Only cheese in a mousetrap is free … It seems so they say. But it depends on how you look at it: if we talk about promoting a company on the Internet and attracting traffic to the site, you can make great progress for free or with minimal investment.
And today I will tell you how to do it.
Sources of free internet traffic
To make people remember your company well, you need to catch their eye as often as possible. All methods listed below are free. That is, you will not spend a penny on the promotion itself, but the people who will do this will definitely have to pay.
Please note that all methods are legal, and I will not describe “black” methods. So let’s go!
Social networks
You can get decent traffic from social networks, especially if the company has recently opened and is only gaining momentum. There are a lot of options here – from Instagram and Facebook to Odnoklassniki and Twitter. It is worth choosing a site depending on the characteristics of your target audience and where it lives.
In contact with
To promote on VKontakte, you need to create your own community. And already in it, in the section “Links” and “Information”, you can specify the site of the company. If in your posts you will describe goods and services that you can buy or order through the site, be sure to give its URL. If you publish news in the public, create an interesting and short description, and below give a link to more detailed material. In addition, you can use widgets, the capabilities of which are limited only by your imagination and the needs of the company.
There are not so many options for posting links on the Instagram social network. You can drive traffic using the URL in your profile description. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to attach a web address to a post.
The system on Facebook is about the same as on VKontakte: you create a company community and attach links wherever possible. For example, you can place a button “To the store” in the profile header.
In the information about the company there is also a place for attaching a link. And you can also insert it into posts.
PS Telegram Channel
Telegram, as you remember, is not a social network, but a messenger. But in it you can create a channel and publish some news, promotions and so on on behalf of the company. There are enough opportunities for placing links – you can indicate them in the profile description, and also very harmoniously insert into posts, linking with certain words.
SEO promotion
The most correct method is to carefully optimize the site, focusing on key queries with high frequency and low competition. If you do everything right, the site will move to the top positions and attract people. But this will not happen quickly – the Google search engine starts indexing pages after a month or two, Yandex does it faster, but it alone will not save you.
Blog or community
Call it whatever you like, but the essence is the same – this is text informational content that you post on the site to announce or promote articles in search engines. It is important that the content is of high quality, varied and expert.
Use articles, reviews, various reviews and studies, interviews, life hacks, collections and checklists, infographics. There are many formats – at first you will have to experiment to find the best option.
To get even more traffic, make linking and publish links to articles in other sections of the site. Just don’t overdo it …
You can also publish materials in Yandex.Zen. Another option is to share links to materials on social networks, both on corporate and personal pages.
References
Your company should easily be in various target directories and aggregators. Focus on where the target audience is active and looking for information about you or your competitors. Also, do not forget about local peculiarities – in almost every region there are many directories focused on a specific city. Also focus on the topic, choose larger services.
There are several large directories in which you must register: Google My Business, Yandex.Directory and 2GIS.
Mailing lists
In this case, you are working with the dissemination of useful information. But this method also works great for attracting traffic.
First, you need to collect a database of email addresses. Then prepare the content – it is advisable not to embed the links into the text, but to design them in the form of buttons so that they are immediately noticeable. It is important to arrange everything beautifully and competently, and then send it to customers through the collected database using special email services. Try to do everything possible so that your emails do not end up in spam – I have already told you how to do this.
Read also: Best email marketing services
Q&A services
Create an account on sites like Yandex.Q and Mail.ru Answers, then give answers to questions from potential customers there. On some of these sites, it is possible to compose a profile description and indicate the company’s website. There are several advantages to this – you demonstrate expertise, promote the site and raise the brand’s reputation.
Sorcerers
The Community has already talked about what a sorcerer is and how he works. Sorcerers work great for your brand’s reputation, so try to get into them. If a certain article, section or service matches the user’s request as much as possible, your site will be highlighted in sorcerers and gain an advantage over competitors.
Cross marketing
Your specialists can provide expert comments on the blog of those whose business is related to yours. Prepare joint articles or exchange materials, link to each other, take comments from employees if necessary and refer to them as experts.
There is also another method – the publication of guest posts on large information platforms such as Habr, T-Zh, VC.ru and so on. Although in this case you will have to sweat, since serious requirements will be imposed on the articles. Pay attention to the editorial policy, study it carefully before preparing the material.
Forums
Another way to attract your target audience to the site is to answer questions on forums that are relevant to the topic of your resource. If the answer is on the site in the form of an article or instruction, be sure to give a link to it. Just try to do it naturally, unobtrusively, so that the message is not perceived as an advertisement.
Conclusion
There are many different ways to drive free traffic to your website. But you shouldn’t be limited to them alone – use them in conjunction with paid promotion methods, and then you will achieve incredible results. If, of course, you choose the right strategy … But that’s a completely different story;)