5 Fast Ways to Get Traffic for a New Website

When it comes to the long-term traffic potential of marketing strategies, content marketing and SEO will usually offer you the biggest return on your investment. They naturally lend themselves to compounding returns over time, and have virtually no risk - as long as you execute them correctly. However, there’s one major disadvantage to these strategies; they take a long time to set up and start returning a positive ROI. Building SEO momentum takes months or years, and when you’re launching a new site, you want traffic fast.

So what do you do if you want to get traffic fast? There are a few options, each with advantages and disadvantages. These are some of the outright fastest:

1. Guest Post. Guest posts serve multiple functions, but there are two which make them a selling point for those after fast gains. First, guest posts connect you with authorities who already have established audiences. Take TechCrunch as an example - its readership is in the millions, so if you can get your brand featured there, you can lean on that visibility. Unfortunately, the more visible the publisher, the harder it is to get featured, so set your sights on something smaller to start.

2. Build Your Social Media Audience. Social audience building can be unpredictable, but if you have your priorities in order, it’s an effective and fast way to scale your potential user base. Here’s why: on social media, you can engage with users publicly and directly. You can use content to start attracting an audience naturally or ads (more on those in a moment) to funnel traffic directly, but more importantly, you can actually engage with people.

3. Leverage Influencers.Remember what I said about high-profile publishers being a shortcut to a wider audience? Influencers basically work the same way, except you’ll be engaging with an individual rather than hosting your client on an external site. You can find influencers in your industry by crawling the social media world or finding one through search.

4. Use Paid Ads. Paid advertising is my least favorite of the strategies listed here, but it’s an important option to mention. Why is it my least favorite? Because it has the lowest long-term potential. You’ll pay upfront for a guaranteed stream of inbound traffic to your site, which may be valuable, but once you withdraw that budget, the ads are turned off and your stream becomes defunct.

Compare that to something like influencer leveraging, which gives you a new relationship to draw upon in your industry, or social marketing, where your audience sticks around (practically) forever. Advertising is a good strategy that’s both fast and profitable, but it just doesn’t have the potential growth or gains that organic strategies offer. With that said, here are some good options for fast paid traffic:

• StumbleUpon ads
• Reddit ads
• Facebook ads
• Twitter ads
• LinkedIn ads
• Google Adwords
• Bing ads

5. Run Contests and Promotions. Contests and promotions are somewhat like paid advertising in the sense that you’ll have to make an upfront investment - usually in a hot consumer product, a gift card, or something similarly valuable. Then, you ask your users to engage in some behavior to be entered into the contest (such as liking or sharing your post on social media).

Contests are powerful because they naturally spread themselves - users like to share these opportunities, and it’s a good way to get widespread visibility quickly. You might even have a long-term benefit if the social users who engage with your contest end up following your brand. The key is to find the right contest - one that’s original, valuable, and interesting to your key demographics.

Remember that “fast” traffic isn’t always good traffic, and it doesn’t always mean you’re getting a good return on your investment. When it comes to the long-term return on every dollar spent, SEO and content marketing beat paid advertising almost every time (assuming proper strategic positioning). Think of it like buying seeds to grow your own vegetables versus buying the vegetables directly from the store; with the right time and care, your garden will return far more riches to your initial investments, but sometimes you need a shortcut to tide you over. Try to keep these short-term methods in balance with your long-term strategies to reap the benefits of both.

39 Ways to Get More Social Media Followers

Social media marketing works only if you actually have fans or followers. This article will walk you through 39 proven methods for increasing your followers across your social media accounts. There are three underlying elements that must take place in order for these to work:

You must be consistent. If you use any (or all) of these strategies for two weeks, and then give up and move onto something else, they won't work. These need to be practiced consistently over the long haul to be effective. If you have limited time and resources to commit to social media, I'd recommend choosing only a handful of these strategies and then making sure you carry them out consistently.

You must know what your audience really wants. What you think they want and what they actually want may very well be two different things. Take a look at your analytics to see which types of posts and content have been most popular; this is what they want to see more of.

You must be a good social media citizen. While some of the tips may seem more like social media best practices, keep in mind that growing on social media is as much about keeping your current followers as it is about gaining new ones.

39 Strategies for Increasing Your Fans and Followers

1. Reach out to influencers: Find influencers in your niche using a tool such as Buzzsumo, and then share their content, tag or mention them, or comment on their blogs.

2. Put social share buttons on each blog post: Make sure you include social media share buttons on each blog post, not just in your sidebar. This plugin for WordPress can help with that.

