My goal is 1 million visits per month by month 9! Right now I am sandboxed for 9 months so no SEO gains yet. The budget will increase with revenue, right now it is set at $1500. What would you suggest to start the traffic rolling in? Advice + Examples + Suggestions + Recommendations Appreciated!
I like the idea about content, it is always a good place to start I think. You could spend some money advertising on other sites. Try and spend some money getting lots of backlinks so you can get into the search results.
Between now and in the past, I've worked with three large content networks, twice as a writer, and currently only as an editor with Suite101. However, as I writer I did watch people get these numbers over at About.com. Yes, it's a large network. But money isn't really spent on the individual subdomain sites... it's left up to the writers to promote. The best thing About does is give them high PR links by featuring content on the home page and general site areas, and encouraging crosslinks like crazy. While most people don't care for that site (myself included), many of the niche areas get well over a million a month, and you can learn a few things from them... just improve them instead of making their own mistakes. 1. It takes a LOT of content. The people with pageviews like that create a lot of content, and they do it regularly... whether it be blog posts, articles, reviews, glossary entries, discussion threads, etc. Everywhere I've seen network-wise, as well as watching a few of my own start to grow, simply says more content = more pageviews. There's no way around that. 2. Make that content UNIQUE, and make it QUALITY! The people who just throw short pieces up w/o much thought don't do as well as the people who really demonstrate their expertise or their passion for their topic. The higher the quality, the more likely people will stay longer, view more pages, and come back later. 3. Get incoming links from high PR pages. Sure, About sites have that easier b/c it's built into the network... but that doesn't mean you can't do it too. As a matter of fact, I just started another thread (yesterday I believe) on one way to do it - http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=1315665#post1315665 4. Tons and tons of crosslinking! When you write an article, link to 4 or 5 related articles below it, in a sidebar, or both. Organize your articles / reviews / etc. by topics. Topic pages give you an easy linking structure to your own content, but they also give you someplace to include a few quality external links w/o just a random link page... add descriptions to give you some room for optimizing. topic breakdowns also give you a better way to organize large amounts of content as things grow on your site, and you help direct visitors to exactly what they want. 5. Don't go around begging people to link to you. Spend your time on your content and making your site really valuable in the beginning. The more quality content you have up, the more will be indexed, the more people can find, etc. I'm not saying never ask for backlinks to be agressive. Just don't make it a major focus to a point where it's coming before the actual "meat" of your site. If you give something of high quality, people will link to you w/o you having to think twice about it. 6. The moment that you feel you have any kind of significant numbers, start schmoozing. Make nice with publishers. You'd be surprised how many will happily send you books to review, software, etc. Even with my smaller sites, I have good relationships with a few publishers and software manufacturers and have a pile of books, software, and even pre-publication manuscripts ready to read and review. Things like electronics will need much larger numbers before you get review copies, but it doesn't hurt to try. When you build these relationships, forward those reviews to them. They'll often republish them in press sections, mention them in press releases, or even link to them from their home page occasionally, and it can lead to good quality traffic. Of course, there are things you can learn NOT to do from About too. The biggest thing: Don't let the ads overrun your content. Ads are fine, and probably necessary if you're going to justify spending the time or money to get large amounts of quality content. But if people can't find your content, or they're annoyed by the fact that you have huge flashing banners, you can lose them before you have a chance to hook them. I'm certainly no expert and never set goals that lofty for myself. But it can definitely be done... just takes a heck of a large time committment. Of course a decent marketing budget won't hurt either if you've got it. I don't know how realistic your time frame is... but who knows. Maybe others here have done similar things. All I know is I'm trying my darndest to use the best things from the content networks I was with and avoiding the worst... just not turning out content quickly enough to even consider something like this. Good luck. Jenn
It also depends on your site/niche. Some topics will never reach that many page views because not that many people search for it. In order to get that many you need to be at the top of competitive keywords in the SERPs. Which is difficult to do so good luck.
Content is King - nice write up jmmattern What are you offering on your site? Information/images/free stuff/products/etc...
big dreams.. for big money.. my hope is if I can get at least 10 to see my page a day it will be great good luck guy.. hope you have lots of money to spend on advertising..
I think with the correct techniques you can get pretty good traffic without spending even 1/4 of your budget.
Agreed. Advertising might help, but to get numbers like that, content really is king. You can spend a fortune on advertising, but if your site lacks quality content, you won't keep them, and you won't bring them back. Jenn
You should tell us what kind of website you are trying to promote. Is it somethign the press would be interested in? Press REleases are a good way to go if you have somethign worth their while.
I say that if you have a resonable amount of traffic already you need to invest that money not in advertising but in a script to run inner connected links on your page to increase pages per visitor. that will dramatically increase traffic permanently