Posted on Aug 25th, 2006

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I wrote this as support material for a speech being given by our VP. Its a list of non-SEO or PPC methods of building traffic (with an emphasis on blogs and social media)

1. Social Networking Sites (Myspace, Friendster)
   You can setup profiles for your website or yourself and use in-network messaging and bulletin systems to promote your site.
2. Digg
   Writing digg-friendly content, like lists and howtos, and optimize your tags to gain traffic from digg users.
3. Delicious
   Bookmark yoursite, with optimized keyword tags and others will see your link.
4. Wikipedia
   Write an article about your site, company, self or niche and include a link back to your site. Or just add your (useful) link to an existing article.
5. Link Baiting Bloggers
   Specific types of content are known to attract links from bloggers.
6. Forums
   Find industry specific forums and message boards and become a helpful member, suggesting your site wherever appropriate and including a link in your signature.
7. Mailing Lists
   Join niche email lists and become a respected member, again suggesting your site where appropriate.
8. Comments on other sites
   Respond to relevant posts on other people’s blogs and specify your site as your “homepage” for a link back.
9. Tackbacks on other sites
   Respond to another blogger via your blog, and send a trackback and you’ll likely get a link back.
10. Youtube
    Make a viral video and post it to youtube (optimize your entry) and include your URL in the video.
11. Article Syndication
    Write useful content and offer to allow other webmasters to publish it on their site with a link back to yours.
12. Give awards
    Give away a handful of awards to related (but non-competative) sites in your niche. They’ll link back.
13. Get awards
    Find industry web awards and nominate yourself. If you win you’ll get links and traffic.
14. Affiliates
    Start an affiliate program and allow others to do your promotional work for you in exchange for a commission.
15. Link Exchanges
    Find webmasters who have one or more sites in your niche, and offer to exchange links (with keyword anchor text).
16. Traffic/Banner Exchange Networks
    Join a banner exchange network and serve other site’s banners on your site, while they show yours on theirs’.
17. Press Releases
    Do something newsworthy and publish a press release, make sure it is keyword optimized as news sites often rank very highly.
18. Link Directories
    Find general and niche link directories and submit your site. Better yet: volunteer to be an editor for your category.
19. Joint-venture/cross-promotion
    Find a related website and develop a partnership project, like awards, contests or giveaways.
20. Craigslist
    Post an ad for your business and optimize the content for your keywords, craigslist ranks very well in search engines.
21. Podcast
    Make a podcast and get it listed in podcast directories.
22. Type in domain traffic
    Buy a good domain name that people actually type into their browsers (ie: widgets.com).
23. Write a column
    Find an online or offline industry publication and offer to write a regular feature for them in exchange for a link back.
24. Technorati
    Optimize the keyword tags on your blog and make sure you rank well for high traffic searches at Technorati.
25. Flickr
    Take pictures of your product, post them to flickr, optimize your tags and include your URL.
26. Buy or Rent Email Lists
    Send out huge blast emails to relevant opt-in lists.
27. Build an email list
    Encourage your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter and email them regularly to encourage repeat traffic.

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