3. Post original, relevant content: This requires some outside-the-box thinking. Sharing other people's content should be a valuable part of your strategy, but make sure to share your knowledge and insights as well.

4. Periodically channel your email subscribers to your social media accounts: Every once in a while, encourage your email subscribers to follow you on social media.

5. Link to your social media accounts on your Contact and About Us pages: These visitors are already reaching out to you; give them another way to connect with you.

6. Identify popular posts to get more shares: Getting new fans often comes down to how often your content gets shared. A tool like Fanpage Karma can help you identify the most popular posts in your niche.

7. Be responsive: Posting engaging content is just one piece of the puzzle. Respond to questions, comments, and complaints in a timely manner.

8. Hold giveaways and contests: Hold contests and make liking your Page or following your Twitter account a requirement for entry. Rafflecopter is a fantastic tool for this.

9. Actively find and follow others: Don't just count on others to find you; go out and actively find others in your niche whom you can follow and engage with.

10. Tell stories: To avoid being overtly promotional, use stories to connect with and engage your fans. Stories are far more likely to be shared than promotional content.

11. Use relevant hashtags: Use a tool like Hashtagify.me to find relevant and trending hashtags. Use these in your posts to attract new followers who are searching for those hashtags.

12. Streamline your efforts: Being active and engaged on a few social networks will net you more followers over the long haul than sporadically posting on many networks.

13. Post viral content: Easier said than done, right? Post Planner can help by providing you with images and content that have been proven to go viral.

14. Post often: Optimal posting frequency will differ between networks and audiences. Test out different posting frequencies and see which ones result in the most engagement and shares.

15. Focus on quality over quantity: While posting often is important, social media growth is more likely to happen when you're focusing on sharing amazing, quality content that you know your audience loves.

16. Link to your social media accounts everywhere: Don't be shy about linking to your social media accounts. Do so in your newsletter, email signature, blog, etc.

17. Discuss social media conversations on your blog: Entice your blog readers to follow you on social media by crossing the blog/social network divide. Blog about heated or interesting conversations taking place on your social media accounts.

18. Offer incentives for people to follow or like you: Offer your social media followers exclusive discounts, freebies, or coupon codes.

19. Guest blog on popular niche sites: Regularly contribute guest posts to popular niche sites and link to your social media accounts in your bio

20. Add Facebook and Twitter widgets to your site: Go beyond simple social media icons, and use a Facebook Like Box or Twitter Embedded Timeline on your site or blog.

21. Promote your social accounts in-store: Offer your in-store guests an incentive to like or follow you on social media.

22. Try Facebook's promoted posts: Extend your reach by promoting posts that have a history of getting engagement.

23. Give stuff away: Incentivize likes and follows by giving away free product samples or prizes for new fans or followers.

24. Cross-promote with a complimentary business in your niche: Connect with other businesses in your niche and promote each other's social media content.

25. Build network-specific landing pages: Create landing pages on your site for visitors from each social network you're on, and then link to these pages in your social media bios. This may increase your follows only marginally, but you should see an increase in traffic and conversions.

26. Provide valuable education without being a know-it-all: Unique, valuable content that only you know has a great chance of getting shared. Think about what info or insights you can provide based on your unique experiences and industry knowledge.

27. Use humor: Evoking emotions (positive or negative) through your posts is great for increased sharing; however, posting funny or happy content will net you more sharing overall.

28. Reshare other people's content: Share posts, images, and tweets from other businesses, and they'll be more likely to share yours.

29. Become a valued member in an industry LinkedIn group: As you provide valuable insights, group members will be more likely to want to hear more from you on social media.

30. Create topical boards on Pinterest: When naming Pinterest boards, be sure to target keywords people are actually searching for. To see what people are looking for, start typing possible keywords into the Pinterest search box, and see which keywords are auto-suggested.

31. Set a goal: Set short-term, specific goals for how many new fans or followers you want. This will help you keep your efforts focused and give you the best chance of actually achieving your goal.

32. Be a source of trending content and breaking news: Set up Facebook Interest lists and follow leading industry sources on Twitter, and then share breaking news with your followers.

33. Post only your best photos on Instagram: This suggestion goes along with an earlier one--focus on quality over quantity. With users having shared over 20 billion photos to date, posting a ton of poor quality images isn't going to get you far. Choose your best four to six photos each day and share the cream of the crop.

34. Be relatable: Let your fans and followers know you're a real person rather than a faceless business; this will make sharing your content with their friends feel like less of a risk.

