There's No Place Like My Home Page!
by Mike Banks Valentine
In operating WebSite101 I get one question *far* more often
than others. So I thought I'd address the single
question more frequently asked than any other online query,
"How Do I Get Lots of Traffic?"
The question is always a variation on the theme of the one
asked below. I wish that it were possible to answer with
something like,
"Put your feet together and click your heels three times,
then
say, "There's no place like my home page", over
and over.
Raul asked:
I've a Web Site that I made 3 weeks ago. After promoting it
on:
- Search Engines
- Directories
- FFA
- E-mail
- Ezines
- etc.
I can only make about 100 visitors a day. Could you please
give me some advice on how to get more visitors. Where can
I promote my Site so I can have lots of visitors? I've a low
budget, but I would also like to know the best places where
someone can advertise a web site and have lots of visitors.
Thank you for your time,
Raul
My answer is frustrating to many beginning webmasters.
You are doing GREAT to have 100 visitors a day for just a
three week old site! It often takes that long just to be
spidered by the search engines. I'd presume that it's your
other efforts bringing the traffic, because I can't find
your site in *any* of the search engines, *yet*.
The thing that you need to accept is that it's a never-
ending task! You should NEVER stop promoting if you want
to continue to improve your traffic and your search engine
visibility.
You'll find differing opinions on the *best* places to
advertise, but my opinion is that the place to concen-
trate your energy is in writing articles for ezines and
establishing your own ezine.
Take a look at http://website101.com/ezine.html to review
places to advertise, write articles and how to get an
ezine of your own launched and listed in ezine directories.
Look at the book by Rick Beneteau called "Ezine Marketing
Machine" (It's subtitled, "How I make a fortune
using FREE
ezine advertising") there is a link to the book from
the
page referenced above.
If you don't want to write your own material, there are
lots of authors willing to contribute to your ezine. Take
a look at http://www.egroups.com/group/Free-Content
where you can subscribe to a list and receive free articles
regularly from business writers about marketing on the web.
Use these articles in your ezine and write your own to
contribute to the list as well.
You include what's called a "resource-box" at the
end with
your web address and e-mail link so people can visit your
site. You make the articles available to others to use free
in their ezines and your articles (read, free advertising)
are accepted by others to run in *their* ezines. This is a
powerful traffic generator.
You should also re-submit your site to the search engines
each time you make a change to the page, so that they index
the new material and the "spiders" keep returning
to your
site each time you've made a change. Don't overdo those
submissions though or you'll end up "banned" by
the SE's!
It's a long process to rank well in the search engines. I
recommend subscribing to many of the excellent lists about
search engine optimization and submission. One of my
favorites is Danny Sullivans "Search Engine Watch"
news-
letter ( http://www.searchenginewatch.com ), he keeps you
up to date on search engine news and changes.
A great discussion list for search engine discussion where
you can learn from the experts and ask questions about how
to improve your ranking. To subscribe, send an e-mail to
mailto:join-i-search@list.mmgco.com and you'll regularly
receive *great* information on how the pros accomplish the
difficult task of search engine optimization.
Of course you could also pay someone to do this for you,
but not if you have a small budget. As you can see, it's
quite a time consuming task to generate traffic unless
you can figure out what I've left out of that magic spell.
Aren't you forgetting your ruby slippers or something?
-------------------------------------------------------- WebSite101
"Reading List" Weekly Netrepreneur Tip Sheet Weekly Ezine
emphasizing small business on the Internet http://website101.com/arch/
e-tutorial online at: http://website101.com/shortcourse.html
By week's end you're ready expand your business to the web!
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