15 Untapped sources to drive quality traffic to your website

Most marketers have two goals in common: to attract more traffic and convert more leads. More traffic translates to more visibility and profitability. But let’s face it, finding quality traffic sources for your site can be very annoying. By now you’ll have realized that high but random traffic won’t add much value to your site or its content.

Therefore, the focus should be on generating the right traffic, consisting of prospects who can significantly contribute to the growth of your business. Now this is where it gets challenging. Attracting the right traffic is the first step in the process of generating qualified leads, so it’s extremely important to do it right.

Even though SEO and social media are the two primary conventional sources, it’s high time for companies to realize that they just scratch the surface of generating web traffic. They’re probably the most mainstream technique that marketers use.

Now you’re probably thinking, “What’s left to try?.” Don’t give up just yet. There are tons of other unconventional traffic sources; you just need to know where to find them. And hey, most of these sources are free, so they won’t put a hole in your pocket!

Yeah, I know this article is pretty long. But good things take time, right?

So, without further ado, let’s dive in.

1. Syndicating your content

Let’s say you have a top-notch blog that publishes valuable content on a regular basis. Even though it’s well-written and informative, the response probably wasn’t what you expected. There are still millions of readers who may not even know your blog exists. Now you’re stuck wondering how to reach out to all of them with your content. Well, there’s a way to do it. It’s called Content syndication.

Content syndication is the process of republishing your blogs and articles on third–party websites, as full articles, thumbnails, or links. By submitting your articles to the article directories, top websites, and blogs within your market, you’ll drive a enormous amount of traffic to your site. Republishing let‘s you leverage the same content multiple times.

A lot of sites are open to content syndication. Here are a few:

●       Outbrain

●       Zemanta

●       ARC

●       Taboola

●       ZergNet

●       AllTop

●       9Rules

2. Guest blogging

Another way to get lots of exposure (traffic) back to your site is through guest blogging. It’s a popular method used by bloggers. You write posts to be published on someone else’s blog, or get another blogger to write a post to publish on yours. It is also one of the best ways to reach out to a completely new audience, because at the end of the post there will be a link that leads back to your website.

It’s a great way to establish yourself within your market and to develop relationships with other bloggers and experts in your field. As always, in the end, it all comes down to value. Showcase your best content or, publish the most valuable guest posts. Even a couple of high-quality guest posts submitted to leading blogs and websites can help generate a lifetime of consistent traffic.

While looking for the best guest blogging opportunities, your main goal should be to find sites that are relevant to your niche or industry. Google is one of the best places to find suitable guest posting opportunities.

Conduct a keyword search to help narrow your search results. Here are some suggestions:

● Using quotes, search popular phrases such as “Write for us,” “Guest blog submission,” ” Call for guest bloggers,” or “Guest post by”

● Add keywords from your industry, such as “guest blogger” and “sports ,” or “baseball” and “guest post guidelines.”

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3. Trackbacks

A trackback is an automated process that links two or more relevant blog entries together. It is a way to notify another blogger that you have linked to one of their articles. When one blogger writes and publishes an article that is relevant to an article on another blog, the blog system can leave a trackback on the other blog’s article. It usually appears in the comments section with a link, so your link will immediately show up in the comments section of that blog, which can lead to lots of traffic.

Think of trackbacks as the equivalent of acknowledgements and references at the end of an academic paper or chapter in a text book. Bloggers love it when you link to them, and out of gratitude they’ll often link back to you, which can send even more traffic to your site.

How to send a trackback

Usually, you’ll have to manually enter a trackback URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) into the blog entry you’re creating. You can find this at the end of most blog posts. Add the trackback URI from the other blog post to the Send Trackbacks format in your blog post before you publish it.

4. Ad footers

Rather than blowing your marketing budget by splurging on traditional methods of advertising, you can put it to productive use with this creative advertising technique. Believe me, the response you get from it will blow your mind.

If you have a blog that publishes solid content, link advertisements for your site to it by adding a banner at the footer of the blog. Users who visit your blog, will see the clickable banner, or a catchy tagline at the bottom of their browser, which leads back to your site. Footer ad‘s always catch the attention of users. Don’t underestimate the power of this strategy. The mutually beneficial end result will do wonders for your blogs and your site.

Here’s how the tech giant Hotmail employed this growth hack:

Hotmail already had about 20,000 users one month after launching in 1996. They added a tagline at to end of any email sent by a Hotmail user that read “Get Your Free Email at Hotmail”and contained a link back to their homepage. As a result, the company user-base skyrocketed to 1 million users within 6 months. This led to a massive growth: 12 million email accounts. Not bad at all.