35. Cross-promote your social media accounts: Periodically promote your other social media accounts to your fans and followers.

36. Answer questions on abandoned Facebook Pages: You'd be surprised at how many big brands have massive numbers of Facebook fans, and yet virtually ignore the questions and comments these fans leave. Respond in a helpful, non-promotional way to unanswered questions (and be sure to answer as your Page).

37. Include a social media call to action on your business card: Hand these out at trade shows, networking events, and speaking engagements.

38. Make sure your social media usernames are consistent: If you want people to actually find you when they search for you by name, make sure your account handles and usernames match your business name. Avoid abbreviations whenever possible.

39. Make your blog content tweetable with a click: Use a plugin such as Inline Tweet Sharer to encourage visitors to share your tweetable content.

On page SEO Checklist

Here is the final checklist which you need to follow in 2016 to make sure your content rank higher in search engine.

Keyword placement:

• Keyword in Title
• Keyword in Permalink
• Keyword in first paragraph
• Keyword in Image Alt tag
• Tweaked Keyword in H2 or H3
• Bold Important Keywords and related keywords
• Italics 1-2 important Keywords
• Outbound Link to relevant high-quality sites
• Internal links to related articles
• Remove all stop words from Permalink
• Add multi-media (Video, Slides, Inforgraphic)
• Longer the content length, better it is. Minimum: 700 words
• Optimize image before uploading (Compress and resize)
• Page loading time
• Use LSI Keywords (Use Google search to find related Keywords)

Other things:

• Use Meta title in less than 65 character
• Use Meta description in less than 150 characters.
• If using any Social SEO plugin, make sure to add image for Facebook, Twitter. (Take advantage of social graph)
• Make sure to have social sharing buttons at the end of post or floating social sharing buttons.
• Have related posts after blog posts to lower down bounce rate.

Things not to do:

• Not more than 1 H1 tag (Your Post title is H1 tag)
• Don’t repeat H2 and H3 Tag
• Don’t increase Keyword density by more than 1.25%

Things to focus on:

• Try to use Keyword in Post Title at beginning
• Use Long tail keywords (You can use up to 65 Character in Post title)
• If writing in evergreen niche, remove dates from the posts. (Use Date Exclusion SEO plugin)
• Content length: The longer the length of the content, better it is. Though don’t try to uselessly increase the content size.
• At the end of blog post, ask users to take action.

SEO - Tactics & Methods

SEO techniques are classified into two broad categories:

• White Hat SEO - Techniques that search engines recommend as part of a good design.
• Black Hat SEO - Techniques that search engines do not approve and attempt to minimize the effect of. These techniques are also known as spamdexing.

White Hat SEO

An SEO tactic is considered as White Hat if it has the following features:

• It conforms to the search engine's guidelines.
• It does not involve in any deception.
• It ensures that the content a search engine indexes, and subsequently ranks, is the same content a user will see.
• It ensures that a web page content should have been created for the users and not just for the search engines.
• It ensures good quality of the web pages.
• It ensures availability of useful content on the web pages.

Always follow a White Hat SEO tactic and do not try to fool your site visitors. Be honest and you will definitely get something more.

Black Hat or Spamdexing

An SEO tactic, is considered as Black Hat or Spamdexing if it has the following features:

• Attempting ranking improvements that are disapproved by the search engines and/or involve deception.
• Redirecting users from a page that is built for search engines to one that is more human friendly.
• Redirecting users to a page that was different from the page the search engine ranked.
• Serving one version of a page to search engine spiders/bots and another version to human visitors. This is called Cloaking SEO tactic.
• Using hidden or invisible text or with the page background color, using a tiny font size or hiding them within the HTML code such as "no frame" sections.
• Repeating keywords in the metatags, and using keywords that are unrelated to the website content. This is called metatag stuffing.
• Calculated placement of keywords within a page to raise the keyword count, variety, and density of the page. This is called keyword stuffing.
• Creating low-quality web pages that contain very little content but are instead stuffed with very similar keywords and phrases. These pages are called Doorway or Gateway Pages.
• Mirror websites by hosting multiple websites - all with conceptually similar content but using different URLs.
• Creating a rogue copy of a popular website which shows contents similar to the original to a web crawler, but redirects web surfers to unrelated or malicious websites. This is called page hijacking.

Always stay away from any of the above Black Hat tactics to improve the rank of your site. Search engines are smart enough to identify all the above properties of your site and ultimately you are not going to get anything.

How to Increase Domain Authority

What is Domain Authority?

