10 Ways to Get All the Traffic You Need without Google

One of the biggest fallacies that most new Internet entrepreneurs tend to believe is that Google is “God.” They tend to think that they must rank well in the Google rankings in order to be able to succeed online. Now I’m not going to tell you that Google doesn’t matter – it does. However, it is perfectly possible to get all the traffic you want while utterly bypassing Google. Here are ten ways to do the job:

Article Marketing

Anyone who has been around the IM world for a while has probably heard this term and or the term BUM marketing. The version of article marketing that most people are familiar with though doesn’t work at all. Most people think article marketing refers to putting thousands of spun crap articles onto article directory websites and hoping the links will get you ranked in Google.

The truth however is that real article marketing doesn’t rely on Google at all. Real article marketing means you write extremely high quality articles which you syndicate out to major websites and newsletters and then get direct traffic from them.

You can start by putting the best stuff you can create into article directories (make sure you put it on your site first and get it indexed). Remember by the way that you don’t need to bother worrying about making each one unique. Your goal is to get your stuff found by quality sites, not to get the links indexed by Google.

Video Marketing

Put your videos up with plenty of links back to your website and people will find your videos directly on the video sharing websites. No need to worry about using Google to get your videos noticed. Oh and by the way, make sure you videos are fun to look at so that people will actually take the time to look at them and look at your website.

News Releases

Another great way to get traffic is to use news releases which will allow you to get your links directly in front of potential customers by having them appear in major newspapers and websites. This is similar to article marketing, though your goal with doing this is a bit different. Instead of focusing on major websites and newsletters which are looking to syndicate content, you’d get your stuff onto news aggregators. Again, there is no need for Google because the news aggregators get their own direct traffic which will be redirected to your website.

The thing is, if you want to put out news releases which will actually get read, then you should either be a professional writer or hire one who knows what he or she is doing. Don’t try to pretend that you can pass around a piece of worthless junk which nobody will care about and actually get any kind of traction from sending out your news releases. It just doesn’t work that way.

Software Marketing

Another often overlooked method of getting traffic is to use software marketing. The idea here is that you put together a useful utility which people will actually want to download (and no, you don’t need to know programming – you can simply hire someone else to do the job for you at a site like Elance or oDesk) and the insert links to your website within the software to get people to come to your site and purchase additional products that you have available for sale.

Blog Commenting

I know that blog commenting is a popular method of getting backlinks to your website and that’s very true – it is. However, what you may not realize is that it’s also a great way to get traffic directly to your website. The key here is to be amongst the first ten or so people to comment on an article on a very popular blog. Then, you need to make your blog comment really interesting and actually worthwhile. People will click the link back to your own website simply because they are curious about what you have to say since they felt that what you said on the blog comment was so insightful. Of course, this does mean that you need to write insightful comments and you can forget about spinning or writing “thanks, I learned a lot.” Your comments need to be so interesting and insightful that people will feel compelled to click them.

Publicity Stunts

I love publicity stunts as a way of generating real traffic to your website without Google. They’re fun and they’re not nearly as difficult as you might imagine. Now yes, you could do a publicity stunt where you take a car and have it go flying off of a tall building or where you give away free airline tickets to everyone in Oprah’s audience. However, it’s also possible to do publicity stunts which require less monetary investment. The key here is imagination.

One of the best that I’ve ever heard of was a dating website which required all members to be “beautiful people.” They released a news release claiming that a virus (called Shrek – as in the troll, get it?) had infected their system and allowed lots of ugly people to register. It was faked, but it also got lots of attention and didn’t cost them anything more than the cost of a news release to let the world know about it. Again, the key is imagination.

Joint Ventures

Drop by the Warrior Forum or some of the other popular sites for doing Internet Marketing and make a name for yourself with people in your particular industry. Then, look for chances to create joint ventures with others who may want to partner with you on creating a cool product. You can piggyback off of their mailing list and never need to worry about whether or not the Google gods will shine on you.

Solo Ads

I know you likely know about things like Adsense, however, one of the most often overlooked methods of getting plenty of traffic to your website is to use solo ads. This means that you purchase ads directly from the owner of a popular blog or website. The nice thing is that you can often get such ads for next to nothing. I have seen people get deals for as little as $10-$15 per month for sites which gets thousands of hits a month. More typical is around $30-$50 per month, though even that is insanely cheap.

Ads on Other People’s Videos

This is another cool idea I came across a while back. Instead of doing your own videos, look for videos on YouTube which actually have good traffic already and which currently don’t have a video link included in them. You can then contact these people and pay them a minimal sum of money to include a link to your website on their ads. The great thing about this is that it means that you get lots of viral traffic without ever worrying about Google.

Good Old Fashioned Word of Mouth

Finally, don’t forget about your own existing customer base – they’re likely to be one of your best sources of traffic. Just offer people who already like you some kind of incentive for bringing their friends into the fold and you’ll never need to worry about traffic from Google again.

Bottom Line

The bottom line is this: yes, Google is important. However, it’s a travesty to assume that you simply MUST rank well in the Google rankings in order to make money online.

Tagged google, internet marketing, traffic