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Three Zero-Cost Ways to Get Visitors to Your Site
By Tinu AbayomiPaul (c) 2005

You have to laugh when you hear about the elaborate schemes
people cook up in order to get three or four clicks through
to their site, when there are plenty of legitimate ways to
get attention for your web site - from dozens to hundreds
of interested prospects. It's one thing to think creatively
- it's another to try and buck the system for a few hits
from people who won't subscribe, return or buy.

Speaking of creative thinking, one of the ways you can get
above-board, quick and free traffic is from using link
services. Without even a hint of abuse, you can use these
services to bring visitors to you - in minutes sometimes.

The first two services that you and I can use without
stepping on any toes are the two link services at
http://Furl.net  and http://del.icio.us .

Also called "social bookmarks managers", these sites allow
you to start up a free account where you can start a link
collection which can be sorted by theme. Using a system
that makes use of categories - at del.icio.us  they're
called a "tag" - there are times when it is quite
acceptable to include your own site. Both make use of RSS
to allow you to keep track of either your list or someone
else's - you can even subscribe to any public collection.

So where does the traffic come in? Sign up with either of
these services, and start collecting links on the same
topic as your site, sprinkling in your own links.

Notice I said "sprinkling in".

Treat this as you would a blog - you don't want post your
sales page. You'll just get put on public link lists that
collect spam entries - bad publicity may be great in
Hollywood, but online it's an income killer. So again, do
not gratuitously begin to link to your entire site and
think you're helping yourself.

What typically happens is one of three things.

1- Your link will be displayed on sites that share these
    tag lists with the world,
2- Your site will be visited by someone who is interested
    in the tag you've chosen, or,
3- Your link library will be so diverse, varied and helpful
    that other users will subscribe to your tag to find new
    links to add.

I find it a good practice to use your real name or your
site name as your login because it shows up as part of your
link collection's name. You can also use your own name or
very targeted keywords to create custom tags.

As you're adding the links to your collection, be sure to
add a topic or tag to target your desired type of visitor.
As an added bonus, if you use FeedBurner.com to study your
feed statistics or to reduce your bandwidth load, you can
integrate these link collections into your own feed as well.

So should you use Furl or del.icio.us for this? If you are
going to be making personal use of this link collection,
want the 5GB archive space and a place to save an archive
snap shot of a web page, Furl is for you. Want to keep it
simple? Stick with del.icio.us.

You can also use the Bloglines clip service (http://bloglines.com),
with or without Feedburner, to achieve similar ends - if
you're more focused towards blogs than RSS, you'll probably
have more success here. The Bloglines clip service is more
geared towards the verbose user, as it is set up much like
a blog.

The third tool you can use to draw traffic is at a site
that blatantly asks you to use it, and they've created it
solely for that purpose - to connect certain kinds of web
readers and publishers.

The catch? Unlike the other three services, this really can
only be used by bloggers - you'll have to verify that you
own the blog in question just to participate.

Good news if you blog though, or plan to - the web
resource in question is run by one of the most important
sites a successful blogger needs to be visible in.

In mid-January 2005, Technorati.com (http://www.Technorati.com)
took the idea of tags to a global level.

Now if you're writing about travel, you can appear on their
travel tag page automatically. You can bet that your post
will cross the paths of blog enthusiasts who are
specifically interested in travel. This works on any
claimed blog in the blogosphere, on every platform. And
it's so easy to do.

If you have the category capability built-into your blog
software, you need only claim your web log and ping
Technorati with updates using your blog software, if it's
set up to auto-ping, or their form :
http://www.technorati.com/ping.html . How easy is that?

If you use Blogger or some other system that doesn't
include categories, never fear. You can come to the party.

 From now on, when you post links to your blog, you'll want
to include the special tag code. It works with any link, or
you can link to Technorati - see an example of it on their
site: http://www.technorati.com/help/tags.html .

With a little time and patience, Bloggers especially can
use any of these methods to bring free targeted traffic to
their doorsteps. Bottom line : don't be tempted to cheat at
traffic generation - there are so many ways to get better
results honorably.

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Learn how Tinu saw a 75% increase in both traffic and sales
from feeds at http://freetraffictip.com/rssbook . For free
reprint rights to her articles (and a potential $500 bribe)
send a blank email to moneyarticles@freetraffictip.com .
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