Top 6 Methods for Gaining Free Organic Traffic to Your Business

In this article, we’re going to be discussing the 6 best ways in which you can gain a significant amount of Organic Traffic to your business’ website, entirely for free!

Now if you haven’t actually got a website, I’m going to be creating a beginner tutorial on exactly how to do this, which will be linked to here.

Now, there are a few things that we need to talk about initially before getting into the exact methods, which are…

Gaining Free Organic Traffic to your website takes time!

It’s all well and good for us to say that you can follow the methods that we outline within this article, and tomorrow you’ll wake up to more website traffic and business leads/sales… However, in reality, that’s just not the case! This is going to take a few weeks to set up properly, and if you’re extremely keen and hardworking, you may even be able to see initial results after just a number of days.

What we’re trying to say here is, don’t expect the world, at least initially!

Building your organic traffic takes time, and once you’re seeing results from the following methods, it won’t take long for you to be able to ramp up your efforts and gain even more organic traffic.

So, let’s talk about the 6 ways in which you can increase the level of organic traffic that your website has:

1. Create a blog on your website (SEO)

If you haven’t already, creating a blog on your website can have some miraculous effects on your organic traffic, why?

Well, a blog is usually a section of a website that concentrates on exploring new industry ideas, concepts, and general questions relating to the products/services that your business offers… Therefore, this content is usually excessive in length and goes into detail about a certain topic.

Google and other search engines like this kind of long-form, highly informative content… And how do we know this, well a study by Backlinko, which observed over 1,000,000 search results in Google confirms this positive correlation between rankings and content length

Based on SERP data from SEMRush, we found that longer content tends to rank higher in Google’s search results. The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words.

Therefore, by building out a blog section on your website, you’re firstly showing Google that you’re an authority figure within your industry, and because of this, they’re likely to rank these types of articles highly in the search engine results… Which means more traffic to your website.

Now you may be thinking, well that’s all well and good to know that I have to create a blog on my website, but what content should I put on it, and how do I know that people are looking for the topic/subject that I’m writing about?

The answer comes down to a combination of keyword research (using tools), niche expertise and competitor analysis.

Keyword Research (using tools)

See, there are tools that we can use to extrapolate data such as keyword search volume, level of competition, cost per click, and more, which will provide you with keyword topics that you can write content about.

An example of such a tool is UberSuggest.

Ubersuggest is entirely free to use, and all that you have to do is enter ‘seed keywords’ that relate to your offered products/services. The tool will then provide you with statistical data, such as the Search Volume, SEO Difficulty, Paid Difficulty, Cost Per Click (CPC).

Not only this, but Ubersuggest also shows a visual representation of any fluctuations in search volume, which could be due to seasonality… Particularly important to know so there are no hidden surprises when traffic is fluctuating.

Finally, the tool also shows keyword ideas/related keywords, which can be used to find keyword ideas for your blog… Although in the case shown in the screenshot, no suitable keywords were displayed by the tool.

Another great tool which is often a good source for keyword ideas is KeySearch, which shows similar data to Ubersuggest,

KeySearch is a paid tool, but it’s priced extremely affordably, and will allow you to do in-depth on-page and off-page SEO analysis, as well as focused keyword research, all of which can be exported in an excel format, meaning that you can keep all of your findings in a folder on your computer, ready to access when you’re ready to do SEO & Keyword Mapping (But that’s another topic in itself that I will write an article on).

Once you have begun creating content, you can start tracking your SEO rankings using a tool like Accuranker or AWR Cloud.

Niche Expertise

Generally, when you’re running a business (especially a customer service-based business), you’ll get a list of FAQ’s that always arise, if a particular FAQ requires a large amount of explaining, this could be a good potential subject for a blog article.

Additionally, your blog section should also include updates surrounding your business and any interesting events or progressions that is happening within the industry itself.

Always remember, if you’re going to provide your insight on a specific story or topic, link to that material via your CMS/HTML editor, so that both your blog visitors, and the search engines can understand what information you are responding to. This will also help Google and it’s AI (RankBrain) in categorizing your particular article within the search results.

Competitor Analysis

Ok, so unless you’ve created a product/service which is totally unique, and you’re in a blue ocean… You’re going to have competitors. And some of these competitors will already have blogs, can you see where we’re leading with this?

As Neil Patel talks about in his article ‘Good Marketers Copy, Great Ones Steal‘ (and no we’re not going to steal anything, don’t worry), great marketers will look at leaders and main competitors within their industry, and seek to find their ‘great ideas’, to reclaim and modify these for their own business… It’s the business personification of ‘don’t reinvent the wheel just realign it’.

