Ideas for getting traffic

[grynge]

The following is just a list of ideas on where to start to to build traffic to your site. A lot of these are temporary boosts in traffic. Remember 1 thing the internet is a very very small place. If you say you have a giveaway/contest then actually give it away. Your site can be ruined by being late or not delivering.

Search Engines, obviously can be one of the best ways to drive continual traffic

• Paid
• Free

Content, can be a hit miss affair, some content will get loads of traffic, other content will get none.

• Articles
• Newsletter

Links, not all links are equal, some links give great link juice and no traffic, some links give great traffic with little link juice.

Directories, depending on your niche being in lots of directories can get lots of traffic or little traffic. For example being a free directory in a free directory list will get you loads of traffic.

Be the NEWS Breaker, probably one of the hardest of all ways to get traffic. Being onsite when a news story breaks can have a huge traffic response. This can be a lot easier if you are in timezones that are not in sinc with major time zones like UK/Europe. Think TMZ it was a movie pirate site before it started to get posts on what was happening in Hollywood. Not always a sustainable amount of traffic

Comments & Forums Posts, making useful and intriguing content on popular blogs and forums can increase your traffic. Pick blogs/forums types that are in your particular niche as the people there are already interested in your niche. eg.. if your site is about forex there probably is little point adding comments to a needlecraft blog/forum.

Podcasting & Video, depending on your content these can be another way to good traffic and these can also lead to viral/linkbait.

Newsgroups & IRC Channels, sometimes forgotten by main stream marketers, there are still millions of users using newsgroups and irc channels every day. The ways to get traffic from these are a bit harder but can still be worthwhile. Having a unique usable tool for these can be a real boon to traffic.

Unique Auctions, a friend of mine a few years ago managed to get 6 tickle me emo dolls when they had run out at xmas time, he put them up for a auction.

Giveaways, recently here in Australia Pepsi gave t-shirts away, the original quota was 50,000 t-shirts the first lot took about a month to giveaway so they added an extra 50,000 t-shirts which took about 2 weeks to give away. Obviously not everyone has the budget of Pepsi but giveaways can be a great way of getting traffic. Making your own rules is always good if your budget is low. Giving away things that people actually want is also very good but can be expensive. Watch who is applying for the giveaway, a popular blogger will be a better person to give to than a nobody with no website.

Contests, very similar to giveaways, use your own rules to set it up. This you may have to watch in Australia contests are covered under state legislation so you may need to check with your local authorities on holding a contest.

Social Media/Instant Messaging, make lots of friends is pretty easy, join one of the large games or groups. An easy way to not get busted for spam on the group is to use one of the other ideas for getting traffic and market it to the group. For example use a tool/contest/giveaway based on the game.

Local, this one can be useful, get your site out to your local places. Put it up on bulletin boards, place flyers around the place, place ads in places that allow local advertising. Local business clubs if your website is appropriate. I once had a game site, I talked to my sons school and they allowed it in their firewall, it spread from school to school eventually it was placed on the K12 list in america.

• Newspapers
• TV
• Stationary
• Flyers
• Local Clubs
• Local Groups
• Libraries
• Councils

Glossary, I think this is one of the least used ideas for getting traffic, having a great glossary explaining keywords/phrases in your niche can be an excellent source of traffic.

Useful Tools, tools can be a great way of getting continual traffic, making the tool specific to your niche and very useful and easy to use.

Linkbait, a hard one to describe basically it is doing something that gets people to talk about and link to your site. Sometimes this can be going against popular opinion sometimes calling a product/person out on their quality/principles. It can also back fire if done wrong.

Viral, very similar to Linkbait except you normally have something that is catchy and gets spread around the internet like wildfire normally something funny, unique, unusual or shocking.

Awards, think of the Golden Raspberries Award, having an award for your niche maybe worth looking into these can be for the good or bad of the niche.

New Hot Items/Words, the owner of WII.com made a tidy little fortune when Nintendo came out with the game console. Same happened with MILF in the pron business. Being the first to have content/domain pertaining to new products/keywords/keyphrases can be quite a windfall when it comes to traffic. This is a very hit miss affair and doesn't always give you a sustainable amount of traffic once the search engines work out what people actually want they tend to tweak to give them it.

I am sure there are many other ways I missed, but it should be a good list to get you thinking about how to get traffic for your site.

