It ain’t 2005 anymore!
Back in the day it was relatively easy to generate ‘free’ website traffic through Google. That meant sprinkling a bit of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) on your website and people would find your business via the mighty Google. You could generate eyeballs for your business, essentially, for free.
That was then. The playing field was, pretty much, fairly level.
Sure there was always those with deep pockets that could always through a few thousand pounds at sponsored listings (the elusive top 3 spots on search results that most of us eventually started to ignore) but, for the most part, any one of us with a business to ‘get out there’ could get to the first page without spending a shed load of hard earned cash.
Within 10 years that had changed massively and now, more than 15 years later, there is one simple fact:
There is no such thing as free website traffic!
Ouch! That stings a bit…
“but the marketing dude said he could get me to the top of Google!”
And how much is that marketing dude going to charge?
“Ah, right… I get you. He wants hundreds or thousands of pounds per month!”
Exactly! Not free.
When I described the state of play in 2005, any website owner that put a bit of time (which was also money) into creating content could get to that first page of Google or, even better, the top spot for that business’ key search phrase or word and they generally didn’t even need the ‘marketing guy’!
Gosh it was even easy back then to generate traffic to your business from social media fairly easily too but that, sadly, is also a page in marketing history.
OK, so that’s the doom and gloom. Where’s the good news?
LOL. ? There isn’t any! Well, there kind of is and isn’t.
Hard work, shed loads of content, shared far and wide, every single day, to your target audience, and (if you have it available) throw loads of your hard earned money on ads.
But that won’t generate free website traffic and that’s my point.
Hard work takes loads of time and time is money.
Creating a consistent flow of new content takes either your time of someone else’s time that you pay for.
Having someone (or yourself) sharing the right kind of content across multiple platforms every single day takes a lot of time (again, that’s money).
Or just buy adverts.
Facebook ads,
Google ads,
Twitter ads,
TikTok ads,
Instagram ads…
etc.
Traffic itself is not dead. Free traffic is.