Forget PR, how to increase traffic?

[lauraddirectnet]

I had originally posted a question about Google PR, which I now understand, thanks Larwee, to be of less importance than before.

Here is the question I am more interested in now that I understand Google PR and such.

What are the best ways to increase traffic?

Thanks for everyone's help!

 

[Oregon Coast Guy]

1. Lots and lots of quality content that visitors will appreciate and want to share, link to and return to. Add a couple pages a week if you can. I would recommend that you do not monetize your site until you have at least 30 pages of content. Keep it real. SE's and getting smarter all the time and they look for visitor response. The better the content, the more the traffic will grow.

2. Lots of backlinks from quality sites associated with your content. Don't try to get links that have nothing to do with your site or are trashy.

3. Write articles and submit them to the article directories.

4. Consider offline sales such as newspaper ads, fliers, get some business cards and hand them out. Vistaprint.com is great for that type of stuff.

5. Find blogs and forums that center around the same niche of your website and participate. Make sure to add your sig with a link to your site.

6. Add your sig to your emails.

7. Create a MySpace

8. Create and use video to drive traffic to your site. YouTube.com and LiveVideo.com are the people you want to use. Video is becoming huge.


That should get you going and eventually, it will begin to snowball for you.

 

[AIA]

Budget?

Do you have a budget? If you're looking for immediate traffic you'll probably have to purchase it, and depending on your market, price can vary wildly. Oregon Coast had some great suggestions and it shouldn't deter you from using the majority of them even if they don't provide instant traffic.

As for just a ton of traffic instantly you often get what you pay for. There are companies like Zango that will target your ad (popunder) and serve it very cheaply to hundreds of thousands of people. It's not everyone's idea of great marketing (including mine) but it does achieve what you want, however, you'll also have to contend with the fact that you're promoting a business via an Adware company...but like I said, you often get what you pay for.

My recommendation would be to work on establishing content and the traffic will eventually come. If you start a blog and submit it to Technorati then submit the RSS to Yahoo - AND write well, you'll find a target audience quickly.

I also know there's an ad co-op out there somewhere (digital point I think?) that gives you credits for exchanging links and you share traffic with other webmasters, but I've never used it, nor do I know if it's still active...maybe you'll want to look into that as well.

 

[lauraddirectnet]

Those are some great ideas. We are working on submitting our articles, so I have that one the way, so I see we are on the right path. I have also recently started getting into blogging. I will definitly look into the MySpace, I created on for a website, but not for our affiliate program. So I will have to do that. Are you on MySpace?

 

[TUTTI]

Here are some of my favorites:

1. Free Traffic Bar (of course) Very Happy
2. Traffic Swarm
3. Top Surfer
4. SQUIDOO
5. linkcrews

 

[lauraddirectnet]

Thanks I will check out those top 5. Tony T, you said you use MySpace, what kind of luck have you had with using it?

 

[socubeliveg]

hi,want to know how to use video to drive the traffic to website

hi,I have owned my youtube ID and also uploaded the video.But how to drive the traffic into my website? by the way,I also rerister Myspace ID,but I seems that no traffic can be drived from Myspace to my website?that is why?wait for your reply.Any of your suggestion will be accepted.

1. Lots and lots of quality content that visitors will appreciate and want to share, link to and return to. Add a couple pages a week if you can. I would recommend that you do not monetize your site until you have at least 30 pages of content. Keep it real. SE's and getting smarter all the time and they look for visitor response. The better the content, the more the traffic will grow.

2. Lots of backlinks from quality sites associated with your content. Don't try to get links that have nothing to do with your site or are trashy.

3. Write articles and submit them to the article directories.

4. Consider offline sales such as newspaper ads, fliers, get some business cards and hand them out. Vistaprint.com is great for that type of stuff.

5. Find blogs and forums that center around the same niche of your website and participate. Make sure to add your sig with a link to your site.

6. Add your sig to your emails.

7. Create a MySpace

8. Create and use video to drive traffic to your site. YouTube.com and LiveVideo.com are the people you want to use. Video is becoming huge.


That should get you going and eventually, it will begin to snowball for you.

