Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
(works, checked as of 2024)
2 years ago, in a land far, far away…
…I was reviewing my blog’s Google Analytics to see where my traffic was coming from.
To my surprise, only 60% of visitors came from Google.
Which was weird, as 90% of my efforts were focused on SEO. I learnt an important lesson that day; not to focus on a single traffic source.
Traffic is the fuel of an online business. Without it, you have no leads, no prospects, no new buyers. Which is why its so important to diversify your traffic sources and tap into different mediums.
This post is going to cover 16 more unconventional sources of traffic and how to use them.
1. Image Sharing
There are hundreds or even thousands of image sharing sites that allow users to upload images and link to their site. By uploading your images to these sites, you open up a new stream of traffic with very little effort.
Sites like Flickr (works, checked as of 2024) can drive hoards of traffic if an image of yours goes viral. If you include the URL of your site in the image itself, that will protect it from getting stolen and will result in way more traffic. Simply upload your personal images to image sharing sites.
Checkout a list of image sharing sites here (works, checked as of 2024).
2. Document Sharing Sites
Document sharing sites are an incredibly powerful source of traffic. The cool thing is you don’t have to create any new content to leverage them. Doc sharing sites are simply PDF hosting sites.
You can upload PDFs to them and people can download them. Every PDF download page shows the PDF on screen, and any links you place within the PDF also show on the web page. Which means backlinks, all you have to do is save your blog post as a PDF (add a 3rd of the post into the PDF) and place a link at the bottom back to your site.
When you upload the PDF to doc sharing sites, you’ll get backlinks and traffic. Doc sharing sites rank extremely well on Google and will send you search engine traffic. Here’s a small list of sites to submit to:
1. scribd.com (no longer available, alternatives: Academia.edu, Slideshare, ResearchGate)
2. docstoc.com (works, checked as of 2024)
3. slideshare.net (works, checked as of 2024)
4. crocodoc.com (no longer available, alternatives: PDFescape, PDFfiller, Sejda)
5. Issuu.com (works, checked as of 2024)
3. Pinterest
Pinterest (works, checked as of 2024) is quickly becoming one of the most popular sites in the world. Sending more referral traffic to blogs than Twitter (now x.com) & LinkedIn combined; its a big deal.
Pinterest is practically just an image sharing site, but deserves its own listing. It allows you to upload images and link to your site. Very simple, but surprisingly drives a lot of traffic. Simply create an account, upload your images and link to your site.
4. Misspelled Domain Traffic
I don’t use this strategy myself nor do I recommend you do; but its worth mentioning. Every day millions of people misspell website addresses. The result is they land on an error page.
If however, someone has the mispelled version of the domain name bought themselves; they can siphon a lot of traffic. For example, if you owned gpple.com – you’d probably receive 50,000-100,000+ visitors a day (lots of idiots hit the p key instead of the o).
Buying ‘likely’ misspellings of popular sites in your niche is a powerful way of siphoning traffic from your competitors. Takes a few minutes to setup a landing page on these domains, and a few minutes to purchase them. It’s sort of a grey area, and its effectiveness varies depending on how stupid people are on any given day.
If nothing else; its worth knowing so you buy likely misspellings of your own domain before your competitors do.
5. Podcasting
People love to watch videos, especially online. However maybe Youtube isn’t for you and you’re not yet ready to get in front of a camera. An easy alternative is podcasting. Podcasting allows you to create audio podcasts and upload them to podcasting sites.
You were never meant to do this alone
Reading this changes nothing. Doing it with people who show up changes everything. That is the whole difference between the people who transform and the people who keep starting over.
Start free →These sites get traffic and can help you build an audience which will result in more traffic to your site. Podcasting is excellent for building authority and credibility within a niche. Here are a few podcasting sites:
allpodcasts.com (works, checked as of 2024)
Spotify
Apple Music
Amazon Music
6. Tutorial Traffic
Tutorials are a powerful source of traffic. Ever searched ‘how to’ do something in Google? Nine out of 10 times, several tutorial websites will appear. If you’re in a niche where you can give tutorials, make use of tutorial websites.
