30 Best Free Traffic Sources For eCommerce Store/Website (EverGreen)
The internet world is getting smaller and smaller every day. New business platform and websites like drop shipping are popping up almost here and there. As a matter of fact, these days you can easily create an online store under five minutes using Shopify.
But creating the website is actually the easiest part. The most important part is sustaining it as a profitable e-commerce business.
The competition has increased. This However, makes it require a great amount of experience and marketing knowledge to generate traffic to your new online store or website.
To be successful in e-commerce business is not in the range of products you offer or the quality of your designs, but the amount of traffic your online store is able to generate.
Everybody knows it’s no secret that the more people your store attract equals more sales and definitely more profits.
The question, however, is how the heck do you find these traffic for free? From these articles, you’ll learn 30 free evergreen traffic sources for your new online store most especially for those having $0 budget plan for their marketing campaign.
#1: Blog about Your Products
Writing a quality content for your products is one of the surest ways to generate free organic traffic for your business. Not alone is this free it’s also going to generate sales for your store on autopilot.
‘Chris Garrett’ of CopyBlogger stress out eight ways on how blogging can increase the profitability of your business. I know writing a blog post may look like a big deal, most especially if you’re just getting started.
But trust me, it’s only going to about 2-3 blog post for you to get used to it. So what you need to do now, is add a blog to your existing online store.
With this, there will be much content to feed Google bots on your website and with this Google will return the favor for feeding her babies.
There are plenty of things to write about, it could be “how to articles” or tips or reviews etc.
Finally, have this in mind. Organic traffic is one of the highest converting traffic you can ever get because they have the knowledge of the product already and taking action is quite predictable for or visitors.
#2: Answer Questions Related to Your Products on Quora
I believe Quora to be one the best platform to generate a free traffic to your website. But this time around not just free, but a quality and converting traffic. Unlike other social media’s whereby users just browse around for fun. Users on Quora are constantly looking for a solution to their problem.
If you can provide a satisfactory answer to many questions as possible your chance of not getting quality traffic to your website is very slim.
However, don’t just go on answering questions that are not related to your product niche, or even question that aren’t popular. Try as much as possible to filter out the unpopular ones and focus on the popular questions.
Since they are popular, chances are vasts majority of people is following the question and once there is a new answer they will follow through. You could also make it a habit to be the first to answer your product related question on Quora.
#3: Guest Posting on other Websites
I know this might probably sound somehow to you, it did to me when I just learned about it. It was until when I was able to grasp the benefit behind it that I started giving it a try.
Writing a post for yourself can be tiring not to think of writing it for someone else. But, trust me its benefits cannot be overemphasized.
If your post is published on other websites, you’ll get a link back in return which will, of course, send more people to your website.
Now assume you were allowed to put one or two backlinks in the post to your website, the people that will click through are mostly interested and they may end up taking action that will lead to conversions on your website.
That’s just one of the benefits, the most important thing is that the more you were able to get these backlinks the more your chance of becoming an authority in that niche.
And with this, you won’t just rank well for that niche, but you will be exposed to a bigger audience which will, in turn, give you the opportunity to even make bigger sales.
#4: Get Traffics from Forums
Forums are also nice places to get healthy amount of traffics. There are various forums out there based on different Niche, browse around and join a niche that’s related to the kind of product or services you’re selling.
However, you should know that you can’t just go about sharing links on different forums, you should at first study their rules and regulation. After this, if you must comment, make sure this is going to add value to the topic you’re sharing your thought about.
Make sure you add your store link to your forum signature, as such will show your forum readers your website address. And as a result of this, most readers will likely visit your website whenever you share something of value in the forum thereby generating more traffics for you.
#5: Create an Infographic
By nature, people love images than reading long and tiring words. If you can create nice and compelling infographics related to your product or service not alone will you get traffics, Google will index your website higher due to Google’s page rank algorithm.
Just in case you have no idea of what Infographic means, it’s a graph of information, or you can call it a visual representation of facts and statistics put in an easily digested form. A good example is the image below.
Due to its attractiveness, your post has a chance of going viral on social media thereby generating more traffics for your website.
However, they might not be easy to create, but if you are able to create one, they are gold when it comes to social share and search engine traffic.
