5 Smart Ways to Get Traffic without Depending on Google

I was devastated when I read an article from Zac on John Chow’s blog recently about how Google is shutting down blog networks, the major victim being Build My Rank. I was already considering using Build My Rank when this happened, but what happened proved the importance of not relying on just one traffic source.

You might be thinking the problem is with Build My Rank’s approach to link building, but I can tell you from experience that even innocent webmasters are suffering from the many changes Google has been making lately in the name of “improving search engine results”.

Traffic from Google is great, especially if you can master how to get a lot of it, but on the long run it is important not to let your business rely on just one source of traffic. There are smarter ways to generate traffic to your blog, especially ones that will ensure you don’t have to rely on Google forever.

1. Work on Building an Active Mailing List

You’ve probably heard it several times over that the money is in the list, but the reality is that the traffic is also in the list.

Your email list is an asset, and you can use it to drive traffic to your blog repeatedly if you can cultivate a relationship with your list.

I’ve heard it somewhere before that it takes around 7 – 8 appearances of an ad for it to stick in the head of the viewer. The same thing goes for email marketing, and the more you get in touch with your subscribers, the more likely they are to check out your brand.

You can build your list using any of the other tactics I’ll be sharing below, and you can also build your list using Google if that’s what you want. But first, focus on getting the subscribers, cultivate a relationship with them and look for ways to drive them back to your blog.

Aweber is the preferred mailing list among most internet marketers and site owners.

2. Multimedia Marketing

SEO is the rage these days, and a lot of us are focusing only on ways to get our site ranked in the top search engine rankings instead of capitalizing on the untapped power of multimedia content.

It could be via videos, podcasts or even presentations, there are huge sites online with an audience waiting to be tapped into.

Youtube alone serves over 1 billion views every day, and there are several other video streaming sites with a huge market share. The iTunes directory is also being used by millions of people, and that’s a great place for you to get exposure for your blog.

Don’t just focus on the written text. Capitalize on other forms of content to get more exposure for your blog.

The good news is that Youtube is owned by Google, and multimedia content is being favored by the search engines lately. In other words, instead of optimizing your blog to rank in Google, optimize your videos and audios to rank well in Youtube and iTunes, and you will increase your chances of multimedia success.

3. JV and Partnership Opportunities

There are influencers in every niche, and there always will be.

Smart marketers learn to leverage the audience of others. The reality is that there are hundreds of people who have spent years and decades building their own audience, and these people have been able to grow over the years and get their audience to trust them.

You can get more traffic to your blog by looking for a way to partner with these successful people while growing your blog at the same time. The truth about this is that it isn’t always about money, but creativity. Some people won’t give you access to their audience no matter how much you pay, but they will repeatedly write about you if you’re creative enough.

Sometimes, you only need to exchange a service they really need with them in exchange for plugging you to their audience. Some people you can target are email marketers, bloggers with big audience, social media influencers, and interview based sites. Look for ways to contribute value to the lives of these people, and they’ll happily give you free exposure in return.

4. Write Case Studies and Tutorials

Look for magazines and company newsletters in your niche, especially those whose services you are using, and look for a way to help them solve some of their problems. Sometimes, a problem they want to solve is getting people to believe more in their services, and a case study on how you got great results from using it will be mostly beneficial. Sometimes, a problem they might be facing is with explaining how their services work to their users. You can solve this problem by writing a tutorial on how to easily use the service. Each of these problems present you with an opportunity to market yourself, and if you can capitalize on this they will end up calling you back to share your experience in the future.

5. Reply to Every Comment, Email and Social Media Comment

Engagement is the currency of the web, and smart people are discovering this right now.

The real key to business success is to get a lot of word of mouth marketing; otherwise you will keep on marketing for years and have little to show for it.

The key to creating more word of mouth marketing isn’t just to have a great product; it is to create a good first impression. Reply to emails and comments on your blog in minutes, focus on helping your readers as much as you can for free, and they will contribute so much traffic than money can buy.

What’s more important is that we trust our friends more than marketers online, so if you could get people to recommend you to their friends you will be able to get more exposure than any marketing could.

This guest post was written by John Holt, a led lights wholesaler.