Today I’m going to share one incredibly simple thing I do that consistently generates me over 100 visitors per day in three different ways. It also helps me build backlinks which contribute to long term traffic growth.
It is the simplest and most effective discovery I’ve made in the past year – and you can EASILY use this strategy yourself to get more traffic and make more money.
So what is this strategy?
(You’ll probably be a bit underwhelmed when I tell you!)
My free traffic strategy for generating 100+ visitors per day is…
ADD MORE IMAGES TO YOUR BLOG OR WEBSITE
Before you close the window and leave the blog, let me reveal exactly what I’m doing and how putting more images on my blog is generating me over 100 visitors per day.
How I’m Doing It
Using the example of my natural health and beauty blog, every time I publish a new blog post, I include one high quality image at the very top of the post that’s relevant to the content.
For example: Top 3 Best Homemade Hydrating Face Masks
I find the image at iStockPhoto.com and I usually download images that cost 1 or 2 credits which is around $0.80 or $1.60.
I pick an image, download it and rename it from something like iStock_74354975345XSmall.jpg to something more relevant. For the photo above, I renamed it to “hydrating-face-masks.jpg”.
Then, when creating a new blog post, I open the Media Manager, upload the photo and set the alternate text to “hydrating face masks”.
Essentially, the alternate text should be a description of what the photo is. So if you have a photo of a banana, set the alternate text as “banana”.
That is ALL I do. It costs less than a dollar per post, takes two minutes max, but generates traffic using the three methods below.
1. Google Image Traffic
Sometimes, for reasons unknown, Google ranks some of my images pretty high up for certain keywords. It’s a bit of a lottery, but I have at least ten images that generate consistent traffic from Google Images.
For example, I have one image that ranks for the search phrase “wheat” in Google Image search.
Here’s the traffic I’ve been getting for it since November.
(Click to enlarge)
433 visits in total – and an average of over 5 visitors per day for that one keyword for that one image.
A quick search in Google Images for “wheat” shows that I’m in the second row of results, as shown below.
If they click on that image, it will take them to a blog post on my site. Admittedly, it isn’t the highest quality of traffic with only a 1.23 page views per visit average, but would you say no to an extra five visits per day completely passively and for free?
Another image that has generated significant traffic from Google images is this one of cocoa butter. It has generated 270 visits since being published.
Back in October I was generating 20-30 visits per day from Google Images for the keyword “banana”. That image has stopped generating traffic now, but while it lasted the keyword “banana” sent me just over 200 visits.
I have tens of keywords that have sent over 100 visits purely from Google Images.
Add some relevant images to your site, optimize them for the search engines and hopefully Google will send you some more free traffic, too.
2. Fellow Bloggers Borrowing My Images
This isn’t such a significant traffic source DIRECTLY, but who knows how important this is for improving my search engine ranking.
Often I find that other bloggers “borrow” images from my site. They really aren’t supposed to, but MOST of them link to my blog as the original photo credit so I don’t mind.
I’ll often get a trickle of traffic from the link they place to my blog, and it counts as a valuable link back to my blog which gives a little search engine boost.
3. Pinterest
I expect more and more of you are becoming aware of Pinterest – a new social networking site where users can “Pin” their favourite images to their virtual “Boards”. The image gets posted to their boards and their followers can see those images, and if they click on them are taken to the original site.
Having high quality images on your site increases the chances that Pinterest users will “Pin” your page to their board which can result in a nice little traffic boost.
Plus, other users can “Repin” the image which will then be exposed to their followers, who can again “Repin” until your image spreads virally throughout the site – and all the time the image will still link back to the original source it was pinned from.
I’ve just started using Pinterest myself for my health and beauty blog for the last 10 days or so. Take a look at my traffic stats so far…
Click to enlarge
It was about January 16th I set my account up, which is just before the two massive spikes at the end of the graph. I pinned a few of my things (as well as interacting in the community and pinning other stuff, too) and have had two 100+ traffic days from Pinterest alone.
Before I even set up my account, I was generating traffic in late September and early October simply because someone stumbled across my site and Pinned one or more of my images. That can’t happen unless you have high quality images.
I think Pinterest is going to be BIG, so I’m going to be back later this week (or early next week at the latest) with a “Pinterest how to” so you can start generating some traffic with Pinterest as well. Make sure you are subscribed at the top right to get updated when this Pinterest update is published.
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So I hope I’ve made my case for including high quality images on your site. It’s made a huge difference not only for traffic generation, but for user experience, too.
Got any questions? Anything else to add? Or any other simple traffic ideas? Just leave a comment below.
And as always, don’t forget to Tweet, Like, Plus 1- or even Pin this post 
Talk soon,
James
Leave a Reply
01/25/2012
Yes, I’ve known about this tactic for some time but like most things, I don’t do it consistently. Thanks for this post that has reminded me of this method.
Now hopefully, I will do this for all my blog posts in the future.
This works.i have noticed it on some of my niche sites but i dont do it consistently on all my sites.thanks for pointing it out
nice tips James – also visited your site – it’s set up well and easy to view. I’ve been noticing an increase in Pinterest on sites and twitter. Haven’t utilized it yet and look forward to your feedback.
PS – like your idea about Guest Writers – very inventive!
Very interesting tactic James. I attach an image to each post, but it is the same image each time, almost as a branding method. I will look for some more variety and use keyword alt text to see what happens. Thanks.
Never thought of those little secret gems. I really like the google images to provide a little more traffic. I have to check out Pinterest. Plus 1 for this post.
A good & easy tip James. While many people know many little techniques, they don’t necessarily know the impact of the techniques so they never try them. But you have measured the effects and provided proof of the traffic bounce with Pinterest & google images. This helps put this method in perspective. Thanks for the info.
I had found this trick last year and can confirm this really works. I am using it on my network of stamp websites but it’s easy for me to get nice and “unique” stamp scans.
You can get decent traffic from an image, but it’s usually just people looking for photos to pinch. Not great quality traffic IMO.
Pinterest is great though. Been using it for a week or so. You can get a good peak in traffic from their, especially if your post is good quality and maybe a little quirky.
The demographic of Pinterest is mostly women I believe, so great if you are in a female related niche.
Man this is a real gem of a traffic source bro.
I created a Adsense site 2 weeks ago and posted about 7 articles on it. I was relying on SEO to get traffic but with this method I could siphon heaps of traffic from pininterest because of the topic of my site. It’s a perfect fit. So this could be a real diamond in the rough for adsense affiliates.
Thanks James, once again always delivering quality on your blog
Nigel
Great traffic tips James. I never thought of images as traffic sources, but I can see th eimportance of it now. And I never even knew about Pinterest. I alwasy get some good information here!
Several weeks ago, my sister, who reads my blogs, asked me why I didn’t have pictures in them. I told her that I haven’t taken any pictures yet and still have to learn how to upload them. Very frustrating to try to learn this stuff on my own, which is why I haven’t bothered yet. Will definitely bother if I can get some help and maybe my efforts will make some sort of difference in my blogs’ traffic. On the other hand, pictures should only be used to illustrate points rather than serve as needless distractions that only annoy visitors.