#6: Post on Reddit
Reddit is also a platform that can generate a bulk amount of healthy traffic to your website just like Quora. Reddit is more like a vast community of people sharing and seeking information for the betterment of their business.
It’s a platform that is socially powered with news and entertainment whereby you as a registered user can submit content. From Reddit, you can attract a large number of dedicated followers or customers for your business.
Reddit will be more helpful if you can find a suitable community related to your niche. Join the community and grow your reputation by sharing valuable content with your community. With this, you will be sending massive tons of traffic to your website.
But make sure you don’t go about posting links anyhow because you’re definitely going to get blocked.
#7: Incentivize Your Current Customers or Followers
Starting a referral program is also an easy way to get more traffic by utilizing the existing ones to even get more traffics. You could incentivize your current follower or customers to share your products or their favorite products with the friends and family.
In turn, give them a discount or free gifts or even a free shipping on any of their future purchases. With this, you’re simply reducing the workload on yourself and passing it to your followers.
George Vasiliadis – in his article “3 ways to use referral marketing to generate more sale for your e-commerce store“! Said People are four times more likely to buy when referred by a friend and 83% of consumers are willing to refer but only 29% actually do.
The question now is why is it just 29%? It simply because they weren’t asked.
#8: Engage in email Newsletter
Email newsletters are a quick and easy way to send info about your products or services to your subscribers all at once. It involves sending a series of messages to an existing list of subscribers.
This may be about your new blog post or simply informing them about a new product or service available.
Sending emails to people who left their email address when they visited your website is a good way to remind then about your business. Most of them probably forget about your website the following day they left.
But constantly sending emails to them keep reminding them about you, which will eventually lead to additional traffic.
However, to be successful at this, you need to have a creative way of crafting the emails to attract them to click through. Get response offers the perfect tools to get started.
#9: invite others to guest post
Guest posting is a two-way thing, you could also invite people in your niche to blog on your website. The thing is, after writing on your blog they are likely going to share it on their social media. Even better is liking back to the post from their website.
This will definitely bring new readers to your site. However, make sure the content they are submitting is of high quality. This is because Google makes it a big deal when a guest post is of low quality.
If you engage this properly you definitely going to see the benefits.
#10: Post content on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social networking site and one of the fastest growing sites with users increasing every second. Currently, it has over 500 million active users that can be a source of traffic to your website.
However, your goal here should be to establish yourself in your business niche or industry. Groups are one of the best tools on LinkedIn. With this, you can drive traffic to your websites and reach an endless stream of targeted people.
Over 870,000 groups are currently available on LinkedIn, with members varying from 1 to 400,000. Take time to update your profile as to give a concise explanation of what it is you do which will make you look professional.
#11: Write an E-book
An e-book is one of the best-targeted ways to generate passive traffic to your website at no additional cost. If you have a valuable content that can be produced in a long structured and organized text, then write an e-book.
Writing an e-book won’t cost you anything but if you can right an outstanding one, it could be a powerful traffic generating tool. Which can generate endless of traffics to your website, even years to come.
The best part about e-book traffic is most of them came through because they are already interested in what to offer. This kind of traffic is easily converted.
#12: Publish a Press Release
Press releases are written communication that reports specific but brief information about a happening. Every website should employ these techniques as it will not only generate traffics it will also give your website quality backlinks.
So what Press Release should you publish? It could be any unique or interesting part of your store, business or services. This could be new product launches, special pricing or promotional offers. Or even a special commentary on a current event in your product niche would go well.
Finally, not all press should be earth-shaking revelation it could simply be about products, features or special offers.
#13: Go Twitting
Twitter is a great social media platform to generate free traffic to your online store or website. Its simplicity is what makes it one of the top effective ways to engage with your targeted audience.
One of the perfect ways to get a reasonable amount of traffic from twitter is to proactively search for tweets about your product or services. This might actually be a question.
Once you found them, provide a reasonable advice or solution that will drive them to learn more from you.
If you engage Twitter well, it can drive tons of quality traffic to your business. But you need to be creative and pro-active for this to work effectively.
#14: Go Visual with Pinterest
Pinterest is a rising platform and currently, they are proud of their 175 million monthly active users around the world. What’s even more interesting is that Pinterest brought in traffic 3x more than Google Plus and LinkedIn.
