Today’s focus will be on Articles and other methods to drive traffic to your site. While social networking could fall into this article, I’m going to dedicate more time to it in a separate one later.

What are some of the methods to drive free traffic to your site?

• You can ask friends to show up
• You can post links in directories
• You can create articles
• Add signature and post in forums

Can asking friends really help?  Yes in someways it can.  If you are running a site that contains forums, the more people you get to sign up and post the more likely new members that come across your site are to join.  Nobody wants to go to a forum to talk to no one.  There are services out there that will accept payment to fill your forums with seeded posts.  I have never used one but they are out there, just search some on google and you’ll find a few.

Posting links in directories will allow you get start getting some inward links to your site.  It is important to understand that google doesn’t always favor some of these directories, but several it does consider authoritative.  It is important to do  your research, see what googles PR is for the directory and choose wisely.  If you have a site on pets it doesn’t make sense to get a link in a computer directory, and the more of these little “mishaps” you have the more likely Google will penalize you for those actions.

Creating articles is a good road, but a pain.  You might want to promote yourself but the best sites are very particular about what you are allowed and how many links you can have etc.  I’ve learned that the hard way.  It is important to make sure you have plenty of keywords in your article that you are interested in having people find you under.  So if you want people to find you for “internet marketing” make sure you have that phrase a few times in your article.  If you are not looking for internet marketing, but online marketing make sure you use that phrase often as well.  It is important to understand that these short tail phrases are more difficult to rank for an phrases like “home based internet marketing” are easier for you to show up on Google.  The reason “home based internet marketing” is called long tails is because it has at least 3 words, usually 4 words in the phrase.  They are less often type, but much more targeted.

Adding links in your signatures on forums.  If you are a pet site and you have a pet site you want to promote get active with pet communities.  Don’t go off pandering your goods from day one, but become a known expert in that field.  This way people get used to you, and you are not spamming the forums.  After you post several posts feel free to make a comment about your site, or simply put it in your signature.  Now depending on how the forum is set up, every time your signature is viewed by Google you have some links from that post going to your site.  So again y our are building authority in the eyes of the community, but also in the eyes of Google.

Let me know if you have any questions on this one!