I’m doing a web site for a friend who is in business for himself. He wants to sell stuff off the internet and naturally wants all the traffic he can get. I know there are services that promise to increase your traffic for a fee, but he wants to avoid fees if at all possible. What are good, cheap ways to get the most traffic to your website? And, if he does decide to use a consultant, how can you get a lot of traffic without spending an arm and a leg?
Include a “Barely Legal Teens” page?
Maybe start posting on related message boards. For example, if you’re selling bicycles, go to the forums on the World Bicycling Association’s website and look for people saying “Where can I buy an extra spoke for my wheel? I lost one,” and then say, “It just so happens I’m selling them. [Link.]”
BTW, you’d have to do that very tactfully (e.g. don’t just start a million “Come to my website!!!” threads) or else you’ll be seen as spamming, which is very frowned on here, and probably on most message boards worth anyone’s time.
How about adding some content? Getting back to TJDude’s bicycle example, you could have pages that describe the optimum seat adjustment, tire pressure, maintenance schedules, best method for cleaning a chain, etc.
You may have noticed that some commercal sites even have content pages only marginally related to their business (metric converters, perpetual calendars, etc).
Google adwords? Selling on ebay? Having the lowest prices on the internet?
I used to get paid to do this.
Unfortunately, the tricks of old don’t really work anymore. The only way to do it these days is add content and make sure your pages are heavily self-linked. Then start submitting to the various search engines. More content + dense linkage = higher ranking.
Make sure the content you add to the pages is keyword rich, too (though try to avoid too much repitition). Also, does anyone still use meta tags? I haven’t done SEO in a long time, but can’t you add descriptive words to your meta tags that will result in higher search engine rankings?
Yes, keywords are important. Meta tags are useless now - they were always heavily abused.
Can you please explain dense linkage in more detail. And, by content to you mean inside the Mega tag?
Content at the site relating to your subject matter – bicycles, bicycle repair, the joy of cycling… whatever. Depth and breadth of content are what drive traffic, IMO. There are no magic tricks. I’ve got a site that gets a half-million page views a month. All most all of that traffic comes from the search engines, and folks looking for something that I had content relating to. Maybe you could post product reviews, or disussion of equipment, or info on making repairs.
Another couple of things to remember when putting together your content (i.e., the text people will see when they open the Web site):
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Make sure that you get your main message in or include a “hook” (i.e., interesting fact, notice of a sale) that will make people want to read more toward the beginning of your content. Most people only read any given Web page for about 30 seconds, so that’s about how long you have to lure them in.
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Make sure that it’s easy to navigate and that your friend’s business contact information is readily apparent - if possible, at least have his e-mail address on the bottom of each page. There’s nothing more frustrating than having to dig through a site to figure out how to give someone your money.
I agree with all the posts above. The only thing I would add would be to make sure you are sharing/exchanging reciprocal links with other websites that sell the same kind of stuff your friend is sharing. Now, when I say that, I don’t mean EXACTLY the same stuff, but along the same lines. Ask yourself, “Would this website be a good resource for my visitors?”
If so, you have a good candidate for a “link partner” and should email their webmaster or contact email about sharing links. This means you’ll have to create a page for links on your own website, and also possibly categorize those links so they are easy for your users to find.
Next, the link that you ask them to place on their site is very important. Make sure the “anchor text” (or text that appears between the <a href=""></a> tags) relates to what you are selling. For instance: Let’s say you are selling hot dogs on your website. A sample link for your website could look like this:
<a href="http://www.hotdogworld.com" target="new">hot dogs, weiners, and brats</a>
This kind of link will give you better search engine rank (in all the large search engines) for the phrases “hot dogs” “weiners” and “brats”. You can put whatever kind of “anchor text” you want in your links that you send to link partners, just make sure it’s relevant to your website. Remember, cheating never wins out in the end.
Hopefully this was helpful. If you want an example of what I do, click the link in my signature.