Therefore, if you’re having trouble finding blogs from business’ within your industry, use some of these search modifiers in Google:

Niche + Blog

Niche + “Leave a comment”

This should allow you to find some relevant blogs to take influence from, and alongside the other tactics that we’ve discussed, that should provide you with a good amount of blog article topics to begin to write about.

Note: It’s important to note that your blog section can help your website product/service pages rank in the search engine results. They can do this through passing link-equity, through relevant internal links being created. Therefore, if you have a blog about a certain topic, and that topic relates to a certain product/service, link from the blog page to the product page, ideally by ‘exact-match’ anchor text… which is the text that you want the linked-to page to rank for in Google.

2. Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is the process of finding suitable blogs (outside of your own) within your industry that allow for comments to be made, and more importantly, a backlink to be created.

You can generally see the comment-leaving feature at the bottom of many blogs, which usually involves the fields Name, Website & Comment.

These kinds of blogs usually provide ‘No-Follow’ backlinks, which mean that near to no link equity is passed to your website… However, the objective is to drive traffic to your website, and if we can also normalize your website’s backlink profile with a diverse range of no-follow links, then that’s another reason to use this strategy.

[Screenshot]

Now there are two scopes of thought to finding appropiate blogs to comment on… Both of which require that you firstly locate some blogs within your niche.

You can find these kinds of blogs, which are in your niche and accept blog comments by using the following search commands in Google:

Niche + ‘Commentluv’

Niche + “Notify me of follow-up comments?”+”Submit the word you see below:”

Niche + “no comments posted yet”

Niche + “powered by expressionengine” “post a comment”

This list of search modifiers should allow for you to find a list of websites which accept blog commenting.

Trending vs Evergreen

Trending: Now for the fun part, we want to identify the best 20, most relevant blogs! You can do this by imagining the ‘typical reader’ of each blog, and then asking yourself the following question… is this the ideal person that I think would be interested in visiting my website and potentially purchasing my product/service?

If the answer is no, then move on to the next blog… If the answer is yes, I want for you to set up a Google Alert, which will notify you whenever this website post a new article… Why are we doing this, because we want to have our comment placed on their article for when the main stream of traffic visits the website, to check out the new content.

Evergreen: So, you want to take those 20 most relevant blogs that you identified, and now you’re going to find out what pages on their website (which allow blog comments) are ranking the highest in Google for high-volume keywords, and hence getting consistent search engine traffic… In essence, we’re using these blogs as parasite pages, syphoning traffic from their URLs which are ranking high in Google for relevant keyword phrases.

So how are we going to do this exactly, well I suggest using a tool such as Serpstat. If you’re lucky enough, you can occasionally catch a Lifetime membership of Serpstat on AppSumo, which is a website that sells great, affordable software for entrepreneur

Otherwise, Serpstat is $20 per month, and it allows you to do several SEO-related tasks, such as checking:

• website’s rankings
• keywords
• backlink profile
• anchor text diversity

However, for this tutorial, you can simply use the free version of Serpstat, which will provide you with a limited amount of data. I have outlined an in-depth article demonstration of what I like to call “Legitimate Parasite SEO”, which if you’re reading this and you don’t see a link, that article is the next one in my content line after this one.

Assuming that you have no followed the strategy that I’ve laid out, you now have a number of URLs that are located on the blog that you’ve input into Serpstat, which rank on page 1 of Google, and have blog commenting enabled.

Well done! You’ve found a great Evergreen Post which should provide a steady flow of web traffic over time.

Now, you want to begin blog commenting.

A strategy that’s always worked for us, and does so for the reasons that it complies to the psychological laws of human nature, is as follows!

1. Read the blog

Yes, believe it or not, many people don’t even do this! Try to understand both the main points and any subtle points that you pick up on, the more specific, the more reason you can provide to the blog owner that you are legitimately interested in their blog.

2. Make bullet-point notes on the interesting concepts highlighted within the article

3. A compliment goes a long way

We all like to be complimented, even despite knowing that deep down, there may be some kind of tactical agenda lurking… When the compliment is believable, It’s human nature to simply cast aside that thought and get that fix of dopamine.

E.G “I really like your writing style”, “The information that you provide on ….. is really well thought out”

4. Ask a question regarding the article – By asking a question, you are confirming to the article writer/blog owner that you have read, understood and are eager to learn more about the topic… Writers and site owners love this, and will be happy to accept your comment, and reply.

E.G “What did you mean by this …. ? I imagine that you’re talking about …., but I would really appreciate further clarification”

By following these three steps, you’re more likely to have your blog comment authenticated, and published on the particular URL, alongside your link. An example of a high-quality blog comment could sound something like this….

[Name], I really enjoyed reading this post, so thank-you for writing it! If I may ask a question, what did you mean when you said “…..”, only my thoughts are that you’re talking about “….”. Additionally, I wondered if you could possibly provide some resources that you think are good for further reading about [Sub-Niche].

