How to Increase Website Traffic for Free

Steps

1. 1
   Optimize your website to be search-engine friendly. Submit it to various search engines and directories. In addition to major search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Ask, Bing and MSN, it's worth submitting to lesser known web directories. If your website is listed in as many places as possible, it can boost your rankings in major search engines as well.
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   Make sure your title, description head, and header html tags accurately convey the subject of your site; search engine algorithms use these as keywords to categorize your site and direct relevant traffic.
3. 3
   Spread the word about your affiliate program by submitting it to affiliate program directories and contacting the owners of related websites.
4. 4
   Create a links page that will contain the links to other non-competing websites in the same industry. Contact the owners of other websites with your proposal to exchange links. You will add their link to your links page, and they will link to your website in return.
5. 5
   Post in forums. Visit the online discussion forums where people in your target market like to gather. Post useful responses to people's questions, and include a link to your website at the end of your post next to your name. Although you ultimately want to get your sig file with the link to your site seen as often as possible, don't overdo it with your posts, otherwise other forumites won't respect you, and therefore won't visit your site.
6. 6
   Comment on blogs. Visit other people's blogs on the topic related to your website. Most blogs allow you to add comments about the issues being discussed. Add insightful comments about the blog topics, and leave your website link. Your comment and your link will permanently remain on the blog website.
7. 7
   Create an e-mail "signature" - your name, your website address and a short tag-line describing the main benefit of your site. Set your e-mail program to automatically add your signature to every e-mail that you send.
8. 8
   Look into traffic exchanges. There are many types of traffic exchanges but the idea is the same - you team up with other webmasters, and they send you traffic in exchange for you sending them traffic. Search the web for "traffic exchange" to find those services.
9. 9
   Create something of value that people will pass around. It can be a report with useful information that you allow people to give away. It can also be some kind of cool and unusual web-page that people will want to e-mail to all their friends. Of course, the pass-around item will include your advertisement and your link, spreading the word about your website. This is a "viral" strategy.
10. 10
    Write articles on the topic related to your website, and include a link to your site in your author bio. Submit your articles to article directories, and allow people to publish your article in their newsletters and websites. Your articles will spread around the web like wildfire. People will read them and visit your website. The best part is that people who read your articles will regard you as an expert, and they will be much more likely to buy from you when they go to your website. How's that for a free publicity?
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    Use accurate keywords for your content. The point of keywords is that they are the terms most people looking for your article by topic will search by. Check those with free Google terms and use the most popular relevant one in your title - a descriptive title to let them know right away what it is if it's a word with multiple meanings. Drawing blood for a phlebotomist is not the same thing as a comics artist drawing blood in a fight scene. Be very literal and then use the exact keywords several times in the article where they are relevant, as well as synonyms. Don't overdo it, or you look like you're trying to spam Google. Just use the keywords naturally when describing the topic.
    • If it is a confusing keyword phrase like Drawing Blood, link to the other meaning and mention that in the first paragraph. "This article is about drawing blood in graphic novels. Phlebotomy is drawing blood for medical tests or donations - here's the other page on "Drawing Blood." Then link to the phlebotomy page in that. By redirecting confused people you leave them a good impression and they might stop to read your article if they also like doing comics art!
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    Start an e-zine for your web site. When people read each issue they'll be reminded to revisit your web site. Submit it to all the free e-zine directories on the internet.A news letter!
13. 13
    Start your own online discussion community. It could be an online message board, e-mail discussion list or chat room. When people get involved in your community, they will regularly return to communicate with others.
14. 14
    Advertise your site at free classified ad sites. There are many of these on the net. Some of the more popular ones are craigslist, inetgiant, freeadvertisingforum, and gumtree.
15. 15
    Join free safe-lists. These are lists of subscribers who have opted-in to send and receive emails to each other. You can instantly reach potentially thousands of people by sending out emails, and you don't have to worry about receiving spam complaints either because everyone on the list has opted-in to receive emails.
16. 16
    Getting a myspace page could also increase your site traffic because hundreds of people will see it.
17. 17
    Constantly update content on your web-page, so having a news section is a great deal for search engines especially.
18. 18
    Update your Facebook status to let your friends know everytime you update your blog and create a Facebook fan page. Your friend's friends will see when they join the fan page or comment on your status.
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    Submit your website to top social bookmarking sites to create a back link to your website, which will increase you page rank as well.
20. 20
    Sign up to yahoo answers and leave great helpful comments to questions people are asking for, leaving a link back to your site with more helpful tips on it.
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    Stay on topic. All this socializing, forum commenting and question answering ought to be on your website's main topic. The more your activity and site content match in topic, the more likely the right people find it. The more targeted your affiliate links are to the topic, the better you'll do with them too. People don't mind advertising that's on topic, it starts to look like a convenience directory rather than irritating commercials.

