Probably the most powerful free traffic generator after the search engine is viral free traffic. It employs the principle of geometric growth. If this page got one hit today, but doubled the hits every day, by the 30th day, it would get over a billion hits for just that one day! That is the idea behind viral advertizing. If this website's backlinks grew at that rate, it would be higher ranked than Google or Yahoo long before day thirty. There are three main viral techniques that I am going to cover in this article. These are the article submitted to an article directory, the blog, and refer a friend. Each have their own distinct advantages.
One way to get an ad in front of a large number of viewers and generating free traffic, is to write an article and post it on an article directory. They have to give the author credit, so he can tag a signature tag on the end of his article, and include a discrete but keyword rich link to his webpage. That is the first day's link. If another webmaster finds the page, reads the article, they can download the article and publish it on their page, but they must publish it exactly as is, signature line included. Every time the process is repeated the number of links and pathways to the originting page grow. The increasing number of backlinks increases the amount of free traffic by allowing the visitors more ways to fing the page. As an added bonus, those extra backlinks rais the ranking of the page for the search engines. A true double whammy. Even if no one ever downloads your article, you still get a link from the article directory. Some of those are PR5 - PR7.
A second method involving a blog works very similarly. If the website owner owns a blog as well and has the RSS feed activated, then every thing they post, including keyword rich backlinks, are sent to every page/blog that is on the blog's RSS list. One post could reach a hundred blogs, and generate dozens of visitors to your page. A dozen visitors is not a lot of free traffic; however, if one of those blogs is hosting a blog carnival and is given a link from Instapundit, then the reach could be thousands of blogs seeing the post and signature line, generating hundreds of vistors, a lot of free traffic. And every one of those blogs is potentially hosting a RSS feed that could reach thousands more
The best part of all of this is that you get free traffic not only from the individual links as they spread accross the web. All of those links, with your keyword rich link description, are boosting your PR, thus improving your ranking in the search engines. Every blog entry you post, or every article you submit to an article directory could be the one that breaks open the floodgates of free traffic to your website. The links you gain using these methods are like a really big funnel or scoop sweeping through cyberspace, scooping up free traffic and funneling it to your site. Every time a potential visitor to your site sees your link, he is more likely to visit your site as well. It is a scientific fact that a potential customer must see an ad at least 5 times before they decide to buy. Finally, every site that carries a link to your page could, itself, spread the link to several other sites. I would love to have an article that I wrote showing up on 10,000 other sites, or else have a a link from my blog showing up on 10,000 other blogs via RSS, with my link attached at the bottom. With that many links, a very high listing in the search engines, and PR, is guaranteed.
A third method of viral advertizing that can generate a tsunami of free traffic is the tell-a-friend. You automatically accept a friend's recomendation over someone that you don't know's recommendation. Its human nature. If your friend liked the website enough to recommend it to you, you are probably going to visit the site just out of curiosity. And as an extra added bonus to the website's owner, the visitor who gets such a recomendation, is going to have a better percetion of the website initially. For a sales website, that can be a real bonus. A visitor who is more predisposed to listen to the pitch and buy.