Thanks [Your Name]

One last note is to remember, that you don’t always have to link to your website’s homepage. If you’re commenting on an article that’s surrounding a certain topic, and you also have an article about that topic, link back to that inner URL, and if you can find a way to mention within the comment, that you’ve also written a post on that particular subject, then do that! It will allow readers to see that your website is also a source of information surrounding that particular subject…

[Name], I really enjoyed reading this post, so thank-you for writing it! If I may ask a question, what did you mean when you said “…..”, only my thoughts are that you’re talking about “….”. I’ve actually written a post about this on my website, and I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Thanks [Your Name]

That’s it for blog commenting, let’s move onto the next method.

3. Forum Posting

This method of gaining organic traffic is probably my favourite! And the reason for this is that people in forums are searching for an answer, as opposed to the former method (although this is more applicable to Trending content as opposed to Evergreen content) where they could just be viewing the latest post by the blog, and hence aren’t hungry for a particular solution.

However, that’s different for forums! If you find that you’re in a forum, you know that you have a rather niche and specific problem.

So for those who may not use forums, and aren’t exactly aware of what they’re used for, they’re simply websites which allow for members of the community to post questions and answers.

Therefore, if you’re having a lightbulb moment right now, that was exactly what happened to me this time last year, and I can honestly say that forum marketing has helped transform my business’.

What forums should I use to post content on?

There are an array of fantastic forums that exist within the niche that you are in… To locate these, we’re going to talk two different strategies that can be used, to locate niche-relevant communities and general (but will most likely have niche-relevant posts to comment on).

Niche-Specific Forums & Communities

Firstly, we’re going to talk about identifying the niche forums that would be useful to post on, and yet again, we’re going to be using our boolean search modifiers, and I’ve listed some below:

inurl:niche + intext: “powered by vbulletin”

inurl:niche + intext: “powered by smf”

Again, we highly suggest making a list of these forum communities, which you can refer to over the fore-coming days/weeks.

General Forums & Communities

There are some fantastic general forums/communities that exist which can be used to promote your website on. Now you may be thinking, if these forums are about general topics, how will they be any use to me?

Most of the forums that we outline below provide internal search functionality, and therefore allow their users to search for questions that relate to a specific topic.

However, we’re not going to rely on the search functions of these forums, at least not entirely… Let me explain!

Remember how we used the Trending vs Evergreen content identification strategy when we were trying to find relevant blogs to comment on? Well we’re going to use the same strategy with these forums…

So, what specific general forums do I recommend that you start with?

• Reddit
• Quora
• Youtube (Although not a forum, the comments section essentially is)

By using these three resources, you can nearly guarantee that you’ll see an increase in website traffic! Why do I say that? Well, these three forums are extremely popular, just take a look at their traffic statistics, as show on SimilarWeb.

As you can see, these websites have a significant amount of web traffic, and we can use our marketing skills to syphon some of this to our website.

1. The first step is to sign up to all of these forums, and begin filling out your profile information

Now, if you’re interested in promoting your brand through Youtube, and for your videos to be successful in ranking with Youtube’s search engine, then creating high-quality video is going to be of high importance, as it will directly affect this. A tool that may be useful in helping you create high-quality video content is Exovidio FX, so if you’re serious about this being a potential avenue for traffic, take a look at the tool here.

Another fantastic aspect about each of these particular forums is that you have the ability to place a backlink to your website within your profile section, which means that any kind of interaction with the community is likely to result in an increase in forum users seeing your public profile, and thus visiting your website.

2. Next, we want to use the internal search function available in each of the forums to identify potential questions to answer.

3. Finally, we’re going to use the “Legitimate Parasite SEO” technique, to locate URLs (questions) on each of the forums which are ranking highly (page 1) in Google. This essentially means that the posts get a steady flow of organic traffic, which we want to tap into.

4. List all of these URLs that have a suitable question to answer, remember, you want provide value and show that you’re a decent, honest member of the community, before all-out promoting your website.

It’s also important to note, the questions that you find on these forums will not all be “completely ideal” to promote your “money posts” or product pages… However, you have to think outside of the box, and even pre-form a sales funnel, and a buyer-persona of each person within the sales funnel process.

[Describe with a diagram of sales funnel & buyer persona diagram]

By doing this, you can adapt the content that you write for specific questions, to the type of person that you have modelled for, in the buyer persona. This will help you qualify the traffic, and attract the ideal traffic to your website, blog page or sales page.

That’s it for forum marketing, let’s start with the next method of gaining free organic traffic!

