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Getting traffic to your website can be one of the hardest parts of your online business. When I started online I listened to all the gurus telling me that getting on the top 3 on the first page of google was the only way of generating free traffic.

SEO can be very tempting to newcomers because it feels like an easy free traffic strategy. However, the truth is that SEO is getting harder and harder and a lot more competitive.

It is very easy to get carried away buying all the seo tools the gurus recommend and spend hundreds of dollars with little results unless you know what you are doing. You can hire an expert to do it for you but that can be expensive as well.

So what are the alternatives?

Here are my 7 awesome methods to get traffic to your site. Some are free and some are paid, you can use these to great effect if you actually take action and use them.

1. Viral Videos

Grab a video with several million views from YouTube and embed it in your blog. There’s a great chance that people will email the link to your page around to their friends and contacts after they’ve viewed it.

Here’s another example:

2. Guest Posting

A terrific strategy that costs nothing and only involves you writing an article. Find a high traffic blog in your niche and get your article posted on it. You can find blogs to post on by searching for the name of your niche and the words, “write for us” in Google. I’ve had some good results with Guest Posting and I highly recommend it to you.

3. Keyword Targeting

This is SEO based. Choose a keyword in the Google Keyword Tool that has a decent amount of searches (at least 1,000 per month), write a blog post on it and build some links to that post. You can build the links yourself or alternatively hire someone on fiverr.com or oDesk to do the job for you.

4. Blog Comments

This is underrated. It is true that a single blog comment will only drive a handful of visitors to your squeeze page or blog. But blog comments are a GREAT way of getting on the radar of high profile influencers in your niche who often get their emails filtered by a virtual assistant.

Once you’re on the radar and have demonstrated that you can add value (by posting your comment) then you can contact them directly and start building a relationship.

Propose an interview on Skype, a guest post, offer them some free content, etc. This approach is what I like to call “The Traffic Escalator” principle.

You start with quick and simple traffic strategies and escalate them into more powerful ones! For me blog comments have been the “seed” of some great relationships with other marketers. They can really lead to a great deal more traffic down the road.

5. Banner Ads

Search Google for the name of your niche and “advertise with us” to find websites that accept banner ads. Then approach the site owner and propose a test display of your banner for a month.

Test the opt-in conversions and work out how much each subscriber is costing you (e.g., if you get 100 subscribers and the banner cost $30 then the cost per subscriber is $0.30).

Then develop longer term deals with the sites that are working best. You can get a banner designed that will link to your squeeze page on fiverr.com. Tip: Ugly banners tend to work best!

6. Offering Free Content

Contact product creators in your niche and ask them if you can provide a bonus for their product. To access the bonus their customers must first sign up to your list.

So this is a great way of adding new subscribers who are paying customers (worth at least 10x the value of free information seekers!) You could create a video, audio interview with an expert, cheat sheet or eBook.

7. Interviews

Conducting interviews are a great way to get started if you feel that you are not an expert in your niche. It also allows you to learn for free and make contact with key players in your marketplace.

You also gain a huge power of association by aligning yourself with these experts. After your interview, again use The Traffic Escalator principle to build the relationship with that expert further. Can you guest post for them? How about offering them free content?

That`s it for now, keep checking back for more useful information to help you with your business, all you need to do know is take action.

To your continued success

Mike