8 Free Ways to Grow Your Site’s Traffic

1. Make Your Site SEO-Friendly From the Start
Plan and build your site with SEO in mind. If you’re just beginning, check out these helpful tips. Keep your page topics focused, add keywords to your content, and tag your images, too. If you’ve already built your site, go back and revamp. (Another reason it’s great to be able to update your own site!)

2. Help Your Customers Find You
Before your future customers can visit your site, they’ll need to find it, which means that first, search engines need to find your site. Make your site more attractive to search engines so they can index it by strengthening your site’s SEO (search engine optimization). Start here for some helpful hints, and read on for even more ideas.

3. Help Your Neighbors Find You
Optimize your site for local searches (keywords plus a location) with these helpful ideas.

4. Create Great Content and Keep It Fresh
Keep your content lively and current. Start with good, informative content and update it regularly. Include seasonal messages and offers, change images, add current products. Your site should look and feel open for business every day, with new information that keeps customers coming back.

5. Key Up Your Keywords
Use the most-searched keywords to raise your chances of being found. Google’s Wonder Wheel keyword research tool is one great, free way to find the top search terms for your business.

6. Set Your Site Apart with Metadata
Add unique title, description, and keywords to each of your site’s pages. Search bots pay close attention to this metadata. Also, make sure subheads on each page contain a keyword or two, and don’t forget to tag your images.

7. Build Your Own Buzz

• Start a blog to share your expertise, connect with new customers, and build your network.
• Reach out to bloggers, local news sites, and online journalists who write about your area of business. Promoting yourself online takes some initiative – but with a little work and these tips, you can give your site a higher profile.
• Add social media to your site to expand your reach and get the word out. Place Twitter and Facebook buttons on your site. Share your site through Digg or StumbleUpon. And take a look at this post for more great ideas.

8. Research, Analyze, Measure
It’s also important to measure and to analyze your growing traffic to see how you’re doing and where you could improve. Check out our top 20 free SEO tools to help you achieve your goals. Your site is a work in progress, and you can always keep improving it.

- See more at: http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2011/06/8-free-ways-to-grow-your-site%E2%80%99s-traffic-and-3-that-cost-money.html/#sthash.rPJwIggw.dpuf