Best ways to increase website visitors

Folks, so we build websites based upon say something we love, or have some knowledge about and want traffic, what are the steps or ways to get it ?
I know a lot of ya will say this is already wrong, 'DONT'T BUILD SITES AROUND SOMETHING YOU LIKE, BUILD SITES AROUND HIGH DEMAND SEARCH TERMS'.
Will, for those of us that didnt know that and built sites around are hobby or something we like doing, How to we get traffic ?

First of all, do we even have to submit the site(s) to search engines ? I was told the engines will find your site anyway, by spiders ?

what else to get traffic ?

 

I really hate to say this, but here goes nothing


if you build it, they will come.


plain and simple if you build a website and can get a few friends to start telling other friends, and your website has something of interest to these people, you'll get visitors.


I was working for a now defunct small local community newspaper, we stopped printing it months ago, and haven't placed anything new in weeks on the site, yet we're still getting traffic to the site. (prepaid the hosting that doesn't run out till the end of the year) And quite a bit of traffic I might say, because there are alot of articles and stories people still find interesting.

Also don't bother with DMOZ or the other garbage directories. Find some good niche directories, perhaps even regional directories pertaining to your site.

I never spent more than a few days over the last year setting up the SEO portion of the site. Make the site something you know about and maintain it, and you will eventually get traffic, perhaps not tons over night without spending tons of money on marketing, but sooner or later you'll see traffic from SE's and directories.

 

I built a site a few weeks ago and didn't bother to submit it to search engines.
I think it only took a few days for MSN and Yahoo to index my site. Google has the sandbox thing but it's still listing a few of the pages. So no, you don't need to submit to search engines. You do need backlinks from a few sites so the search engines can find you.

 

I would also focus on off-the-net marketing ... i.e. fliers around places were people can access the internet (campuses, libraries, web cafes, etc). People will look up when bored and see a website name and surf to it.

 

If you are focusing on a single or a couple of websites I would agree with the "build what you know or love" idea. To get alot of traffic you will find yourself spending alot I mean ALOT of time on that paticular site (especially if its your first). Best way to generate traffic is SE and thats why we are all here. There are other ways however and this really depends on your industry. Affiliate programs could work. Some times forum sigs can work well, so can Press Releases. I have seen may business that were based on local sales do ads in local papers or fake job listings to generate traffic. Creativity is your friend for generating traffic.

Just know if its a new site things will be slow for a while. If you can make it past the first year you should be fine.

 

there're really three ways to build traffic

1) traffic from search engines - you need to rank well for some keywords
2) traffic from quality links - you need to have some interesting content
3) traffic from repeating users and word of mouth

Get quality links and get more links. You don't need to submit to search engines. Major search engines will find your site and pages by following links.

the more links you have, the faster the site will get into the search engines.

 

I really believe in "turn passion into profit".

 

Google Adwords campaign is costly but effective way of website marketing

Regards,
eZest

 

Building a site you like is a difficult thing,nobody can say that his interest matches the most people ,but it is a good thing that you do so ,if you like it.

 

start a forum.
if its an underserved topic, people will start posting, and your site will benefit as posts count as content. Also, people will return to visit and ask questions.

 

I don't think I agree with the above poster, I would advise the opposite. Activate a forum after you are getting some traffic. Empty forums = bad image. I recently had one of my sites featured (marriedcheater.com) on a busy humor top site and recieved hundreds of hits a day (instead of the usual single digit traffic). I have a mildly active forum there and recieved during that whirlwind of promotion about 4 new registed forum members.

I have never tried press releases, can anyone point me in the right direction?

jg123

 

Ditto. I like to launch a site, do all I am going to do to it (which includes optimization & link strategy of course), then let it "find it's way" or become established in the search engines. If you sit and worry over it... well, you know what they say about a watched pot. It'll make you crazy

So build it, work it, be done... and move on to work on your next site/project in the meantime.

You can sit down once a month to review stats, rankings, and work on fresh inbound links (unless your site requires more hands-on maintenance).

 

focus on content then use basic viral marketing or word of mou(se)th techniques -"recommend this page", newsletters, comments on articles, articles/content deliverable as pdf files or e-books and so on.

 

follow your passions and money will follow

 

content is king and make sure it make some sense..

 

Theres a lot of things that you can do to increase traffic, and here are some of things ive learned so far:

1) Building sites around your passion is a better long term strategy that building based on search demand. Especially when you consider that if its in high demand..chances are your already competing with 123810238 websites. give or take a few thousand.

2) Basic Process - Its about both content, promotion, monetization, design - in that order. Concentrate on content first, and spend the overwhelming bulk of your time on that content. Next promotion. At first focus on the free ways you can promote your site...forum posts, blog posts, emails, directories, and just general chat to get the word out. Now start a little bit of monetization, try and make the most of the limited traffic your getting. Get that nailed take a look at the design...Concentrate on function rather than bells and whistles...so many people spend a lot of money on templates..when really what people want is content...they dont care if it comes with a blue border with grey boxes or whatever..as long as its readable, and useful. You can come back later to the design and come up with something really nice...when your earning enough money of the site to justify the expense.

3) Google sitemaps are useful. Its worth creating and submitting a sitemap.

4) Onsite sitemaps are a necessity, especially for highly text driven sites.

5) In terms of promotion...there is good traffic and there is such a thing as bad traffic believe it or not. Just because your visitor count increases it isnt always 100% a good thing if your paying for it, especially if your paying too much for it. You can often use sneaky promotion methods and deceive the visitor to click through to your site..but if they just end up clicking out straight way..what have you gained? more bandwidth use, no sales, no browsing of your onsite information, no new subscribers...etc..

6) On top of point 5, concentrate on what you consider a site conversion. They come in many forms..subscribers, sales, actualy browsing and replies to articles, forum posts, blog comments etc.

7) Check out your site traffic at least once a week, preferably 2 or 3 times a week..There is gold in the log information. I use addfreestats.com on one of my sites and you can get a LOT of information out of it...and its free. More info than awstats or webalizer.

8) Adwords, adcenter etc..Can be useful in site promotion and since you can place limits on your spending..you can make sure you wont go over budget..Plus after a while you'll learn what searches can give you some nice cheap clickthroughs...and that actually convert.

Im sure there are more points..but those are some of thing ive learned so far in my very limited experience. Also i would say that unless you have a high budget and your prepared to risk it...spending money on PR links, or text links in general is a risky proposition.

My 2c...I hope youve found the post useful.

 

and reading ! and reading and reading here in DP forums and in others webmasters forums + patience + patience + time.

 

Some research was done in USA and the results says that the most visitors come to websites from search engines.

Look at the results:

Search Engines -- 87%
Links from other sites -- 85%
Printed Media -- 63%
Word of mouth -- 58%
Newsgroups -- 32%
E-mail -- 32%
Television -- 32%
Books -- 28%

 

Here is the truth: People want INFORMATION which they search using search engines. People dont want to see nice fashioned site with lots of images, macromedia flash etc.. Keep it simple, use plain html text, decorate the text to make colorful and readable. The more you make your site text based, the faster you will get traffic and your site will get famous quickly.

Given the volume of so many websites created each day, competition for ranking would go immense. SIMPLE INFORMATIVE CONTENT IS KING.