Traffic Generation: Quality Traffic Without Google?

Here’s a harsh reality:  Unless you are a big company or you have a behemoth of a budget to spend on link building, PPC and content creation, ranking on the search engine pages will be a steep uphill task.

The abrupt algorithmic changes do not help the situation either for online marketers who work hard to create and optimize their content. I’ve certainly seen a major decline in search engine traffic.

The truth is, relying on organic search engine traffic from Google alone is not a dependable strategy for visibility and lead generation.

But, is all lost?

There are other ways, other than Google, that smart marketers are using to generate traffic, gain exposure and reach out to their target audiences.

Join the conversations that matter

Contributing to important conversations in your niche is one of the best ways to establish authority and gain visibility online.

Commenting on niche-specific blogs and participating in relevant forums can help you attract considerable clicks to your own site. Of course, you need to actually read the blog posts and offer valuable comments related to the topic at hand.

A great example of this is from my friend and top blogger Ryan Biddulph (here on the left) over at www.bloggingfromparadise.com. (I recommend checking out his site as it’s great). Ryan is probably one of the most active bloggers I know, and you’ll find his detailed and really helpful contributions on pretty much all of the authority blogs out there each week.  As a result of this he gets serious traffic to his site and at the same time builds a powerful brand. Of course, this can be replicated for whatever niche you are in.

Other than blogs, forums also offer a great opportunity to link up with like-minded people and to contribute to the conversations they are having. Alternatively, you can start a conversation too.

While some platforms allow contributors to leave a link, constant link-dropping and self-promotion will not work. It’s best to avoid that tactic.

Guest blogging is still alive

There is a lot of talk about the ‘death of guest-blogging’ but guest blogging is still one of the most effective traffic generation and link building strategies available for online marketers.

Posting on the right blogs i.e. those that already have a higher ranking and authority can generate an immense amount of attention to your own site. Most of the top niche-specific blogs and websites accept only high quality, valuable content and allow you to point at least one outbound link to your site.

But aside from the links, guest blogging enables you to establish authority in your niche. It also allows you to leverage the traffic available on a popular site and to expose some of this traffic to your service or product.

Social Media

No one can deny the popularity of social media sites. Facebook alone attracts 1.28 billion monthly active users, while 100 million users visit Twitter every day. Social media platforms are some of the most convenient channels marketers use to directly reach out to their target audience.

Both large and small brands have been able to establish massive followings simply by creating and distributing great content through social sites. This is one tactic I help many businesses manage each week as part of my job at www.jiggledigital.com and it’s super powerful. Here are some stats from a week of my previous Facebook activity (and remember, this is not paid traffic so its possible to create some major reach just with a simple Facebook page if you work at building it)

What makes social platforms so effective at generating traffic to your landing page is that you can distribute content, set up a contest, or just relay information about a product to a mass audience. The fact that you can reach out to a large audience at no cost makes it possible to draw at least a fraction of your fans and followers to that landing page or website.

Making the most of video marketing

Did you know that YouTube is the second most popular search engine after Google?

No one can deny the power of video as a digital marketing. But video is even more powerful as a traffic generating tool. A helpful video that is optimized using the appropriate keywords can generate a lot of views and in turn many clicks to your landing page.

Your video does not have to go viral to generate tons of traffic. Understanding your niche and the type of content that works best for that niche will help you create videos that attract and possibly convert your potential customers.

Building your email list

Emails are intimate; they are up-close and personal. It is no wonder that email marketing offers a much higher conversion rate compared to organic and paid search, and social media.

A carefully constructed email campaign can provide you with relevant leads that are higher up the buying cycle. One would argue that building your email list is the best investment you can make toward generating relevant traffic for your business.

You Can Generate Traffic Without Google..

Let’s admit it: Ranking on Google’s organic search pages is a dream come true for any marketer. But, it can take a long time to attain such a privilege, especially if you are in a crowded niche. This makes a multichannel strategy absolutely necessary to attract those potential customers that might otherwise not see you.