The site's built - now what?

[ewelike]

This may be a bit unusual for a Newbies forum but... we've already built a site! We're just wondering how to go about marketing, and whether our affiliate strategy needs rethinking.

I'm scratching my head even working out how to ask for help, so should I start at the beginning? Is that too close to self-promotion?

In abstract terms then:

We saw a need to build a better mouse-trap - so we did, with the hope that merely by existing, customer's would magically pass through the site leaving bread-crumbs of referral fees.

The site's been live for a while, and (functionally) it does what we set out to do, but we have very little traffic. What do we do now?

We've been careful to avoid scaring people away with an over-bearing quantity of ads, and actually have very few, though we do mix banner, text and standard referral links.

Our problem is traffic - or the lack of it. So, where should we start marketing?

Authoring a blog feels a case of "build it and they will come" - how would people discover the blog in the first place, and if they can find the blog, why can't we make them find the core site first?

Leaving comments on blogs feels clandestine, but is it actually normal / acceptable practice (assuming you're constructive and not just spamming.)

The beginner's idea that gets me most curious is "get people to link to you, without linking back".

How? If we see some content-filled site we'd love to get a mention on, how do we make sure we do? Is it through merit, or persuasion, or both? Old-school phone calls, or email, or submitting forms online - or all of the above?

Help! I don't know where to start...

Ash

 

[Larwee]

Ash, here is a lot about traffic generation and marketing ideas:

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/general-topics-affiliate-forum/10120-how-get-massive-amounts-traffic-your-site.html?highlight=traffic">How to get massive amounts of traffic to your site!</a>

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/search-engine-marketing-seo-forum/4889-target-traffic-help.html?highlight=traffic">Target traffic help</a>

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/general-topics-affiliate-forum/11566-best-free-method-youve-ever-used-marketing-your-business-online.html?highlight=traffic">Best Free Method You've Ever Used in Marketing Your Business Online</a>

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/rss-marketing-blogging-forums/1195-get-traffic-2-your-blog-7-ways.html?highlight=traffic">Get Traffic 2 Your Blog - 7 Ways</a>

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/general-topics-affiliate-forum/7913-increase-traffic-website.html">Increase traffic to website</a>

<a href="http://affiliate-marketing-forums.5staraffiliateprograms.com/newbie-affiliate-forum/9884-how-do-i-get-more-traffic.html">How do I get more traffic?</a>

 

[Linda Buquet]

Authoring a blog feels a case of "build it and they will come" - how would people discover the blog in the first place, and if they can find the blog, why can't we make them find the core site first?

Leaving comments on blogs feels clandestine, but is it actually normal / acceptable practice (assuming you're constructive and not just spamming.)

The beginner's idea that gets me most curious is "get people to link to you, without linking back".

How? If we see some content-filled site we'd love to get a mention on, how do we make sure we do? Is it through merit, or persuasion, or both? Old-school phone calls, or email, or submitting forms online - or all of the above?

Hi Ash, I'll address a couple quick points and those threads Larry gave you have great info.

RE BLOG - The reason to blog is search engines love blogs. How do they find you? Good targeted key phrases in your blog post titles. You need to do some KW research and find some important keywords people would use who are interested in your niche, then write blogs about some of those main topics, but include long tail KW so the KW are not as competitive.

For instance if your site is about Persian Cats, you'd research those 2 KW and find longer tail phrases that have lots of people searching for them, but aren't too competitive. I have not researched that market just - making up some examples if that was your niche. Caring for baby Persian Kittens, Persian cats urinary tract infection, Persian Cat pictures, how to make your Persian cat stop scratching the furniture, etc. Then if you can get some fairly good search engine placement, people looking for those topics may find you.

RE COMMENTING ON BLOGS - "Leaving comments on blogs feels clandestine". It’s a really good way to not only get some traffic from those blogs but become part of the community for your niche. Give you a back link. People reading that popular blog, if they like what you have to say, may check out your blog, bookmark, subscribe OR even see a blog you wrote they want to blog about and will send you more visitors.

Key is to make real comments, written for the right reasons, like you said. If you do it just for links, people can see right through it. I don't even approve short comments or lame comments that don't add value to my blog. I think most popular blogs are the same.

