Recently I created the Women and Web Content Survey. As part of that survey, I invited respondents to ASK ME ANYTHING. Of the almost 400 replies (to date) more than 80 women asked questions Most of them were very similar in concept and content, making it easy to create answers that will appeal to many. So I created an “Ask Me Anything“ category on Redhead Marketing. You can read the answers to these questions on this blog. Here is the first question:

What is the best, most effective way to drive traffic to your website?

There are dozens, make that hundreds of ways to drive traffic to a website. If you have a limited budget then organic (natural) SEO (search engine optimization) is the best way to do that. Here are 25 Organic SEO tactics that are free (except for your time and effort):

1. Provide quality content, products, and/or services

2. Give something away

3. Optimize you website with the proper tags, descriptions and seo

4. Create a Video

5. Create a brandable e-book

6. Start Blogging

7. Use social bookmarking sites

8. Use an RSS feed

9. Provide free content for other blogs/websites

10. Get traffic with Linkbait

11. Build Traffic with a Contest or Challenge

12. Make it easy for visitors to refer others

13. Make it easy for readers to email your site/page to a friend

14. Offer a digital download (such as a game or software) that carries your message

15. Offer an e-card/e-comment service

16. Build a community

17. Write articles for ezines and article publishers

18. Submit Your Site to Web Directories and Build Targeted Traffic

19. Let others market your product or service with an affiliate program.

20. Write press releases

21. Take your marketing offline

22.Submit your site to Free Advertising websites

23. Leverage Social media to promote your website

24. Capitalize on your email signature with links to your site

24. Write an ezine

25. Take your marketing offline

I am going to share three of my favorite ways to drive traffic to your site:

#1. Provide quality content, products, and/or services – Providing quality content, products, or service is by far the best way to build your reputation, and build repeat traffic to your site. Research has shown that on average, when someone has a positive experience they will tell two other people about that experience. On the other hand, if they have had a bad experience, they will tell seven other people. You want people to tell others about a positive experience. One that gets them to come back again and again. It is called viral word of mouth marketing.

In order to build your reputation online, you must provide content that showcases your expertise in a way that others are not doing. You cannot do this by rehashing what has been done on thousands of sites before. You need to add your own voice and experience to the mix. As you begin building your reputation you can approach other online professionals (such as bloggers) and collaborate, share resources information and ideas. Work with others to raise your credibility by providing them with content that your competition is not. This could be in the form of news, education or inspiration (or a combination). Think Wikipedia. They started out as a small simple online encyclopedia and before long word spread that they had something that could be shared among all websites via links back to Wikipedia’s content. That is what YOU Want to do!

By the way, you don’t have to do it all yourself. If you don’t like to write, hire a freelancer. You can find copywriters, bloggers, and other content experts on elance, fiverr and industry specific sites. Connect with them and see how you could use their content to enhance your website. The most important thing is to maintain quality content, superior service sand products your target audience wants and needs.

#2. Give Something Away – There are thousands (maybe millions) of sites giving things away every day. And one would think that would dilute the value. NOT. One of the best examples is Gmail. Gmail is a free email service provided by Google (the number one search engine and website in the world) that anyone can sign up for to receive email. Google realized early on that if they wanted to be number one and remain that way they would have to find ways to get people coming back to their site over and over. They started by being a “directory” of sorts (search engine) where people could go to find information and websites. They continue to evolve by providing other great offerings for FREE the latest of which is Google+ (I will be writing about that soon). They know that in order to keep their position as number one they MUST continue to provide value and what people want. Otherwise they will get overtaken by Facebook and maybe even Bing one day.

Some of the things you could give away are software, ebooks, special reports, widgets, plugins, videos, tutorials, etc. etc. When you give something of value away you can drive traffic, create a buzz and ultimately add to your bottom line.

#3. BLOG – Blogging is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website. It is an effective tool for communicating with your customers and target audience to share your knowledge, expertise and ultimately build credibility. The keyword here is targeted and direct. Blogs that do best are those that have a specific topic or purpose for “being.” Some examples of effective blogs include: The Huffington Post, TechCrunch, Lifehacker and Laughing Squid (all ranked in the top 40 blogs according to Technorati, the leading blog search engine and directory.

Blogs are easy to create and maintain, cost effective and provide your business with a chance to spread your expertise and knowledge to a much larger audience. Updating a blog is easier and quicker than waiting for your web designer to make changes to your website. And the search engines love blogs. The information is diseminated into cyberspace instantaneously via something called RSS (which stands for really simple syndication – they should put an “F” in there for FAST too). When you update a web page it could take days, weeks and even months for the search engines to notice. When you do the same with a blog, they find out quicker than you can snap your fingers. Contrary to what most people think, blogging does not have to be done EVERY day to be effective. In fact, once a week is good to begin with. You can even write content for your blog and set the content to be published any time you want. An example is this whole concept I started of Asking me Anything. I am writing several posts to be published over the course of a couple of weeks and when they do they will appear like “magic” on my blog giving Redhead Marketing, Inc. fresh content on a regular basis.

If you only did these three things today you would see a big change in your traffic almost overnight. I will elaborate on each of these tactics in the weeks and months to come. As I write about them, will link back to this list. Good luck with increasing your website traffic goals!