and hire an experienced freelance writer or web designer.

Looking for another great way to drum up some traffic? Check out PushConnectNotify and leverage the power of push notifications to really increase your traffic flow! It is super easy-to-use and a great way to optimise your site while securing leads.

What are your tried and true techniques for jumpstarting your website traffic without having to break the bank? Let us know in the comments below! 

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