This is not intended to be a be all or end all course on getting traffic to your web site. To do that you will have to go here. (Don't forget to subscribe to his free newsletter, and also read the proof pages .)
Some basic ways to get traffic to your sites are through the search engines, links from other sites, email, and advertsising. Most other methods are just variations on those themes and many books, ebooks, and courses have been written on all of them.
There are two main types of search engines. Spider engines (eg: google) and directories (eg: Yahoo or DMOZ)
In a nutshell - the spider engines send their software robot out to follow all the links it can find. Anytime it lands on a webpage it indexes the conent of that page for possible inclusion into the search listings.
Directories have all of their links entered by hand after the site is reviewed by an editor. Some of them will also supplement their searches with spider engines (Yahoo, for example, uses the Inktome engine.)
Visit SearchEngineWatch for way more info.
How your site ranks in a spider engine is determined by several factors.
- The actual page content. The spider takes its best guess as to what a page is about and catalogs it appropriately. Try to narrow your topic to the point where it can be described in two to five words.
Put that term into the <title></title> tag of your page, in the description, in the keywords, and in the page headline. It also helps if the text of the page has something to do with that topic. :)
The more closely your page content relates to the page topic the better your page will rank.
- Links to your page from other sites. If the link to your page comes from a page with a related topic it counts for more than if it doesn't. If that page has a high page rank then that helps even more.
The text of the links to your page should also reflect the topic of your page.
- Lastly, the search engine has to find your page, somehow. You can tell them about it at their add url page or you can let them find it on their own.
With a directory you have to tell them about it.
Google, and maybe the other spider engines, seem to prefer finding links to new pages on their own, though they don't mind if you tell them about it.
If you have a link to your page on a page that the appropriate engine looks at occasionally then your page will, eventually, be found and maybe indexed.
If, for example, Google ranks a page highly then it's going to look at that page more often and look through the links on that page more often.
If there are no links to your page anywhere then none of the spider engines will ever find it.
- If you would like to see what services are available for search engine services check out our submit your site page.
Email
Promoting your site via email doesn't mean buying 97 million names from a SPAM mailer for $27. in fact, if you don't really know what you're doing you shouldn't buy lists from anyone.
What you do is build your own list through forms placed on your own site. I like the double opt-in systems because you'll collect a lot of bogus email addresses otherwise.
It works like this. I put my info into your form and your system sends a confirmation email to my email address. I then click the link in that email and I'm on your list.
When you send your letter it should be all about info appropriate to your sites. So if your site covers gardening you shouldn't send letters filled with casino ads.
Tips, suggestions, articles, etc., are all appropriate.
Your emails should also include a system where people can automatically change their info or unsubscribe.
For a system that covers all of the above take a look at AutomateYourWebSite.
For a system to do that same, but which runs from your desktop, mailloop will handle it and a lot more.
Links
Links are what makes the web go 'round. Depending on the site one may actually get a lot more traffic from links on other sites than from the search engines, especially if the topic is highly competitive.
Make sure links to your site contain text appropriate to your site. Instead of having the link to your gardening site say click here for Harry's cool site it should say something like gardening tips.
Google assigns pages something called Page Rank. This is just google's way of deciding how important a page is. Having your link on a page with a high page rank is far more valuable than having one on a page with a lesser rank.
To learn more, go here: page rank explained.
If you'd like to see the page rank of any given page then install the google toolbar. (Only if you have MS Internet Explorer. Firefox uses a different tool.)
Advertising
With advertising you're buying traffic to your site. You don't have to rely on the search engines at all.
You can buy links on sites, banners, ads, and also buy traffic from Pay per Click Search Engines. (PPC)
And that pretty much covers the extent of my knowledge of buying advertising!
I don't buy any kind of advertising for any of my sites except for a bit of PPC. If you want to learn from the guy who drove well over a billion visitors to his sites over the last few years, much of it through advertsing, then check out Traffic Secrets
Courses
For a free eBook which will explain all of the above in FAR more detail...
- How to come up with a site topic
- How to put the site together
- How to come up with the content for your site
- How to get people to come to your site
- And How to make some money from your site...
- click here.
You can also click here to register for a free
Internet Income Course ($295.00 value)
Resources, Links, Products, News
Websponsors
If you already have a site and get decent traffic, but would like to earn some extra money then try WebSponsors. They add nice value to your site with targeted ads.
Visit their site and click the join now button for more info and to get started.
Search Engine Optimization for Dummies (Amazon.com)
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