As virtual assistants, we are always on the hunt to find ways to get traffic without paying exorbitant amounts of money in advertising. Here are some tried and true strategies to build a high traffic website without spending a dime in ad money.
The #1 Secret to Free Traffic: Consistency
Many beginner virtual assistants want to build a successful business overnight with a lot of paying clients. It just doesn’t happen that way. In order to find and attract clients, you need traffic to your website.
The most important thing to getting a ton of free traffic is consistency. You won’t get a ton of readers by publishing one good article. You won’t get a ton of watchers by releasing just one video. You won’t rank highly in search engines overnight.
The key to consistently getting high traffic is putting out great content on a regular basis. This builds trust in both your prospective client’s eyes and with the search engines.
The Most Instant Method: Article Marketing
Article marketing has been around for about five years now. The technique is simple: Write an informative article and publish it to an online article directory like EzineArticles.
The keywords you target are important. Try to pick out keywords with a small to medium amount of search volume with low competing keywords. There are many techniques you can learn about when it comes to article marketing and my favorite teacher in this area is Jeff Herring (fromthedeskofjeffherring.com).
A Great Way to Build a Name: Video Marketing
Another great traffic source is video marketing. You can easily create a content video and distribute it to hundreds of websites – in just minutes.
Again, consistency is the name of the game. You probably won’t be able to get a flood of traffic by submitting one video. But if you establish yourself as a well-known expert through video marketing, you can easily build yourself a name, a ton of traffic and a ton of backlinks.
If you are like me and don’t want to get in front of a camera, what you can do is create a PowerPoint presentation and use your voice, or simply display a picture of you, a short bio, and your URL links as you read an article. There are a few ways to use “video” without having to take your video.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is perhaps the most powerful method to get free traffic. It’s also the method that takes the most time, is the most competitive, and has a certain amount of randomness factor to it.
There are several key factors that play into getting your website highly ranked. Having great unique content is one. Having a ton of backlinks to your website is another. Finally, selecting the right niche, sub-niche and keywords can make a world of difference.
If you have unique and innovative content, other people linking to your website consistently and you choose a market with not too much competition but enough traffic to make it worth your while, then you have a good chance of having your website make it to the top of the search engines.
Social Media
Social media like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon and many others are often overlooked by virtual assistants.
There are two types of social media: Media that will generate traffic, such as Digg or StumbleUpon, or media that will help you get people who are already interested to come back – Such as Facebook fan pages or Twitter accounts.
The key idea behind social media is becoming a part of the conversation of your target market. If you’re in the real estate community for example, your goal is to become well known enough in that community that your name means something. All these social media outlets are tools to help you do that.
How Successful Can You Be With Free Traffic?
There are hundreds of examples on the internet of people building six or even seven figure businesses online all without paying a dime in advertising.
The secret is producing consistent high quality content and marketing it well. If you apply even just one of the techniques above properly, you’ll get yourself a very nice stream of traffic.
Lisa Wells can teach you more about how to market your virtual assistant business to get clarity, get a plan, and get clients at her website.