This post is for anyone who has a website and is struggling to get traffic to it. The purpose of this post is to give you free methods that will bring traffic to your website in short as well as long term.

One of the most basic things to realize if you have a new website is that, it will take some time before you start getting continuous flow of traffic to your website. The more effort you put in the better it will be for you but it will still take some time. No matter how good you are, some things just take time.

"You can't produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant." - Warren Buffet

So, if you're ready to begin, here are some of the things that will help you get traffic to your website:

1: Produce Valuable Content

First and probably the most important things is to produce valuable content. Not only it will help you get more traffic, it will also help you build trust and make more sales.

How will valuable content help you get more traffic?

First of all, it will get more shares. The only reason people will share your content with their friends is if they like it and the only way they'll like it is if it is valuable. It could be funny, helpful, informational or whatever but it needs to give the audience some sort of value.

Secondly, it will have better rank in search engine. A lot of people run after Google, trying to do everything possible to get a good rank but not realizing that Google runs after value.

Think about it, the two biggest factors for ranking in Google are first, keywords (anyone can do it) and second, backlinks (especially from quality sources).

Now anyone can add their target keywords on their site and in their content but you can't get backlinks from other big sites if your content sucks. The only reason any authority site will link back to your site within their content is if your site provides value to their readers.

Third reason why you should produce valuable content is, so that you can sustain the traffic coming to your website. Let's say you somehow manage to get traffic to your website (suppose you used paid traffic), but will those visitors stay on your website or visit your site again if they find no value there.

People don't visit your site because of you, they visit because of themselves and if they find no value in exchange of their time and attention why would they ever visit again or why would they share it with their friends?

Now in order to produce valuable content you'll need to understand your audience's need and produce content that they find helpful or interesting.

Stop writing content to impress Google or to get more shares and start writing it for your audience; you'll end up with much better rank and higher shares.

Producing valuable content will automatically enable you to take advantage of two biggest online traffic sources; search engine and social media.

2: Get Some Initial Visitors

Just by constantly producing valuable content you'll end up with a lot of consistent traffic to your site in long term but you'll have to bring some initial visitors to your site or else how would anyone find out about your great content anyways?

In the beginning you'll have to bring few people to your website and then (if they liked your content) they'll tell other people about it and will visit your site again and in this way your site will continue to get more and more visitors. Plus at the same time your site will begin to get mentions on other websites thus building backlinks for you and getting better and better rank in Google (that means more traffic) and this will become a cycle...

More people = more shares + more backlink = even more people

But getting those initial visitors is an important part to begin this cycle.

So, how do you get some initial traffic to your site?

Here I'm gonna give you some techniques you can use:

Social Media

First thing you can do is to share your content on your own social media accounts. Every time you write a new post or produce a new piece of content, share it with your own friends or followers on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn.

You can also join Facebook and LinkedIn groups related to your topic and share your posts in those groups.

Other Sources

Another thing you can do is to convert a small part of your post to other formats and share it on different platforms. Like you can make a short video from your post and add it to YouTube and link back to the original post in the description so that anyone who wants to get full content would visit your site.

You can do the same thing in other formats too, like you can convert your post into PDF or PPT and add it to Slideshare or convert it to an infographic and add it to Pinterest etc. (with a link back to your site obviously)

Guest Posting

Third thing you can do is to guest post on other blogs. You can find out blogs similar to your blog but having bigger audience than you, and add guest posts on them with a link back to your content.

Most of the small bloggers will allow you to write a guest post on their blog as long as you're giving value within your content. You can link back to your site somewhere within the content of your guest post or you can link back in the end (in 'about the author' section).

Do yourself a favor and save your time by following these two rules; first of all do not send guest posting request to blogs that don't allow guest posting (check out their blog's rules first) and secondly, don't send requests to huge authority blogs (like Forbes or INC) especially in the beginning they won't accept it. Start with small blogs and as you progress you can begin to write for huge blogs.

Note: Guest posting is not only going to give you some initial traffic it is also a great way of building backlinks and thus by writing guest posts you're increasing your blog's search engine rank in long term.

Forums and Quora

Other than these three things you can use Forums and sites like Quora to get some initial visitors. Find out some of the most popular forums in your niche and join them.

Most of the forums allow you to add a signature (with a link) that's displayed with all your posts. Just add the link back to your site in your signature and start adding posts. Spend 5-10 minutes daily on forums answering other posts and you'll start getting traffic to your site.

You can also use the site Quora. Join Quora and start answering questions related to your topic with a link back to your content wherever it's relevant.

3: Build An Email List

Now the last tip for this post is to build an email list and I suggest that you start building your email list as soon as you start your blog.

Email list is not going to help you with attracting or bringing traffic to your site but it will help you sustain your traffic. Every time someone visits your site, reads your content and leaves it, even if they do have liked your content chances are they'll forget about your site and will never visit again.

To prevent this, you can get their email address when they first visits your site and then every time you create a new post or publish something you can send them an email and bring them back to your site.

Building an email list is a very effective way of growing and maintaining your audience. Think about it, the only people who'll give you their email address are the ones who liked your content and trusted you and thus when you publish a new post they have a much higher chances visiting and reading it (all you have to do is to send them an email to inform them about your new stuff).

Since, your email list subscribers have liked your stuff in first place thus they have a much higher chances of sharing it with their friends and thus bringing more people to your site, which ultimately will lead to more emails and thus more traffic and so on.

The most popular way of getting email addresses is by offering something to your audience in exchange like a book or course etc. Create something valuable related to your topic and offer it to your audience in exchange of their email address.

You can take help from online tools like ConvertKit. It will help you build forms and landing pages to collect emails and create broadcast and automatic email sequences.

Summary

The first and most important thing to build long term traffic is to constantly create valuable content for your audience.
Get some initial visitors to your site from social media, forums, Quora, guest posting etc.
Above all start building an email list from the beginning, it will help you grow your audience to a huge level.

SOURCE: http://gistfanatic.com

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Very informative.