5. Ad swaps

Ad swaps are a little-known tactic that many big internet marketers use, to add more and more subscribers to their list. It’s one of the most cost-effective strategies to obtain targeted traffic, and it hardly takes any time at all. The way it works is simple: You find someone with an email list to partner with, and both parties agree to post each other’s offer on their own list. This is usually a free offer, placed on a landing page, in exchange for someone’s name and email address. As an end result, both parties add hundred‘s of subscribers to their lists.

First, you’ll need to locate potential partners to swap ads with. Search for a list of online forums that are associated with your target market. Using major keywords, search for people who are active in building email lists. It doesn’t matter if your potential partner has a bigger list size than yours, you can still leverage that to swap ads with other list owners.

Ad swaps are one of the best ways to attract more traffic quickly, without spending any money. You get the very best, as someone is endorsing your free offer to their subscribers, and you can swap ads multiple times with the same people. Isn’t that cool?

6. Image/photo-sharing traffic

Have you got a killer featured image in a blog post? Go ahead and share it! Photos and images are the most shared type of content on social media. They can drive a lot of traffic to your site from search engines.

Create an account on photo-sharing sites like Instagram, Facebook, PhotoBucket, or Flickr, to share your images for free, with a link back to your page or site. However, simply uploading images is not enough; each image should be optimized for SEO and traffic generation.

Pictures display complex information in a simple form, and they generate more social media shares than posts without images. Without a doubt, making your images pop up in search results can be a powerful strategy to generate traffic.

Here’s a list of a few popular photo–sharing sites:

●      Photobucket

●       Instagram

●       Shutterfly

●       Flickr

●       Fotki

●       Photo.net

●       Picasa Web Albums

7. Video marketing

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video should be worth a million. Did you know that videos generate 300% more traffic than any other source?

Creating a unique visual content experience can generate staggering amounts of traffic to your website. The impact of videos on the minds of people cannot be understated. Facebook Live video is now reportedly at 8 billion views, outstripping even YouTube’s massive 5 billion views per day. It’s no wonder that we see an increasing number of businesses incorporating unique and carefully curated videos into their marketing strategies.

An effective video marketing strategy can implement a range of video types to drive traffic and conversions to your website or blog post.

First things first, you want your videos to be helpful, informative, and interesting. In short, they must have some kind of value to the viewers. You also want it to include some kind of call to action that will bring people to your website. Youtube is the most common and well-known video sharing site. But be sure to link your video to other social media accounts as well. That way you can reach a larger portion of your target audience, and there are increased chances of it getting shared multiple times. How cool is that?

8. Social media traffic

Social media is one of the most proactive ways of generating more traffic because of it‘s advanced targeting opportunities. Did you know that, as of December 2015, Twitter has 320 million monthly active users while Facebook has 1.59 billion? You have free access to millions of users, every month from every platform, right in front of you.

With the boom of the internet, more and more people spend a lot of time on these channels., They’re powerful platforms for communicating with your readers, building your brand, and driving more traffic to your website. By targeting people based on their interests and networks, they can help you identify and connect with buyer personas all over the globe. Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin are excellent mediums for B2C (business to customer) interactions.

Here’s how to make the most out of social media to generate more traffic:

●  Share relevant and useful content to build a strong online presence . Quality content will find its way to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and more, increasing your social visitors.

● Make sure you include visuals, hashtags, short text, and emoticons when relevant. No one wants to go through a boring post without emoticons or hashtags. So, cheer up!

● Be active on industry-related social network groups and communities. These can be an important traffic resource for your website.

● Keep a track of social conversations. Listen for your customers’ questions, comments, likes, and dislikes, and reach out to them.

9. Podcasts

People love audio as much as they love videos. Too shy to appear in front of the camera? Then podcasts are the way to go. Podcasts are digital audio recordings of programs that you can readily download online. Creating them can help you to develop authority and expertise in the subject matter. And, most importantly, podcasting gives you incredible reach. You can take the same set of topics and present them to your target audience again and again. The more listeners you have, the better your chances of converting them into website visitors.

By repeatedly exposing your audience to your best products and content, you’ll develop a reputation as an expert in your industry. Like an article or blog post, your podcast episode becomes something that you can share.

Demonstrate your value to the target market. Your podcast strategy can improve your trustworthiness and credibility, especially if you appear as a guest on other podcasts. Podcasts on relevant and useful topics get more traffic and attract more leads for your business. I recommend using a podcast hosting service like LibSyn, and creating accounts to upload your podcast to iTunes, Stitcher, BluBrry, and Miro.

