It’s undeniable that the one thing you need to succeed in your online business is traffic. And free traffic beats everything else. Where does free traffic come from? Google and other search engines.

How do we get free traffic from Google?

You’ve experienced this process a lot of times. You load up Google or another search engine. Type in something you’re looking for. And then you visit one or more of the sites that show up. Turns out that the website you visit just got free traffic from the search engine. We will be discussing here how to get website traffic to you for free.

If you’re like most people you only click links on the first page or two. In fact, the first page of results receives almost all the free traffic. And what’s more, the first 3 get over 70% of the clicks.

This means that to get any real traffic you need to be on the first page in Google. To do that, you need to be “ranked” in Google’s Top 10 results. And this bring us to…

What is search engine optimization?

Search Engine Optimization is a measure of how well Google and other search engines think your website matches the search terms people are typing into their search boxes. The formula Google uses to determine this is known only by Google. But there are several things that we know for sure.

Getting indexed

Before your website can begin gaining ranking, you have to alert Google to it’s existence. This is called getting “indexed.” This is when Google looks at your site and take notes about it, which are stored in their database.

Google needs to actually find your site in order to index it. Links from other sites are the easiest way to accomplish this. Because Google already knows about these sites, it will follow the new links to you.

Twitter and Facebook updates are great places to put links to your site. Google visits these sites many times every day. And follows new links it finds immediately.

Gaining ranking

After getting indexed, you need to work on your search engine ranking. Google has billions of pages indexed, so just getting into their database does not mean anyone will see you.

The 3 factors in getting ranked:

• Content
• Links
• Activity

Content strategies

This is also called on-page SEO. You need to make sure your content matches the search terms you’re going after. Obviously, the article you’re reading now is about search engine optimization. One reason Google knows this is because the words search engine optimization appear inside it. Another reason is because there are related words, like website traffic, too.

The title of the page, the domain name and other pages on your site are also important. These all play a part in helping Google determine what your website is about.

Link juice

Next, you need to pay attention to the links to and from your site. The links coming in and the links going out are included in this. With inbound links, you want to have more coming in than going out. The more inbound links you have the better your ranking will be.

A very easy way to get a lot of links to your site is through article marketing. To use this technique you write articles related to the topic of your websites. Then you have to create multiple versions of this articles. And then upload a different versions to a bunch of sites that allow you to add content. And the more you do the better.

Increasing your activity

The last thing we know for sure is that Google likes to see active sites. Static pages that just sit may rank at first, but will fall off over time. Regular content updates to your site are expected. You can do this with RSS feeds and news posts.

But the best way is with active discussions on your page itself. This means you need to get real live people to your site, as well. Online forums are simple source of real live visitors.

What you need to do is sign up with several forums in your niche. And post their often. And link back to yourself in your signature file. This generates even more links back to your site. And it also gets people to your web page.

Conclusion

Each step listed above is critical. Unfortunately, rewriting your articles again and again. And creating a bunch of forum profiles. And visiting all the sites to post up your comments and articles takes a really long time. Which means you probably won’t end up doing it.

The good news is that there are automated software programs out there that will do this for you. So the best thing you can do is to automate this process. And then you’re sure to get it done. By taking these steps you practically ensure you’ll get free traffic from Google.

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