How to Get Traffic to Your Website Using White Hat Methods

You have put a lot of work into what you see as a masterpiece. Whether it is a website, an article on HubPages or any other site out there, you want people to see your work. Maybe there are affiliate links or maybe you have an online store. It's even possible to just have the desire to have others see your work.

There are many black hat methods for promoting websites. Spam blogs, spam emails, link farms and using a bot to insert backlinks onto forums and websites are just a few. Those methods may bring you a lot of traffic over the short term, until Google puts it together and sandboxes your site. Ouch.

Good things come to those who wait.

Slow and steady wins the race.

Should I go on or do you catch where I'm going with that?

The best and safest methods to gaining useful traffic to your website or Hub are white hat methods. If you are looking for instant gratification, you won't find it with white hat, but what you will find is a gradual increase over time that is made of useful visitors that actually want to read or look at what you are offering. This is especially useful if you are selling a product or service or are looking for affiliate income from clicks or purchases.

What good is a visitor if they aren't going to click or buy? By using white hat SEO methods, you may not get a million visitors a day but the visitors that you do get will already be engaged in the content that you are about to show them.

1. Don't over saturate your posts with self promotion.
2. Do participate and comment on what other's are saying.
3. Don't ignore your audience!
4. Do offer to promote others so they will promote you.
5. Don't post anything that makes your credibility questionable.
6. Do keep it respectable and clean.

• Facebook- The mega giant of social media has an unlimited number of individuals who will be interested in your site. You just have to find them!
• Twitter- Another large social media site. Remember to grow your followers organically. Stay away from paying for followers or falling into the "follow for follow" trap.
• Myspace- Not what it once was but by simply posting a link to an update, new page, etc. you can draw traffic to your website with minimum time investment.
• Google+- Not a powerhouse... yet but it is gaining in popularity so don't count this one out. Use it while it's new so you'll be seasoned and ready for when the crowd arrives.

The main thing to remember with social media when it comes to self promotion is to use it but don't abuse it. You don't want to be the guy who is always posting their own websites. Mix it up! Post other people's stuff too along with the general Facebook stuff that everybody posts. Keep it interesting so people will actually read your stuff and click on your links. Don't be "that guy" who is constantly self promoting.

Everyone likes people who share things because it makes them feel like they are getting something for nothing. Offer to share other's stuff and chances are, they will return the favor by promoting you as well. That's an organic backlink because you didn't do it.

• Facebook

At the moment, the big boy on the social networking scene is Facebook. I won't bore you by going into the "millions of users" spill because if you are reading this, I'm sure you already know that. If you have a Facebook account or two, use them. Anyone who is successful in social media promotion knows the value of Facebook.

• Twitter

Twitter is still a social media powerhouse but the amount of traffic that you pull from the site will depend on one thing. The quality of your followers. If you have an account that is "so so" or one that wasn't grown organically over time by people choosing to follow you because of the information you were putting out there, chances are that this won't work for you.

Many individuals jumped on the bandwagon of trying to acquire as many followers as possible without looking at WHO is following them and WHY. You can tweet all you want but if the people who are supposed to see the tweets ignore them, you are wasting your time.

If your followers are organic and interact with you, use Twitter to gain traffic to your sites. If you paid for them or did the "follow for follow" thing, ditch the account and start over before using Twitter.

• Myspace

Myspace used to be the king of social media until they made so many changes to the site that it because very user unfriendly and a lot of people jumped to Facebook. It's not quite dead yet. In fact, whether you are actually active on the site or not, Myspace can generate some genuine traffic by just having regular status updates with the webiste url and information. Not bad for a few seconds of work!

• Google +

Google+ is one of the new kids on the block. I haven't delved into this social media site as much as I would have liked to before writing this but with the unpopularity of Facebook Timeline, I know that a few people jumped over to Google+ from Facebook. From what I've seen it is similar to Facebook and user friendly with circles, conversations, etc. available to all users. As long as you interact with others on the site, there should be no reason why you can't post links to your websites and Hubs.

1. Tweet it.
2. Google+ it.
3. Facebook it.
4. Myspace it.
5. Ezine it.
6. Reddit it.
7. Read a blog and comment it.
8. Read a forum post and post it.
9. Post a notice on CraigsList for it.

In just a few minutes you can create 9 high traffic sources back to your article that will help generate organic traffic through sharing, "liking" and other activities online!

Article marketing used to be a borderline black hat method of gaining traffic to websites. Website owners were posting thousands of articles all over the web with a backlink to their website. These articles were spun, written poorly and practically useless except for the one thing. Backlinks.

Google saw this and they admit they don't care too much for article marketing but when it's done correctly and slowly over time, it has proved to draw traffic into a website or onto an article.

Did you know that you can post an article on EzineArticles.com and point it back to a HubPages article? You can. I do it all the time. After I'm finished writing an article for HubPages I always zip over there and write a quick 350 to 500 word expansion of my hub, post it and include the corresponding hub url in the resource box. It has shown to be worth the few extra minutes in time that it takes to post it.

Don't post more than one a day and keep them informative and readable! Those articles can also show up in the Google search and sometimes rank for certain keywords. That's your organic traffic that you are looking for to come to your site. They are already interested in the topic. After all, they just searched for it!

If you choose to do a little article marketing, stick with well known sites that have been around for a while like EzineArticles.com. This ensures Google that your article is in fact responsible, well written and worth a look.

There are so many different ways to build links to a site that will draw interested readers and shoppers.

• Reddit- You will need to participate in the site in order to post links but this is a FANTASTIC way to gain quality hits on your website! It's worth spending ten minutes voting and commenting on other people's posts. Post other things too, not just your own or you will quickly be labeled a spammer and your account will be closed with no warning.
• Blog Comments- Find a few blogs that are in your niche and comment on posts on a regular basis. It is important that the niche be similar to your own because the people that are there are interested in what you have to offer.
• Forum Posts- Participate in a couple of forums in your niche too! Answer questions that will establish you as an expert in that field.
• Advertise the Site on CraigsList- As long as you don't have the same exact ad in multiple cities, you can advertise your sites on CraigsList and generally it is free. I have received traffic for some of my sites from there. You can post in multiple cities but will have to rewrite the ad for each posting because they do not allow duplicates. Right now you will be limited to five cities for your account so choose wisely!
• YouTube- Create great videos to point people to your website. They don't have to be long or perfectly edited. As long as they are interesting, people will watch them! This is another great website to be involved in. Set aside a little extra time for this one because it really is worth it!

It's important to remember that you need to be an active participant in all of these suggestions. It sounds like a lot of work but a few minutes a day at each location will suffice. In less than 30 minutes per day, all of these suggestions can be completed.

There are many other websites out there for posting genuine backlinks and spreading the word about your article or website. These are just an example of what can be done in 30 minutes a day. Time management skills come in handy here and zipping from one site to another will take practice. You can take the information you have read here and use it on many more social media sites than what I have mentioned.

Sure, it's not as fast and as easy as hiring someone to post 5,000 backlinks on random websites but it's safer than taking the slap from Google when your beautifully built website on fishing supplies ends up with a backlink on a blog about weddings. That doesn't add up and Google knows this.