Just create an account at these sites, login and create tutorials. If you publish tutorials on your WordPress blog, take the content and use it to create tutorials on these powerful websites for extra traffic:
tutorialized.com (works, checked as of 2024)
noupe.com (works, checked as of 2024)
instructables.com (works, checked as of 2024)
pixel2life.com (works, checked as of 2024)
psLover.com (works, checked as of 2024)
tutorialkit.com (works, checked as of 2024)
ehow.com (works, checked as of 2024)
instructables.com (works, checked as of 2024)
7. Q&A Traffic
When I got started on the Internet, I spent a lot of my time doing Q&A marketing. Q&A sites are sites for asking questions and getting answers from other members.
You create an account on these sites, and can ask questions as well as answer them. You usually have to answer a few questions before you can ask one. Yahoo Answers (use Quora instead) is a powerful example of this.
When you ask a question on Yahoo answers, it INSTANTLY ranks on Google. If you simply enter a keyword in your question, it will often rank page 1 for that keyword within 10 minutes. All you have to do is create questions that target keywords (within the question) which ends up being the SEO title.
Then create another account from another IP address, login, locate the question you asked, answer it and link to your site. This is again grey hat and against their TOS, but it works extremely well. The other white-hat alternative is to simply answer lots of relevant questions and place a link to your site within the ‘resources’ or ‘references’ section. Here are some sites:
answers.yahoo.com (use Quora instead)
able2know.org (works, checked as of 2024)
akaqa.com (works, checked as of 2024)
allexperts.com (works, checked as of 2024)
answerbag.com (works, checked as of 2024)
answers.com (works, checked as of 2024)
8. Ebook Traffic
Ebook sites are similar to document sharing sites, but specifically for sharing EBOOKS and not single PDFs or documents. There are free and paid ebook sites. Whenever you create a free report, upload them to these sites as well as doc sharing sites.
free-ebooks.net (works, checked as of 2024)
getfreeebooks.com (works, checked as of 2024)
e-booksdirectory.com (works, checked as of 2024)
In Prosperity,
David Wood
P.S. Leave me your thoughts, comments and questions below. Also opt-in to the email list on the right for more traffic tips, tricks and secrets.
Comments
BichesQuincyBiches, June 20 2013, 13:45
Perfect this is just perfect, Just what I need now, YOU THE MAN DAVE!!!!!
CharlesFButler, June 20 2013, 14:30
Thanks david I will use these
Laura M., June 20 2013, 15:05
This is a goldmine of information, thanks for sharing!
James P., June 20 2013, 16:50
Great insights as always, David.
Emily R., June 20 2013, 17:25
These tips are very helpful, I can’t wait to try them out.
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What’s described in the Q&A section — asking a question from one account and answering it from another to plant a link — has an actual name in the literature on online trust: sock puppeting. It’s studied mostly in the context of reviews and forums, and the research consistently finds platforms get better at detecting it over time, not worse. The ‘works extremely well’ claim here is presented as current, but techniques like this typically have a shelf life measured in months, not years.
We used to call this defensive domain registration in the corporate world, and spent actual budget on buying up misspellings of our own brand before anyone else could. Watching it framed here as a slightly naughty traffic hack rather than standard brand hygiene is funny to me — the corporate version of the exact same tactic gets presented in board meetings as risk management, not as a grey area you whisper about.
Sorry if this is obvious to everyone else but I didn’t even think about buying the misspelled versions of my own little blog’s name until reading Graham’s comment just now, and now I’m wondering if that’s something worth doing even when hardly anybody’s typing my domain in the first place since I’m so new, or if it only matters once you’ve actually got traffic worth protecting.
Philip’s right about the sock puppeting point — not defensible, risk aside. But I’d separate that from the image and doc sharing sections, which are just distribution with no deception involved.