"If we see some content-filled site we'd love to get a mention on, how do we make sure we do? Is it through merit, or persuasion, or both?"

I say try to get it through merit. If no one in your niche sees or knows about your blog, they can't link to it though. So you need to use good titles for search engine and comment on good blogs so people get to know and start to follow you.

THE BEST WAY is to link to them 1st. As you find good blog posts in your niche - that very day you can blog about them. I just did one today can see for example. You don't have to make it so long. A paragraph or two about an interesting article you read today over at the Persian Kitten blog. Write an overview (pretend you are a news reporter commenting on the story) and quote a paragraph (which gives you some spiderfood you didn't need to write).

BE SURE TO ADD A LINK TO THEIR BLOG POST + use a trackback. 1) once they approve the trackback, then you have a new link in the comments of their blog. Helpful for getting backlinks. BUT ALSO the reason to write about it right away, is as their readers read and comment, they may see your trackback link and click to see what you have. 2) When the blog owner sees the trackback, he will most likely go to your blog to read what you said about his post. Then if they like your content may subscribe, then maybe blog about one of your posts and link to you down the road.

All of the above pertain only if you are contributing and adding good content people WANT TO talk about and link to.

There are other strategies for getting blog links such as make a top 10 list of the best tools, blogs or whatever in your industry. Those tops sites you list will come to see what you wrote about them. Others may write about it and say Ash over at XYZ has this great top 10 list. Or do some kind of industry study. Just think, if I was my ideal reader or another blogger in this niche, what could I write that would GRAB people's attention???

IF you can write good enough content and get it found people will link to you without asking. I have people all the time email me saying "thought your readers may be interested in this" blah, blah. Sometimes it is something good, usually it isn't. No matter what it is, it comes off a little desperate and I tend to ignore. I suspect most big bloggers are the same.

I've never asked anyone to link to or post about one of my blog posts except in the case of important info I need to get out to lots of people, like the NY affiliate tax issue for example. I get tons of people linking to my blog and quoting me, just because they like what they read. So it's a NATURAL process, just like face to face networking in many ways. If it starts to seem contrived or like someone is just doing something as a marketing ploy it loses effectiveness.

(scuse any typos, no time to proof and wrote that pretty fast. WHOA no wonder I'm out of time, didn't realize I wrote a book!)

Hope this helps and best of luck!

 

[ewelike]

That's a lot of reading - and a lot of writing too; thanks.

Larwee,

I'm nearly done reading through the threads, with plenty of diversions to follow from various contributors. It's a hell of a lot to go through in one sitting , so I know I'm going to have to re-mine articles for their insight.

I really liked 21 tactics to increase blog traffic though. It had a few gems in there pointing out a few stupid mistakes I've been making:

• linking meaningless text ("click here" or "example.com")
  
• allowing traffic to fade away after a freak surge, instead of riding the wave with a follow-up post
  
• procrastinating and reacting too slowly (allowing media-frenzy to whither before posting something genuinely insightful)

Linda,

I know I'm going to have to re-read your post a few times over the next few days and weeks to get the full benefit from the time you've obviously put into it. (BTW: I have to doff my cap to you for using cats and "long tails" in the same paragraph )

The general feeling I get - and I know I'll have to go over things again a few times - is quite heart-warming: I was quite cynical thinking I'd discover keyword-stuffing and hidden text was still a common practice. As it turns out, most suggestions seem to revolve around positive actions: creating real content and tools, and exerting some discipline to keep up regular activity. But there's probably one thing that's either missed, or hidden amongst the threads, and that's monitoring.

There were several action plans (handily separated into daily, weekly and monthly activities) - but I didn't see much about how you monitor and assess how well the actions are serving you. How do you check the effort to produce a well-researched article was worth it? If it takes 3 - 5 hours to write an article, is that more rewarding than writing 10 comments in an hour? Are blogs and forum comments time-efficient for today's traffic, but rubbish for long-term page-rank?

I think I need to read your (Linda's) comment again tomorrow, as it probably answers the questions I've just asked, but I'm too tired to see it.