10. Free tutorials/e-books

Tutorials and e-books are hugely untapped sources for generating online traffic. If you’ve got tutorials related to SEO, Photoshop, web development, programming, or marketing, you can upload them to certain sites and get thousands of visitors. And if your tutorial happens to be really good, there are websites that will gladly pay you anywhere between $60- 150 for each quality tutorial you submit.

The same applies to e-books as well: There are plenty of free sites where you can upload your own e-books, and people actually download and read them! Isn’t that amazing?

Here are some of the most popular tutorial/ e-book sharing sites:

●       Good-tutorials.com  (Graphics/Photo/Programming)

●       Tutorialized.com   (Web design and marketing)

●       tutorial-index.com  (photoshop, coding, video, etc)

●       bookyards.com

●       amazon.com (Kindle Version)

●       free-ebooks.net

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11. Blog comments

Now some of you might say that this is an old-school technique that doesn’t work anymore. But how many of you are actually USING this technique to generate traffic to your website? I’m betting a very few are. This technique, though powerful, is underestimated by most marketers. It’s a brilliant way to exchange thoughts, ideas, and opinions on blog posts and also to build contacts with other bloggers.

However, if you can combine automation with blog commenting, this can become an excellent traffic source for you. Instead of manually searching for blogs, articles, or posts to comment on, you can now use the help of Google’s alert system. It’s free and you can create as many alerts as you require (http://www.google.com/alerts)

Google will send you a mail with a link almost instantly when someone posts information, a post, or news related to your niche/product/service. You just need to click that link and make sure you’re the first one to comment. The earlier you comment, the more exposure you’ll get, since your comment will be at the top of the section. It’s important to ensure your comment provides value: intelligent, insightful comments get attention and drive more traffic to your website.

Some great examples to follow when it comes to blog comments include Adrienne Smith,  Ryan Biddulph,  Donna Merrill and Don Purdum.

12. Promotional offers, discounts, coupons

This might be an age-old technique, but believe me, it still works like a charm. People absolutely love discounts and coupons. Coupons have a built-in visual appeal and an innate call to action attached to them. It creates a sense of urgency in people’s minds, rapidly increasing their curiosity.

If your site offers coupons or discount codes of any kind, you can submit them to hundreds of different coupon websites to gain additional exposure and traffic. If you combine them successfully over social media, they can go viral overnight.

Make sure to add your coupons to the following coupon/deal of the day directories:

○       currentcodes.com

○       dailyedeals.com

○       dealcatcher.com

○       keycode.com

○       quicktoclick.com

○       ultimatecoupons.com

○       dealoftheday.com

○       deals2buy.com

13. Partnerships

Partnerships are a highly effective method for generating website traffic. There are dozens of partnership opportunities available out there. Focus on finding credible partners with whom you can establish a successful working relationship, and achieve mutually beneficial goals. Attend events and scour the internet until you find the perfect businesses to partner with. A good partnership will help promote your website and expose your content to a larger audience.

When you partner with another company, you can advertise your business on a section of their website. You’ll be appealing to a much larger audience who are also interested in your niche. This ultimately leads to more site clicks, and before you know it, you’ll be attracting a tremendous amount of traffic to your site.

14. Email lists

E–mail persists as one of the best ways to communicate with your prospects. Study after study has shown that email marketing has the highest ROI of any marketing channel. According to research from Direct Marketing Association(DMA), the buy rate of email marketing is 1000% higher than social media (such as Facebook and Twitter), and double that of organic search engine marketing (SEO).

It‘s a great tool for social promotion, and an amazing source to drive free additional traffic to your site. If you have a news letter, make sure your visitors sign up for it and start building your list. Set up a subscription path on your website and then deliver your best and most informative content to your subscribers. The more your list grows, the more traffic you’ll be able to send to your latest posts.

Micheal Hyatt, the New York Times best selling author and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, built a multi-million dollar business on the strength of email lists. Here’s how his email list of around 2,700 subscribers mushroomed to almost 115,000 within 3 years.

15. Write a response to another’s post

Responding to controversial posts within your niche field is another technique that can direct more traffic to your site. This is a great way to become more visible within your industry, provided that you do it the right way. Don’t just go around starting pointless arguments and posting random comments of disapproval just to get a link back to your website—that’s spamming, and it’ll do you more harm than good.

Here are a few tips to writing a killer response post

●  Do sufficient research and think critically about which posts seem the most provocative to you. Read postings with an open mind.

●  Make sure you describe your point clearly so that everyone can follow along. Provide clear and credible evidence to support your responses.

● When in disagreement, keep your responses respectful. Avoid using unsupported personal opinions, generalizations, and language that others might find offensive.

And, that’s it!

Whether you’re writing blog posts, producing podcasts, or offering e-books, quality is something you must never compromise on. Master the above fifteen techniques and watch your figures soar!