However, the stats aren’t just the only reason why you should consider Pinterest as a free traffic source to your website. Internet users are naturally drawn to attractive high visual quality. This is because people process information quickly when it’s presented visually in form of an image.
What this means for your business is, the more engagement there is with your Pins means more traffic to your website.
#15: Use Facebook
Facebook is actually the largest social platform out there and they are presently proud of over 2billion “active users”. We’re currently in the age that the whole world hangs around Facebook.
People join groups, follow pages, reacts, comments and interact with each other all day long. Facebook is one of the best places to generate traffic steadily to your website. But in other to be successful at it, you need to be proactive yourself.
Create a fan page for your business and post regularly to engage your followers. Join groups and share a discussion related to your business.
If you can be consistent at it, not only will it generate free traffic but also create a brand for your business. Even before you know it. Beeketing offers a free Facebook app to engage your followers. I think it’s worth looking into.
#16: Use a Responsive Theme
Most time we tend to look outside and neglect what’s close to us. Generating traffic is not all about the external resources. Even your website has a part in it.
Long gone are the days when internet browsing was exclusive for desktop computers. These days most people browse on the go… and they prefer the comfort of their mobile phones.
Is your website not responsive to a mobile device? Making users to force their way around your website! If so, I’ll suggest you rethink it.
If your visitors are not comfortable browsing around on your website, this is you indirectly telling them to go somewhere else.
#17: Optimize Images for Google Image Search
Most times we neglect images and only focus on text. As a matter of fact, most people forgot images are also content. So we spent most of our time optimizing the text on our website for SEO ranking while we neglect the images.
If people can search for written content I think it’s wise to say they’ll definitely search for images too. Optimizing your images is another way of creating an additional traffic way to your website.
According to this Quora statistic, over 10% of all Google traffic comes alone from Google images. Basically, we’re dealing with huge amount of traffic here.
A simple guide to this is to always edit your file name by including a name related to the image. Also, make sure you include the “Alt tag” by this you’re simply telling Google what the image is all about.
A good place to learn more is Niel Patel article on how to drive more traffic using Google image search
#18: Comments on Other Websites
This is equally very important. Commenting on other blogs that are related to your website niche is a good way to generate traffic. The good thing is, while you’re getting the traffic you also getting yourself a domain authority.
What I’ll say is, go through industry related blog and make comments. Mind you, your comment should be creating a value and not just the annoying and spammy comments flying all over the web.
Although, not all blogs allow comments. But majorities will approve your comment if it provides values to their post and also allowing to add your website link in other to get a link back.
#19: Create a YouTube Channel
According to this YouTube official stats, it says every day, YouTube users watch over 1billion hours of YouTube videos. Guess what? Only 9% of small business owners have started their own channels.
The question is, what are you about it? I think you need to a quota of your own traffic from the 1billion YouTube watchers every day.
The truth is as YouTube usage continue to jet rise, the opportunity is getting bigger for businesses that are ready to jump in.
As you can see, the platform is not yet saturated! And as a business owner, engaging it properly will give you the chance to showcase your business to the world. While you enjoy tons of traffic in returns.
#20: Go Offline and Network with Potential Buyers
Not everything is done online, sometimes, offline strategies will help you get some decent amount of traffic to your online store.
Whenever there is an offline event that has the same interest as your business, if you are really into work I’d say you go network with them.
By introducing your services or sample products or even pictures can give you a direct feedback about your product. Hopefully, even have them visit your online store and become your customer.
For example, if you sell arts online, the art exhibition is a good event to find genuinely interested customer about your products.
#21: Use BuzzSumo to Rank your Competition
With the help of tools like BuzzSumo, you can check what your competitions are up to and beat them at their own game. Though the tool offers both paid and free plan. If you engage the free plan wisely, you can still get the best of the tool.
In order to create a great content that gains much traffic with the help of buzzSumo, you need to figure out the top topics with most share and take into consideration their keywords.
From this, you can then create a more power killer content that will grab the attention of readers in your choosing niche.
From this simple techniques, you might as well gain for yourself even more followers.
#22: Use Social Influencers
Working strategically with social influencers is another way to drive reasonable about of free traffic to your website.