Thanks again,

Ash

 

[Udo]

Hello Ash,

I clicked on your site and it's a "good one". The only negative aspect in my opinion is, you come straight to the point when clicking your link.
Pre-sell is the way to go before you can start to make money (from Ken Evoy) and I think he is right. I would give your first page a little bit of a personell touch to give your visitors the feeling, here is something special going on and get them interested to click onto your next page. COMPETITION IS BIG OUT THERE, so make it special.

Best regards,
Udo

 

[ewelike]

Hi Udo,

Thanks for you comments. I think I understand what you're saying; but let me ramble on a bit just to be sure...

We've developed with the idea that most traffic would come from search-engines, and go straight to a deep-link - immediately showing the user exactly what they were looking for, and getting them in and out of the site as quickly as possible (I'm sure I've read that one of Google's goals is to continually drive DOWN the amount of time people spend on searching.)

For repeat visitors, we assume users already know what the site does, and thought a cluttered home-page would be annoying (basically because that's how we feel about other sites in the same sector.)

I guess we hadn't considered the third type of visitor - the explorers - people who've wandered over from a forum or blog to take a look out of curiosity. You're probably right, we should be more aware that people following links from blogs may not actually know what the site does.

With that in mind, do people (generally) think signature links should go to customized landing pages? e.g. example.com/new_users ?? Or, should site designers just work harder and smarter to make sure the site home-page works just as well for repeat visitors as for new users?

(I'm already thinking of how to optimize for repeat vs new visitors using cookies, and seeing the flaws: you only detect repeat visitors on the same computer. Maybe I'm worrying about nothing and repeat users will willingly accept and understand the fact you're showing them the 'new user' page even if they're not...?)

 

[jazzguy]

With that in mind, do people (generally) think signature links should go to customized landing pages? e.g. example.com/new_users ?? Or, should site designers just work harder and smarter to make sure the site home-page works just as well for repeat visitors as for new users?

Personally, I would do the latter. of course, as mentioned, you know your traffic more than most and you can track where it's coming from so it may not be a large concern. Usually, my experience has been that forum traffic, especially from webmaster forums and such, only provide a quick view from the reader to see what's going on and then they are gone. Like you stated, it's mostly the curious and not a qualified visitor. I guess this is why testing and tweaking is so huge in this line of work. I doubt we will ever get to the point where we please everyone so stick with the ones you please the most. All the best.

 

[Linda Buquet]

Whoa Ash, didn't realize I wrote a book. Sometimes I ramble, but I think there's probably some good advice in there somewhere.

As far as where to send forum sig and blog post visitors. I admin it didn't really look at site much, so giving somewhat blind advice. HOWEVER most homepages have lots of nav links and are trying to show a vast array of what they offer. Fine for search engines.

But if you are doing TARGETED forum or blog marketing you know who your visitor is, so it's good to either send them to a category page (if that fits for you) or a category specific landing page.

Think of your site like a giant mall and lead them where you want them to go, to take the action you want them to take. If they just walk in the front entrance to the mall and can't find the store they want OR it's at the other end, you could lose them before they buy. If they called your mall and asked if you had any music stores, you would help them get directly to that store, right?

You also want to minimize the # of clicks it takes them to get there. Realize if they have to try to figure out how to get where they want to go and also realize every extra click they have to make - you run the risk of them getting lost or interrupted and then they never make it to the buy button.

So if you want to focus on music forums and blogs then your anchor link would say "Best Music Music CD Prices Here" (or whatever) and link to your music CD page. If you are on a Rock forum, then send don't send them to the cat page send them directly to your Rock section.

That does a couple things! It gets the eyeballs that see your sig direct to the part of site you think they'll be interested in PLUS it gives you targeted KW link juice to that internal category page - which in turn could help you get higher ranking for that cat or product specific page.

Make sense???

 

[genuwine4532]

answers

HERE ARE THE NEXT STEPS:

Social Bookmark and News Sites - MUST HAVE!!!
Article Marketing
Directory Submission
US Free Ads
Blog Comments - Works and Works GREAT!! (relevant blogs)
Relevant Forum Posting with sig link
Build a Squidoo lens to promote your stuff (links are do-follow on the lens)

These are tedious but they ALL work!! Besides the direct traffic these are all essential aspects of SEO, which will get your site better exposure from organic search traffic.