There are several top blogs in your niche that get hundreds if not thousands of visitors on a daily basis. The right way to do blog commenting is to cautiously read the post and if you have something helpful or meaningful to add to the conversation, then leave a comment.
The idea of commenting isn't to drop a link, but to add value to the conversation and to raise your network. Use your real name as the commenter and a proportion of readers will click through to learn more about you.
Pro Tip: If you have content on your site related to the post, use that URL as a link somewhat than the home page. Those who do click during will then have an even better user knowledge.
2. Content Aggregators
Just make great content and Google will incentive you with traffic, right? Maybe, if you have an familiar website with lots of trust and authority. Not so much, if you have a new blog or website. The workaround for this is getting your content listed on popular content aggregators, where lots of people will see it
Some trendy aggregators include:
• Alltop bills itself as the "online magazine rack" of the Web.
• BizSugar.com is a community of small business owners and entrepreneurs.
• Growth Hackers is a community sharing online marketing techniques.
• Hacker News is a social news website that caters to programmers and entrepreneurs.
• Inbound.org is a community sharing and discussing content and online marketing ideas.
3. Forum Commenting
As you are reading this, there are probably dozens of conversations happening around the Web that are connected to your niche. Joining or starting a forum conversation can result in immediate traffic.
As with blog commenting, this isn't about dropping a link, but rather about engaging a conversation and adding value to that conversation. Forum commenting reminds me of the show American Pickers, where they discuss finding the honey hole. When we find a forum where the client really "clicks" with the community, it can drive thousands of visits over time.
4. Google+
Forget the assumption that Google+ is going away – it isn't. If you need help getting started with Google+, please check out my Google+ Quick Start Guide. Google+ can drive loads of traffic, and you don't even need followers.
The strength of Google+ lies with communities. As with forums, the participants are normally hardcore fans of a given activity. We like to think of these folks as highly targeted prospects. Google makes it easy to find niche communities.
Matt Cutts' manifesto, "The Decay and Fall of Guest Blogging for SEO," has been widely misunderstood as meaning that guest blogging is dead. It isn't. What Cutts said was this: "If you're using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop."
Guest blogging done properly has nothing to do with links – it's all about leveraging traffic.
Pro Tip: Read "Power Guest Posting for SEO" by Eric Enge and follow his instructions on the suitable way to guest post heading forward.
6. Q&A
Q&A sites like Quora and Yahoo Answers present another great opportunity to generate highly targeted traffic. If you can offer a genuine solution to a real problem, you may have a customer for life. At the very least, you'll build up good karma.
7. Reddit
If you can find a relevant niche or subreddit with a decent number of subscribers (thousands) and traffic, then Reddit is an option worth exploring. The key is to create useful content applicable to the subreddit. A percentage of Reddit users will read your content, click through to your site, and buy your product or service, if it is a good fit.
8. Social Media
Bet you saw this one coming. For most people, Facebook offers the best opportunity for traffic. The formula for success is pretty simple: Optimize your Facebook profile and link back to your website. Provide helpful and fun content on a regular basis. Make it easy to share your website content on Facebook by using a share button.
Pro Tip: Depending on the niche, Twitter, Vine, and Instagram have all proven to be successful in driving significant traffic. If you have the resources, test these out as well.
9. YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine on the Web, giving out more than 3 billion searches a month. To put this in perspective, it's bigger than Yahoo, Bing, Ask, and AOL combined and should not be ignored.
In my experience, the best performing videos for many e-commerce websites are how-tos and tutorials. Niche videos can drive tons of traffic.
10. Email
The number one message delivered by top affiliate marketers is "the money is in the list." In reality, every business can profit from a mailing list. With robust and easy-to-use email services like mailchimp to manage lists and campaigns, there's no excuse for missing out on this opportunity.
A Word of Caution
Most, if not all, of these opportunities have been impure to some extent by spammers over the years. I'm not suggesting that you act like a spammer. The point of this post is there are legal ways to use these channels to deliver valuable information and drive targeted traffic to your website.
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