Traffic is the fuel of a web property. Without traffic you just have potential. No traffic, no sales, ad clicks, leads, feedback, community.

It is easy to understand why webmasters are obsessed with it.

Now as you know, there various sources of traffic, from free to way expensive. All have their place, and the less budget you have the more work you are likely to have to put in.

Small business operators seem to be getting the idea more recently. Larger businesses seem fixated on three tactics; Adwords, banners and SEO.

I am going to let you in on five “secret” sources of traffic. In fact they are common sense, but because common sense is rarely common practice they might seem like secret traffic sources to your clients …

1. Expired Domains - Old domains can be picked up when expired really rather cheaply. What many people do not realize is a lot of them have links pointing to them, or even garner some type-in hits. For a real snip of a price you can find some real bargains. Buy a whole bunch of them and funnel the search juice and hits to your main property.
2. Site Purchases - It’s not just expired domains that you can pick up on the cheap. Look out for sites for sale that have inbound links and steady traffic. Avoid the pumped and pimped sites from savvy sellers, what you want are the sites that can attract visits from a variety of sources naturally already but with a bit of tweaking can really perform. Again this traffic can be funneled, 301-redirected or just used as is.
3. OPT - Other Peoples Traffic. This is the heart of the Squidoo, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace etc tactics. Find a location that naturally attracts attention and leach off it. Another route is to build something attractive that friendly blogs will want to link to. I could even put guest posting under this heading!
4. Huge and Influential Lists - This is the oldest tactic in the book. It’s so old it makes people overlook it in favor of Social Media Marketing and any other recent buzzword. People forget, but you know it works, right? The key is how it is presented, and absolutely not spam. Call it a Joint Venture, an advertisement, a friendly mention, whatever, getting on a powerful list with a glowing endorsement can be the best converting traffic you have seen. The challenge is getting the right deal on the right list.
5. Hitching a Ride - Let someone else worry where the traffic is going to come from and just tag along for the ride. This is related to the last point in a way but it stands on its own. Think about the last big promotion in your niche. The PR, the advertising, the fanfare. While you might only be able to siphon off a small percentage of that attention, you will also pay little or nothing to get it. There are two versions of this tactic; partnering or freeloading. When you partner you actually give the main event some of your value, be it as a bonus, a prize or some other service. For example a big product launch might get a free pass to your seminar or ebook. When you freeload what you are doing is finding a bandwagon that is about to start rolling and jump on it. So you look for a story that is about to break big and you do all you can to suck down on some of that traffic.

Those are my lesser known traffic sources, what are yours? Share your secrets in the comments …

Tags: increase-website-traffic, link-building, sales-leads, viral-marketing
Posted in SEO