 

[tbarntsen]

make ur website unqiue, easy to search and easy to navigate , traffic just flow,
and the likewise , if you could do that, the PR will also increase

 

[Piree]

Submit your site to Social Bookmarking sites, Stumbleupon is very good to drive traffic. Try to get people who write good comments and stumble your site, And you will also do the same for them

Submit to RSS Directories
Make Twitter, this can drive some good traffic if you get people of your niche, no bots who autofollow you back

Post on forums of your niche with your link in signature, and a short description

Try exchanging traffic with "partner" sites. Like if you got a big gallery site of celebrities, you go to some gossip site. Not perezhilton orso, but smaller ones, and tell them you will link the their site if they link to yours.

And last but MOST IMPORTANT

Good and unique content, this will bring most traffic to your site. It wont be fast, but the visitors will keep coming back if you write good stuff.

 

[djbaxter]

make ur website unqiue, easy to search and easy to navigate , traffic just flow,
and the likewise , if you could do that, the PR will also increase

The only thing that can increase PageRank is an increase in the number of incoming links.

 

[freeleads2]

I am glad to hear someone focus about traffic over PR. My most profitable site has a PR 0. Also when I advertise when Adwords I notice that most of my traffic comes from content ads rather than search. This means people are just clicking on ads on other peoples websites not looking through search. Yahoo beats Google for non search traffic. So why can't you build up your own network of sites linking to you? That is all that Google is doing.

{link to own site removed}

Networking with other sites in your niche is the key.

 

[freeleads2]

I came back to delete the link to my own site and it was already done! I just went and read the rules. Very fast. I appreciate that fact that you want real discussion but I think relevance is the key. If there is value in the link and it really relates to the topic I think it should be included. I created an entire video on this topic. I think it would be of value to your readers. Now they cannot see it. This is not the free exchange of ideas I am looking for. I will concentrate on other forums where we can really communicate. I can appreciate though how hard it is to keep spam off your forum. Good luck.

 

[djbaxter]

Your points can be made without linking back to your own site.

 

[WayOutWisdoms]

While I too am just starting to piece together all of the tools & resources that'll help build traffic, I've found 12 or 13 sites that let you build your own website and offer free web-hosting. Naturally, they limit you to all the features... as they are hopeful you'll upgrade to paid hosting (Which on most I don't necessarily recommend). But many offer a affiliate partnership as well.

Although, I'm falling asleep... I'll name a few (SQUIDOO was already mentioned) but there's..

~Weebly
~Jimdo
~Yola
~Synthasite
~HubPages
~Tumblr

Naturally, the topic is getting traffic, so this is kinda a split between the two, as Hubpages for example has a high flow-through rate and you can build popularity, while some of the others it's more like "practice" for building better looking sites, and again requires some effort to build traffic as mentioned above.

Also, if you have a blog with the Big "G" on Blogger, there's a fella that will have you in his trance when you see all he has to offer regarding blog tips, tricks, tweaks, and hacks, if you really want to start understanding how to use web tools, and his work is so simplified it's awesome. I've spent endless hours and learned everything from writing link codes to tweaking the CSS template codes to add columns, navbars, etc... But he also lists every blog registry, and search engine you can imagine, for optomizing your sites recognition in search and gaining traffic.

Much like Linda here, and several others who give quality information on several subjects concerning marketing, and getting started, this site is in my opinion like 5 Star; a must have...

~Tricks for New Bloggers

Hopefully, I didn't overwhelm anyone, as I am still trying to get my sites looking better, and have better content before attracting too much traffic. After that, it's on to learn keywords, backlinking, SEO, and my personal handicap; organizing it all to harmoniously flow together!

I hope that helps.

As for me Good-Night, well actually, Good Morning

*Haven't been able to shut down and go to sleep yet, as I've been at this steady for 6 weeks str8... have had several hundred nibbles and hits on my ads.... and though it's not much, I made my 1st dollar profit today, Halleluiah!

 

[mexia]

Increase your incoming links and make sure that the incoming links come from website with better page rank than yours, this makes Google see you as an authority. It's really that simple.

Awesome post i like the replies, really learned a lot of stuff.

Cheers.