Influencers is a person, group, or company that has a social authority in your niche and industry. These influencers have a strong online following and in the same manner can easily capture people’s attention, start conversion and create a strong engagement on their website.
Influencer marketing involves partnering with influencers who can promote your store or website. In exchange, you might send them free samples or cross-promote their work. This means you can also mention or promote them on your social platform.
However, these collaborate marketing should be of mutual benefit.
#23: Create a Webinar Once a While
Webinars are another great waysto drive traffic to your online store. The vast majority of people out there are actually paying to learn. You can host a free monthly webinar to teach people about what you do or your product.
Not only will this drive you more traffic it will also allow you to engage and speak directly with your audience.
However, you’ll have to constantly promote the webinar event on social media and of course your website. This will allow you to gain more attendees and the good thing is, more of them might end up being your loyal customers once they find your webinar very helpful.
#24: Optimize Your Product Description
An optimize product description will increase your chances of attracting random web browser to your store. This will be relatively easy if you included niche-related product keywords into the description of every product on your website.
In other to effectively use the power of product description, you need to stay away from duplicate content as much as possible. Resist the urge of using pre-written product description from your supplier.
Instead, craft yourself a unique and valuable description that will rank you well on search engines and at the same time speak directly to your customer.
One of the best practice of writing SEO product description is using a long-tail keyword.
#25: Start An Affiliate Program for your store
Affiliate is one of the coolest ways to generate traffic to your own website. They can either promote your content or create a content by themselves to promote your product.
Each visitor they send to your website will be “cookied” for the affiliate responsible for the traffic or visitor. If any of the visitors later covert they get their commission. It’s a win-win.
#26: Use Snip.ly to Share Content across Your Social Media Platform
Using Snip.ly allows you to share other people content on your social media platform and yet still bring them back your website.
So it doesn’t matter if it’s your content you’re sharing on social media. For every piece of content, you share on Twitter (yours or someone else). You’ll have the opportunity to get a new visitor to your latest blog post as well.
#27: Share Your Content on Google Plus
Google plus is a social network created by Google itself. One of the peculiarities of Google plus is its close connection to all other Google services, including Google for business, Google maps, Analytics, YouTube and a few others.
Its comprehensive approach provides you with an opportunity not only to drive targeted traffic by getting a higher search result. But also to create a business information for yourself.
Google plus can send you lots of traffic. But you need to find out if your targeted audience or market hangs out on Google Plus. The ‘secret sauce’ to this is by joining the Google Plus Communities.
These groups are basically large groups of people based around common interests’ kind of mini forums.
However, like any other social media platform, you need to provide value first before you start sharing.
#28: Share on JustRetweet
JustRetweet is a social sharing community that allows members to work together by promoting each other content. Using this community provides you the ability to buy credits for users to promote your content.
But since we’ve emphasized on free traffic, you can get credit for retweeting or liking other people’s content. So with those free credit you can then submit your own content and get retweets, Facebook likes, shares etc.
This is by far one of the most effective ways to flood your content on the social media platform for free. But to really enjoy this platform, you need to give first so you can also get.
#29: Share on ViralContentBuzz
This is another popular social sharing community just like ‘JustRetweet’. With ViralContentBuzz you can earn credits for sharing other peoples stuff and in turn submit your own content for increased social shares.
This platform makes it super easy to get more social shares on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and StumbleUpon. If you can spare the time to share other people stuffs you might as well have the chance of driving free targeted traffic towards your website.
#30: Create Flipboard Magazine
Flipboard is a social media content aggregation service with over 85 million users! Create your own Flipboard magazine by creating an account and curate content on the platform.
You’ll be surprised how rapidly you can grow your followers on Flipboard and in turn drive traffic to your own website.
Conclusion
You must have seen or already using a bunch of the mentioned methods already. However, I hope you gain some deep insight into gaining massive traffic for your website or online store.
You’ll see result pretty fast using some platform, while some may not come up immediately.
But, hey! Remember Rome wasn’t built in a day.
To be successful at this, commit to a schedule that’s manageable for you and stick to it. Within the next few months without paying a dime your website will be wallowing in a flood of traffic guaranteed.
If you have any question or any other proven method that is not listed please do not hesitate to let us know. We would be more than happy to include.
Over to you now!
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