It is said that ‘changing to a lion is not the problem, but getting the tail of a lion.” Honestly, I don’t know what is so special about the tail of a lion. But I do know that creating a blog is so easy, that it has become a pastime for so many people! But getting people to visit your site is crux of the matter. That’s the hard part!
A lot of publishers claim they have ‘secrets’ used in driving traffic to their sites , and many are offering one e-book or the other containing these ‘secrets’ at different prices. But the fact remains that driving traffic to your site is not that simple or that difficult. It is important rather that your site (or blog) grows organically as a direct result of superior contents and appeal. However, slow growth of your site also infers slow flow of income.
Experts are however of the opinion that certain amount of publicity be done by you to promote your site. The list of such recommended activity is very exhaustive. Here are some I intend to use to promote my site:
1. Contents
A good content will not only attract traffic, but will keep them coming, and might even earn you good free links. I have linked to several sites that I found very useful content wise. I have also bookmarked various. Ensure your site is updated periodically, and keep enough content in the archive to sustain traffic. An advertiser once rejected my application because I do not have up to 30 pages of content! Another expert once said, you should have at least 100 pages of quality content before lunching your site. Content is key! Quality content is invaluable, this cannot be over emphasised.
2. Link Exchange
Exchanging links with similar sites is one sure way of getting traffic. If search engines crawls those sites, they’ll find your link as well. Link exchange can be direct or indirect. You can send a direct request to be linked to a site. Or you can comment on a related site, and sign off with your name and URL (your link). Of course comments should be purposeful in nature, and meaning. It should not be an opportunity to spam.
3. Search Engines
Most people get to a site through search engines like Google, Yahoo, AltaVista. Making your site easy to find by the search engines is by no means an easy task. There are billions of web pages out there, and thousands, perhaps millions offering the same (or similar) products or contents as yours. Most searchers hardly go beyond the second page of Search Engine results. Making your site appear in the first page (with a good page rank) is very critical. This is the domain of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts. However, whether you are an SEO expert or not, you must have a fair idea of SEO to succeed as an online small business owner, or blogger.
Submit your site to as many search engines as you can. This will help speed up the time it takes for search engines to locate and crawl your site.
4. Link baiting
This refers to the strategy of creating controversy to generate interest and traffic to your site. Opinions that contradict popular beliefs is sure to generate reactions. This strategy if tactically deployed may generate steady follow of traffic to your site. Be careful though not to breach the terms of agreement of your site host, your adverts providers, or break the law. The first time I tried link baiting with this poem, the love struck friend deleted me from her facebook friends list. I got 21 new hits, and 2 new followers from the unexpected furore that followed before I was deleted! Is it worth it? Be the judge!
5. Affiliate Programs
Having affiliate program sites link to your site can also be very rewarding in terms of traffic flow. However, affiliate programs come with banners, and adverts many which may not be related to your site content. So when signing up for affiliate programs, be careful not to allow banners to clog your pages. My visitors are interest in contents of my site not in adverts, and banners! I’m sure same will apply to your visitors.
6. Advertise!
The adverts run on my sites by Adsense or the alternative like Albrite, and Chitika are placed by sites like mine. So depending on budget, advertising may be a good way of getting steady traffic to your site.
7. Forums, and Social Networking site
Posting in forums, and social networking sites, like facebook, MySpace, twitter, dig, etc can be a very good way to promote your site. Helpful comments in forum discussions relating to your site contents can help generate interest and traffics to your site. Attach your site URL to relevant postings and comments. Again, here, be careful not to spam! Spamming is generally not ethical beside some search engines can ban your site for spamming.
There are of course many other ways of driving traffic to your site. A combination of some of these methods will help your site to gradually witness an increase in traffic. This therefore serves as a guide of how you may go about it.
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