We have all seen advertisements for other websites on Google and various search engines that work to consistently drive traffic to those sites. Unfortunately, many of us cannot afford to take out a major campaign to advertise our sites and so we must resort to other measures. There are plenty of examples of free advertising that any webmaster can do to increase the likelihood of someone discovering and browsing his or her site. These tricks outlined below will help to increase traffic, promote your PageRank and increase your site’s visibility over the short-term and long-term.

Join Online Forums

This is a great way to increase your traffic and visibility. There are many premium forums and discussion boards all across the internet that rank high in search results and have lots of members and visitors, and there is no better place to start your advertising binge. Make accounts with several forums (the higher the PR, the better) and gradually grow your reputation here. Over several weeks, try to plug your site whenever it is relevant and helpful. This is great for traffic and when posted on high PR sites, will earn you valuable backlinks. You can also earn backlinks from having your URL in your forum profile and signature.

Submit to Directories

There are tons of site directories out there that allow you to add any given site for free to its databanks, with many of these directories having high PR. What this means for you is added credibility in search engine rankings, which will increase your traffic even more. Some of the best directory sites out there include DMOZ (unique content required), Yahoo (non-commercial sites), and the WWW Virtual Library. This should be one of your first steps in optimizing your site for SEO and also a great way to increase your advertising potential.

Reciprocate

In your quest to rise to the top of search results, you will probably come across other like-minded sites that may be in the same boat. While in many cases these sites may be viewed as competition, you should be able to discover some sites that you can begin link building with in order to improve your traffic and number of backlinks. It never hurts to ask a fellow webmaster if they are interested in such an affiliation; just make sure that the sites in question are relevant to one another. Linking to other sites without discrimination can lead to other PR rankings due to penalties assigned by having a larger than necessary amount of irrelevant links on your site.

Hit Up Social Networks

Some of the best advertising in the world can be found on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. If just one person shares your link or story, you can instantly gain access to hundreds – if not thousands – more impressions and clicks. If you want to simplify your link and hide the full URL (perfect for sites like Twitter with character limits), then you may want to try the URL Shortener Tool from Pingler. It will consolidate your URL into a short string of characters that can then be used without losing all of your available typing space.