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One of the best ways to get free website traffic is by creating authority sites.  Perform a Google search on “authority site” and you’ll find a few different descriptions of what an authority site it!

Basically – they’re all correct.  To build a true authority site, you’d spend the better part of 1 – 2 years building a website and dripping it with enough unique content to be a true authority.

I’m going to show you what has worked for me and how you can do the same.

More Website Traffic Blueprint

The only way to drive free website traffic is by increasing the external links (backlinks) to your website.   I’ve already written about how the search engines rank a website and that’s by using backlinks as popularity votes.  The website with the most relevant backlinks for a keyword get placed highest in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).

If you have a product to sell, you need to get visitors to your sales page.  But the search engines give popularity votes to content and authority sites.  So to move up in the SERPs, you need to write unique content and distribute it to:

• High Ranking Article Directories
• Blogs
• Squidoo Lens
• Hub Pages

People want information and use these articles to determine if you have what they want.  Use the “useful but incomplete” strategy, leaving your best information inside the product you sell.

Each of these sites must link to each other AND to your sales page.  Make sure you use keyword rich anchor text and not just the URL.  Using related keywords for related topics will increase your rating with the search engines.

After posting your articles, bookmark them to Web 2.0 sites using a site like Onlywire.

These unique articles you have taken the time to write will continue to generate a constant flow of traffic to your main website.

Extreme Website Traffic

Now let’s kick it up a notch and add a link from your main website to your blog.  Add the link at the bottom of your website for people looking for more information.

Add an optin form to your website with an AutoResponder series.  Every time you update your blog, send out a notice to this list and make them click through to your blog post.  This increases traffic to your blog and gives your list traffic more opportunities to click through to your main site and other links that are on your blog.

Website Traffic Analysis

I prefer to use the free StatCounter software because it provides me with more information about my visitors than other tracking tools.  One way to know your website traffic plan is working is to see return visitors.  My most successful sites generate about the same number of return visitors every week.

By tracking where the visitors are coming from, I know which authority sites are working for me.  If one of the sites is generating far less visitors, I’ll increase the number of articles I upload to that site.

By using a detailed tracker like StatCounter, you can identify:

• When Visitors are Leaving Your Site
• Which Search Engines are Sending You Traffic
• Which Keywords Visitors Used to Find Your Site
• High Traffic Authority Sites
• Low Traffic Authority Sites
• Popular Pages on Your Site
• How Long Visitors Remain on Your Site
• Returning Visits
• Visitor IP Addresses

By tracking this information, you can make adjustments to your site and the traffic you send from authority sites.

The key to free website traffic is controlling the traffic yourself through the hyperlinks you provide to keep the visitor on your sites.  The longer they stay on your sites, the better chance you have of making a sale!