Domain authority is a logarithmic score (ranging from 0-100) by Moz, which predicts how well a domain (web page) will rank in the search engine results. It is based on some other factors like Moz Rank, Moz Trust, social signals, linking root domains, total backlink profile, user experience, site loading time, traffic, etc.

Scoring a DA of 30 from 20 is easier than getting it to 90 from 80. Often authoritative sites like Wikipedia, Facebook and Google itself enjoy the ultimate DA score of 100. But that doesn’t mean sites with DA 50-90 are considered inferior.

It is a comparative value which means your site might see a degradation of domain authority if it is not updated or does not hold the quality signals true.

Domain Authority Vs Page Authority

Domain authority must not be confused with page authority that is a completely different metric. While domain authority gives you the ranking of the site as a whole, page authority is the score of that single page in question.

Domain authority is constant across the whole site, but page authority changes across sub-domains of the same root domain.

Domain Authority Factors

1. Linking root domains
2. Moz Rank
3. Moz trust
4. Quality content
5. Social signals
6. Search engine friendliness

How To Increase Your Domain Authority?

Earn links from more sites

• Start marketing your content
• Not only diversification, but you also need a clean link profile
• Build a well-planned internal link structure
• Write epic content and nothing less than that
• Off page SEO

                    Guest posting

                    Social bookmarking sites

                    Blog Commenting

• Social media optimization
• Increase user friendliness of your site
• Have patience, let your domain grow

How To Check Your Domain Authority?

You can check your domain authority by using the official toolbar from Moz. Alternatively, you can calculate your domain authority by going to opensiteexplorer.

Other handy free domain authority checker tools are Moonsy and Smallseotools. (Read SmallSeoTools review)

What is a Good Domain Authority Score?

Domain authority is a number, and you can always hope to increase it. Anyone with a DA score of 10 would want to achieve 20 in the next update, and similarly someone with DA 52 would hope to make it 75 the next time. So it’s a relative factor.

Having a domain authority of above 50 is often considered an achievement and your blog reaches the influential zone. However, it is not the zenith. Industry experts enjoy a DA ranging from 70-78 or even 80, but that’s again with aged domains being active since 8-10 years.

3 SEO Techniques Even SEOs Forget

Keyword research, link building, on-page optimization - these are all SEO strategies that get a lot of attention. For anyone who knows the first thing about SEO, these front-line strategies are hard to forget.

But there are other techniques that aren't quite as sexy, and that tend to get forgotten in favor of more obvious, first-order ranking influencers. And there's a very good reason for this: it's possible to achieve decent rankings without using any of these strategies.

That said, the three strategies below have the potential to take your SEO to the next level. Beyond basic keyword research and on-page optimization, these techniques will help you attract highly-relevant traffic that actually converts. And because you'll be working smart, you'll find it take a lot less time and effort to achieve even better results.

1. Writing content based on user intent.

SEO and content marketing work together beautifully, when done right. Unfortunately, sometimes your SEO strategies can inadvertently sabotage your content marketing efforts.

To ensure this doesn't happen, focus on creating content that matches user intent. While you may have certain keywords on your 'must-have' list, keep in mind that people who are searching for that word or phrase may have a very different intent than what you're presuming.

As a refresher, there are three main types of searches:

•     Informational: Searches where people are looking for general information (e.g., "How do I cook a turkey?")
•     Transactional: Searches where people are looking to perform some specific online action or activity (e.g., purchase a product)
•     Navigational: Where people are looking for a specific company or website (e.g., "Ford Motor Co.")

Failing to consider these 3 search types can mean all your optimization efforts are in vain. For instance, trying to rank  for informational phrases may be a waste of time and money for an e-commerce site that is looking for purchases (conversions).

So, how can you avoid this? When determining which keyword phrases you're going to target, do some due diligence. I recommend plugging your keywords into Google, and examining the SERPs to see what comes up. Because Google has gotten pretty good at determining search intent, you can use the top ranking pages to give you an idea of what people are actually looking for.

2. Networking.

Because many of the tasks related to SEO can be done in isolation, it's easy to get stuck in your own little SEO 'bubble'. But networking - particularly online networking - is absolutely critical for establishing mutually-beneficial relationships and opportunities.

There are a number of ways networking is imperative for SEO, but here are three of the most important.

Establishing guest blogging relationships: Cultivating relationships with other site owners and publications is A LOT of work. Big sites will often want to work with you on a piecemeal basis until you've proven that you can provide excellent content...and that you aren't just churning out content to boost your own rankings.

