Hello I have been working on another project so hadn't posted on my website for about a month. I decided to check out my traffic stats and once again Google has crippled my traffic in half to practically nothing now. It happened at the start of the year now this time in May around the latest update. I don't do any dodgy SEO so now have lost all respect with Google and am done trying to directly rank for keywords. Instead I will be focusing on gaining traffic by bringing the customers to my site rather than relying on Google, so here are some suggestions you can add to if you wish. My number one source is likely going to be forums and commenting. By writing about a highly popular niche you will have more success because people will be talking about it on forums constantly. Join all the forums in the niche and post valuable information with a link back to your blog or any relevant posts, helping people. As a test I posted for what I thought was a low ranking keyword and commented on all the forums on the first page of Google. Of course I didn't rank on the first two pages of Google with it but that page gets 100+hits a month. Instantly because its all from the forum traffic. Not a lot by any means but it isn't exactly a popular term and now it is one of my top traffic pages no matter where it is in Google since the Penalty. Google Alerts/Comments. Sign up to Google Alerts related to your niche or a post you have done. Check the Alerts for any chances to leave a valuable comment and link back to your blog. Also do a simple google search relevant to your post topics and leave valuable comments. Social media - Share your latest posts and other relevant niche posts on all the social networks twitter facebook etc to extend maximum exposure. Also post your posts to sites like stumbleupon and digg. Every little helps. Articles/PDF/Videos/ebooks/- If you just wrote a long post or one where you can rewrite or have another approach to it do so in an article directory such as ezine articles, hubpages or squidoo. Also convert posts to pdf or ppt format and put them on sites such as slideshare. Videos are great as you may know though I haven't done any because I am shy. However I will create some slideshow style ones from posts and post to youtube dailymotion etc. Those are my tips for gaining traffic if you have any more please suggest them. I am tired of battling the search engines for rankings and am now going to explicitly follow the above for traffic. Organic will merely be bonus traffic.
I've started actively participating in linkedin. I never thought that site was as busy as it is. Lots of good people hanging around there. You can get good traffic from there provided you have some credibility with the users.
I'm with you @broombroom as I do the same thing. On my site I am fortunate to be the only trainer for this platform so my traffic is from forums and referrals. VERY little from G. @qwikad I think it is great you get traffic from Linkedin. I have never found a watering hole in there to do anything for me. I wish I could but i cannot afford the time search endlesly.
I would add reaching out to blogs in your niche for guest posting opportunities or let them know you're available to comment on new developments (with backlinks, of course.)
There's always plain old paid advertising. I use it heavily in my business, and you should too. I still do free marketing (forums, articles, blogging, social, etc)... but the traffic and leads that i get from paid advertising far exceeds my results from free marketing. But i still continue to do free marketing so that it can lower or even diminish my overall costs of advertising. You should consider it. Sounds like you know what you're doing.
I don't think I do know what I am doing lol. I spent a good portion of last year on my review site reviewing products. Anything popular I couldn't rank for and anything I was ranking for was getting little to no traffic. I was relying completely on Google rankings at this time. For a few months I had 5k per month traffic and made some money but then Google ripped that in half and now recently ripped it in half again to virtually nothing so now I am rethinking my strategy and hoping that a more magazine/informative style content approach would work and gain traffic with the methods above. I just hate putting so much effort into something you think is right to find out its all wrong and get nothing out of it.
So is it possible to succeed this way? I am rethinking my strategy and was going to do what I suggested in my OP for traffic. I just hate putting so much time and effort into something that eventually fails.
I think so but you need to assess what is successful for you. I am quite content with my system. I did things early on that were not a part of my strengths and I tried to pass myself off as an expert. That was wrong. I did not make a nickel. Develop your system and perfect it as you go and success will come.
Sounds like you put too many eggs in one basket - Google. You need to also get traffic from social and referrals from other sites.