I've been monitoring this particular section and I'm curious. When starting a new site, it seems most people tend to rely on search engines for their traffic. Maybe it's just me, but given the fact that it takes several months to start getting your listing embedded into the average search engine, isn't it more feasible to directly market your site to the target audience? For example, if you start a site/blog about...say, Tennis. Of course you'll start submitting your links to search engines so they can start the process of getting you listed, but going out and directly marketing your site to newsgroups and forums, plus submitting link trade request to other 'tennis' related sites seems to be the way to go. I feel that when your site gets most of it's traffic from search engines and you rely on that traffic regarding income(Adsense, Yahoo, etc.), it leaves you at the mercy of any changes or updates that could drop your rankings in said search engine. Like I said, just my two cents but I feel that this 'dependency' on search rankings and seo is getting out of hand. I have one site that receives over 1K unique visits per day and only 26% of that comes from search engines. My goals is to increase my visits while keeping the search engine portion of that...down. Does anyone else have an opinion regarding this?
Yep, way too much reliance on search engines, especially google. Myself, I promote my sites and not worry about search engines. This is the way it was before google showed up. Webmasters were taught, learned, had to, promote their sites using every means available...from ezines, to lists, to ffa's, etc. Today, everyone wants a quick fix and to be numbero uno on google. Thus spending time (and money?) trying to get there. When the time (and money?) can best be put to better use just promoting the site.
I deffinently agree with iowadawg. I submit my directory physically to the directories themselves. There is no point in submitting to a search engine when the engine will just come to you "If the link is there" This also builds quality to the person who submitted your site and thus if the page is on a PR3 or 4+ it will be noticed with a higher percentage because that PR page gets focused on very quickly.
... and that's because if you succeed with the search engines, the volume of traffic they can potentially bring in is generally overwhelmingly more than the other types of marketing you can do. also, i don't think everyone thinks that it's a 'quick fix' where search engines are concerned. most people would know that doing well with search engines are difficult.
I don't think search engines generate enough traffic for keywords that are attainable by seo for one person. It may bring alot, but once you get all you can, you'll be asking yourself, "Where can I get more". It really is a challenge. Most people can start a restaurant or other local retail biz and succeed. However, with the web, competition is fierce and not everyone will succeed.
Bold words Phone Message, but very true as you stated. Apparently as you said "Where can I get more" will never be enough even if you get more, there is always something new, greater and more sufficient than what we have now.
Is anyone willing to share cost effective methods of generating traffic, using the Internet, other than getting into search results? I've been able to get some visits using Digg, but that is a temporary thing... and I find it hard to come up with something "useful" to write about every single day.
A very subtle way to advertise a new site that is 100% free is to search for a popular message board devoted to the topic of your new site. Sign up with your sites name as a username, and put a link and maybe a slogan in your signature. Rather than spam up their message board with topics telling people about your site, you can just post every now and then in topics of your liking. It isn't going to generate a ton of traffic, but people will be curious and most likely check out your site. 2cents.
I do a lot of link exchanges, I mean the search engines arent going to find you without links...Yeah, I post in other related forums and I also submit a few articles here and there, helps me a lot. Except the fact that i havent been able to do that for a while due to work...but I definately think thats a much faster and better way than waiting for search engines. And I post my own articles in other forums incl a link back to my site. If they like my articles, they'll visit me.
Fully agreed with you guys. We should not totally depend on search engine. should find other ways of getting the visitor/customer. thanks Bujuk