Connecting with influencers: There's no substitute for authenticity and trust when it comes to building your brand online. With so much content being produced and pushed every single day, anything you can do to stand out from the crowd is important. Having a key player in your field endorse, mention or promote your content can be HUGE; because even if you have zero credibility on your own, you are essentially 'borrowing' theirs.

Increased reach and potential for external links: We can't forget social networking. While we know that social sharing and engagement doesn't have a direct impact on search rankings, the indirect benefits are undeniable. As your content gets liked, shared, retweeted, etc., it gets in front of more people. And as more people see it, it has more potential to accumulate links - which we know does directly impact rankings.

3. Optimizing for user experience.

A good user experience essentially means visitors can easily find and consume what they need on your page. There are many factors that go into creating a positive user experience, but most come down to one thing: giving visitors exactly what they want.

According to Moz, while user experience may be a second order influencer on rankings, it's impact 'downstream' can be significant:  "Crafting a thoughtful, empathetic user experience helps ensure that visitors to your site perceive it positively, encouraging sharing, bookmarking, return visits, and inbound links—all signals that trickle down to the search engines and contribute to high rankings."

So, what elements should you incorporate in order to optimize user experience? According to Searchmetrics' 2015 Search Ranking Factors report, there are a number of user experience (UX) elements that are correlated with high rankings. Some of the most significant are:

• A well-optimized internal link structure to guide users and the search engines through your content
• Relevant images and videos within content
• Responsive design so the site is accessible on all devices
• Readable font size (average of 14 pts above the fold, 12 points below)
• Use of unordered lists to break up content into scannable chunks

There's no question that Google tracks and weighs user signals like click-through rates and time on site to use as ranking factors. The elements above will all help ensure users who click through to your site find what they need and stay on your site longer.

The three strategies above should be part of any SEO strategy. While you can potentially achieve decent rankings without doing any of them, I guarantee they'll make your job easier and help you achieve optimal rankings and conversions.

How to Master Video Marketing on LinkedIn

fter creating a marketing video, most brands distribute their videos through YouTube, Facebook, or other paid media options. But what about LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is one of the most important networks for B2B marketers. It boasts over 350 million registered users and sets itself apart with a more professional, business-savvy audience. However, most companies underutilize the platform, which means video content on the platform tends to be underutilized as well.

For marketers who do promote their videos on the channel, LinkedIn can be a goldmine. It offers a great opportunity to stand out in the crowd and promote targeted, B2B video campaigns that reach a professional audience. If your brand has yet to focus on LinkedIn, here are five ways to boost your video marketing efforts with LinkedIn and grab the attention of your prospects.

Add Interactivity to Your Profile

If your LinkedIn profile reads more like a standard resume, it won’t do you much good when trying to attract the attention of media and potential clients. Instead, you can optimize your profile to highlight your brand’s marketing messages with video. LinkedIn provides several ways to include video content in your profile, starting with the ‘Summary’ section. Here you can place an ‘About Us’ or explainer video that complements your text ‘About Us’ or summary.

You can also add video content to the ‘Experience’ section of your LinkedIn page. Videos are displayed under your recommendations, so this is the ideal spot to place customer testimonial videos.

You can even create exclusive customer testimonial videos for LinkedIn - or offer your own video recommendations to your partners and colleagues that they can post under their LinkedIn ‘Experience’ section. This is a great way to get others to spread the word about your company through engaging video content.

Video Updates

One of the simplest ways to boost engagement on LinkedIn with video is by posting video updates. You can share your latest marketing videos and even tag other companies. If you wish to upload your videos to YouTube first and then paste the link in your update post, LinkedIn will use YouTube’s metadata (titles, descriptions, and thumbnail previews) which is also beneficial for SEO.

Sharing your marketing videos on LinkedIn keeps your profile fresh and helps your prospectives stay up-to-date with your company news.

Use Video in LinkedIn Groups

There are thousands of groups on LinkedIn and there’s a good chance a few dozen of these groups are specific to your industry. Take advantage of these popular professional hangouts and start a discussion by posting your video content here. All you have to do is paste your video links in the body of a new discussion field. You can also include relevant videos within a reply to someone else’s discussion.

Actively participating in LinkedIn groups can help establish your brand as an industry leader and video can humanize your efforts. These groups and discussions are also great for staying on top of industry trends, competitors’ news, and discovering new ideas for your digital marketing campaigns.

So if you have great video content to share, why not try posting it on LinkedIn? It’s easy to do, and not many businesses are doing it yet so your video posts are guaranteed to stand out in the sea of link/text only posts.