Free Ways to Promote a Blog or Website : Get Free Website Traffic

There are many free ways to promote your blog/website. Many of them take some time, while others are fast and easy. Some are more effective, than others, but all ad to the growth of your blog and cost you nothing. Here are just some of the free methods you can use to increase your sites presence and increase traffic.

• Blog Directories

If your site is a blog, be sure to submit it to multiple blog directories. I would suggest starting off with Technorati and Blogcatalog. I get a small, but steady stream of traffic from blogcatalog (there is a link in my sidebar).

• Comments

Comment on blogs frequently. Leave thoughtful comments, pertaining to the post. Blogs covering topics related to the niche your site is in are most beneficial, but don’t overlook blogs that while non-related, are popular with the demographic you cater too. For bloggers, commenting on CommentLuv enabled blogs is especially helpful, when trying to gain back links. (CommentLuv.com)

• CommentLuv

Bloggers may wish to consider adding the CommentLuv plug-in to their sites. It is available for Wordpress, Drupal and Blogger. CommentLuv adds a titled link to the last post published by visiting commentors. This plug-in has been shown to increase both comments and traffic. Keep in mind that dolling out all these links will reduce your “link juice”, and likely effect PR (page rank). This is a trade-off many bloggers are more than willing to make for the additional free visitor traffic. I am installing CommentLuv in the new blog project, I am currently working on, and am considering trying it on this site as well.   Update HowtoMakeMoneyontheInternet.info is now a Commentluv enabled blog.

• Forums

Participate in forums related to your niche. Many forums are set up to allow you to post a link in your profile. Some will even allow you to post a link to your site, in you signature. Check the TOS of the forum to learn what links are acceptable. There are several lists of Do-Follow forums readily available online. They can be a great source for free targeted visitors.

• Social Bookmarks

Use social bookmarks such as StumbleUpon, Digg, Xomba and Reddit, to promote your site and articles. I have had the best results with StumbleUpon and Xomba (Xomba evens splits their revenues with submitters…sweet deal). Make sure to add “share this” buttons on your blog/site.

• Search Engines

This may seem like a no brainer, but make sure you have submitted to all of the major search engines, as well as, a good amount of the smaller ones. Google “free search engine submission”, and you will find several sites that will do a number of submissions free for you. I would do Google itself manually though, just to be sure. Check you e-mail (and spam), for a day or two after, since some submissions will need to be confirmed from your e-mail address.

• SEO (search engine optimization)

SEO is one of the most important ways to promote your blog/site with spending money. There is a vast amount of SEO information on the web. It would be imprudent, for anyone to overlook basic SEO. This is so important in fact that this item has grown into it’s own article.

These free methods of promoting your website, are just a starting point. There are many more ways to generate traffic without spending money. As you progress, you will find even more ways to promote your blog/site for free.

Tags: free SEO, Free Site Promotion, free traffic