4. Guest Posting

Guest Posting is the process of obtaining virtual real-estate on someone else’s blog/website, in the form of a blog post, case study or article, which will allow you to then link back to your own website.

The website that you’re guest posting on should ideally be in the same niche or a similar niche to your own site, and therefore the visitors to that site should have mutual interests in the topics that you talk about on your own site.

Not only is guest posting a great strategy as it allows for you to gain a significant level of exposure on another website that provides targeted traffic, but these kinds of guest post placements will also provide a contextual, do-follow backlink to your website, which is highly beneficial for your website’s off-page SEO and backlink profile.

You can find these kinds guest posting opportunities through a number of different ways, and each one will be more/less ideal based on the amount of time, dedication and monetary investment that you have.

Search Modifiers

If you haven’t already, we can imagine that you’re getting extremely familiar with using search modifiers.

We’re going to use a selection of search term modifiers to find appropriate guest posting opportunities, all of which we’ve featured below, where the word ‘Niche’ can be swapped for your industry/sub-industry keyword:

Reference – Backlinko.com

HARO – Help a Reporter Out

HARO is a platform that tries to help journalists connect with sources, these sources could be business websites which have new, interesting content such as new product releases, inventions, stories, etc.

You can sign up to the platform as a ‘Source’ and see if there are any guest post opportunities that are available.

Guest-Posting Services

There are a range of done-for-you guest posting services that provide an effortless, easy way to gain highly relevant, quality guest post placements. These are done through agencies that specialize in providing these kinds of services, which means they have accumulated contacts within the industry, and therefore can get your website featured on websites that are out of reach of most website owners…

As we briefly mentioned before, the benefits of guest posting not only stretch to an increase in targeted traffic, but a high-quality placement can also transform your website’s rankings in the search engine results… Getting you more organic traffic.

We actually used a guest post placement offered by The Hoth, which completely transformed our website’s rankings, you can read more about that in our article ‘The Hoth Review‘, and we’re currently running a case study on their SEO services, which will be updated each month, starting from February.

We recommend checking out their guest posting services, which we’ve linked to here.

Alternatively, there are other established and reputable websites which provide guest post placements, one of which is FatJoe. We’ll also be testing their SEO services in the future, and creating a case study to display our results.

5. Social Media

As we all know, social media is everywhere, and if you’re not using it within your business, you’re really missing out!

A statistic such as the one below, really hits it home that you should be active on social media, as it will not only provide your business with direct traffic (we understand that this is relative to the industry you’re in, and some industries are more adapted to being able to adopt social media more than others), but also it will indirectly, as it will provide important social signals for the likes of Google, which are vital in helping your business’ product pages and blog pages rank in the search engine results.

• The number of social media users worldwide in 2018 is 3.196 billion, up 13 percent year-on-year (smartinsights)

We understand that most business owners simply don’t have the time or the resources to start building full-scale social media marketing campaigns… Well, at least not without a little help!

There are two choices available when it comes to social media marketing,

1. Hire a social media marketing agency to run these campaigns, although this can be very expensive, and therefore the ROI would need to be very high
2. Use scheduling software to create, schedule and promote your campaigns… The particular software that we use for our clients is PromoRepublic, which not only takes care of scheduling, but also advises on the types of content to promote, when to promote, and even has build-in templates and an image editor. We’ve featured a demo of it below:

That’s it for social media promotion!

6. Email List

The final source of organic traffic that we’ve featured in our list, is arguably the most important, and yet probably the most under-utilised form of traffic… It’s your email list!

If you’re not aware what an email list is, it’s an accumulation of emails that a brand can build over time, to allow them to directly communicate with a list of people who have agreed to sign up.

These people have most likely signed up to the email list in exchange for what’s called a ‘lead magnet’, and therefore the brand can then message them surrounding any updates, sales and product offerings that they think the list would be interested in.

There are tools such as Aweber, which are email autoresponders, and have the role of automating the flow of emails to new & existing email list members, based on the email programming that is set by the brand. These autoresponders are very easy to use, and mean that brands can concentrate on their business activities whilst the autoresponder takes care of email campaigns, once it has been programmed to do so.

Therefore, if you’ve not been building an email list, you’ll require the following

1. A lead magnet to offer your visitors, in exchange for their email address
2. An email autoresponder system which you can program, and automate your email campaigns

In Summary

If you take advantage of all these methods of acquiring organic traffic, we’re certain that you will see a steady, but a substantial increase in traffic over a period of weeks to months.

It takes time to build up organic traffic, but if you use all of the methods simultaneously, you’ll find that they all complement each other, an example of that being, if you actively seek to get more traffic from blogs and forums, you will indirectly increase your website’s rankings over time, which will in turn help boost your blog posts traffic, and ultimately this means more traffic to your money/product/service pages.