3 Things Gurus don't Tell you about Traffic Generation

Every website owner knows how important it is to get as much traffic as possible to their sites. There are a lot of different methods of traffic generation and a lot of different techniques being taught – some for free, others with a price tag attached. If you are a newcomer to internet marketing, you probably have a limited budget; meaning that free traffic generation techniques are more likely to appeal to you at this time. Fortunately, there are a lot of free methods which you can learn about, but there are a few important things which the self-appointed marketing gurus leave out when telling you about them; and these omissions are where the money is really being made.

Writing articles as a means of generating traffic is a technique which is well known to those who have been in the field of internet marketing for some time – all the gurus will tell you to write articles in your niche which contain relevant keywords and to get them on article directories. This is a good way to generate backlinks and has two benefits. One, this improves your search engine rankings. Second, the articles themselves are also indexed by search engines, making it even easier to find your website. We all know this by now – but there is something important here which the gurus do not tell you...

You should also submit your articles to websites and newsletter publishers in your niche as well as to the article directories. You can simply offer your articles; and if they are well written, they are more than likely to be picked up for publication. This is a great way to gain exposure to your target market and is better than submitting to article directories.

Another popular way to generate traffic for free is by using forums. All the gurus will advise you to look through web forums for relevant topics, post comments, answer questions and of course, include a link in your signature. This is also a good way to generate backlinks and bring traffic to your site. But here's what the gurus do not tell you:

You should read every category in any forum you join. Make a note of the common problems in each area and create a report or whitepaper addressing these problems and offering solutions to forum users for free. You can easily add a link to your website inside this report. This is a much better way to generate traffic than simply getting a few backlinks by posting on these forums.

Finally, there is the use of social bookmarking services as a technique to generate traffic. Gurus will tell you to bookmark your pages and articles to get them linked to the social bookmarking sites such as Stumble Upon and Digg. But here's what the gurus do not tell you:

Rather than bookmarking your blog posts, web pages and so on, have a look at what's popular in the social bookmarking services. Find something which is relevant to your niche and create some content which ties into it. Then comment on related posts, including a link to your content. This is a high quality back link which will bring in visitors who are already interested in your niche. They are also more likely to bookmark your site as well, which will move your content up in the social bookmarking service's list. These are some of the free traffic generation methods which work well – but the gurus save for themselves; now you can use them too!