Screenshot Tour of Android 3.0 Honeycomb, Built for Tablets

Google gave us a glimpse of Android 3.0 Honeycomb earlier this year, but today they released more details on the upcoming OS. Here's a look through what we can expect. Spoiler alert: It's awesome, and it fixes many of Android's biggest annoyances.

The Tablet UI

The biggest change in Android 3.0 is the general layout of the UI. Since it's built specifically for tablets, you have much more space on your home screen for icons and widgets. This is a pretty stark contrast to the iPad, which just enlarged the iPhone's 4x4 grid with big, spaced out icons—as you can see in the screenshot above, you actually have a much denser grid than you would on an Android phone, meaning you can pack a whole lot of stuff into one home screen.

The Notification Bar

The notification bar has been moved to the bottom of the screen, and they've added a few navigation buttons to it that seem to take the place of the capacative hardware buttons we all know and love on our Android phones. The three buttons, from left to right, are Back, Home, and Recent Apps. The new recent apps window is pretty handy, taking advantage of the extra space to show you the current state of each running app.

The Home Screens

The home screens themselves are pretty similar to regular Android as far as functionality—you can add app shortcuts and widgets wherever you want, swipe between five different screens, and expand your app drawer to access anything not already on the home screens. That said, the entire thing has this new 3D look to it that's really awesome (which we caught a glimpse of in our first look). As long as the hardware can keep up with the new UI, it'll be pretty awesome (we all remember how laggy the original Motorola Droid was).

The Action Bar

Probably the most welcome change in the new UI, however, is what Google is calling the Action Bar. In every application, the top bar is reserved for contextual options, navigation, or other buttons. The Email app, for example, has a new message button and a refresh button at the top. When you select a message, that action bar changes to display a move to folder button, a mark as read button, a star message button, and a delete button. Of course, it also has dropdown menus for any buttons that overflow off to the side.
Why is this so awesome? These are the kinds of buttons that, on the 2.0 cycle of Android, are usually buried in menus that you access with your phones Menu button. Now, instead of having to hit Menu (and God forbid a "More" button), those options will be available right at the top of your screen. Really, this is one of my biggest complaints about Android, and it makes me wonder why we don't have this action bar in 2.x, too.

Keyboard and Copy/Paste

The new soft keyboard is an improvement over the iteration we're all familiar with, including larger, reshaped keys for easier targeting. What's cooler is that it also includes some keys we're more familiar with on full keyboards, like Tab, which will make us desktop users more comfortable.

Copy and paste on Android has never been the most friendly feature, but 3.0 takes a step in the right direction by making it a much faster affair: just long-press on any text and it will select that word. From there, you can drag the selection area to include more text. The action bar will also show Select All, Cut, Copy and Share buttons while you're selecting text too, which is fantastic (seriously, why isn't that action bar in Android already?). Overall, working with text in Android 3.0 is going to be a much more pleasant experience.

Tablet-Optimized Core Apps

There aren't any Google apps in the SDK (like Gmail or Google Talk), but the non-Google core apps like the Browser, Camera, Contacts, and Email have all been updated to more efficiently use the extra space you'll get with a tablet. The browser has tabs built in (hallelujah!), bookmark syncing with Chrome (double hallelujah!), Incognito mode (ahem), and automatic sign in to Google sites using the Google account tied to your device. I don't need to tell you guys how cool all these features are. These are usually things we have to download an alternate browser for, both on Android and iOS. This is a big step forward.

The other core apps aren't quite as revolutionary, but still nicely redesigned. The camera app is definitely cool (see above), and the Contacts and Email app are basically two-pane versions of the same apps we already know and love—not unlike the difference between the iPhone and iPad versions of Contacts and Mail in iOS. They're a good use of space, but nothing revolutionary (unless you're counting the aforementioned action bar that I still can't get over).