[hooperman]

Great list grynge. Are you having a slow week?

I've just used your post as a checklist and already identified one thing that I can use on a site of mine:

Glossary, I think this is one of the least used ideas for getting traffic, having a great glossary explaining keywords/phrases in your niche can be an excellent source of traffic.

I've seen plenty of glossaries, but never thought about writing one for my site.

[Clinton]

If he's having a slow week I'm not complaining. Neither are any of the newbies who "live" on this site.

Another fantastic post, grynge, thanks. I've used the glossary idea myself - like my glossary of terms on website buying and selling. But there are several ideas on your list that I've never tried. Which ones have worked best for you?

Platform: I don't know if this comes under useful tools, but providing people a route to reach their market or their audience. Press Release sites for example.

UGC/Community: Like these forums. Members talk about stuff that's important to them and that attracts other visitors.

[grynge]

I had to do some write-ups for this stupid contract I got myself into, so rather than just waste the time I spent on them I modified them a bit so they could be less specific and hopefully help some people out.

I really think it depends on what kind of niche the website is in, a small local business might be better off doing all the local stuff. A site that relies on adverts would be better of trying to get the huge traffic.

I have used the majority of them except Link Bait, over the years and they all seem to work well, most of them are very short life spans. But can be huge hits of traffic. One of my writers, did a piece on a lion kissing the lady that saved the lion. When she found the information it wasn't actually in the news, about 2 weeks later it was picked up by routers and then every radio/tv/newspaper in the country, the traffic nearly brought the server to it's knees. In the space of a week I made more from adsense than I do from all my adsense sites in a year. I still get the odd traffic but it was only worth about 1 week of traffic. When Steve Irwin died my sister who is a psychologist had written a piece on fame and children which included Bindy Irwin while we didn't get direct traffic for steves death, we got mega amounts for queries about what and how bindy irwin was feeling/doing/coping after the death.

Tools are an excellent way of keeping people coming back to your site.

[Andy]

Great post grynge,

Maybe you've covered these but I'll add it anyway:

Blogs - whatever content you post elsewhere, post to your blog. I've got several I've neglected terribly but they still get a consistent trickle of traffic. The more I post the larger this trickle grows.

Link wheels - creating a network of sites that point directly or indirectly to your money site can enhance all your efforts if done properly.

Parasite hosting - Incorporate the above method using sites like Blogger, Squidoo, and Hub Pages to draw traffic from them.

Andy

Andy

[grynge]

Thanks Andy your link wheel reminded me of an old way of getting traffic, the WEBRING. These used to be a great way of getting traffic from people already interested in your type of content.

[Kay]

email sigs - as well as including the sig appropriate to the reply, you can always add a link to another of your sites if you think the recipient might be interested in that too.

other people's content - I don't mean people who syndicate as part of a business strategy, this idea is more aimed at the average user. If you publish a story or a photo by them, they are quite often very pleased to have had their work published and then they tell their friends about it.

create synergies - look for non-competitors in a related niche and see how you can create win-wins. For example Dave and I attended an event, enjoyed it, and gave it a great write up. The owner of the event was so pleased with what we wrote about it that he splashed our review in his (large circulation) glossy print magazine, as well as linking to our review from his own website.

write book reviews (for new books)- if you honestly like something, then say so. Your review may well get a mention on the author's website or something even better. For example, I was emailed some sample chapters of a cook book prior to its publication. I loved it! And wrote back to say so along with a "quote". After publication, the book itself turned up in our mailbox and to my surprise and delight there was my quote on the back cover. Ainsley Harriott says...The Guardian says... and Not Delia says.. (Thanks for reminding me of that proud moment.)

Another thing you can do if you review new books is to ask the author to give away a copy in a competition which you will run for them.

[babyface]

The following is just a list of ideas on where to start to to build traffic to your site. A lot of these are temporary boosts in traffic.

Just to add..

How about the power of Networking, social or business related to attract traffic. Can be a fun way to get traffic especially if your site has a particular social aspect or focus.

Pushing deeper into the Bloggersphere also has many advantages since good bloggers tend to stick together and support each other and there is a always a huge level of interconnectivity between blogging platforms. Also offering things like guest blogs or putting your blogs on technorati is good for exposure.

Theres also Vertical search, making good use of all of your sites assets, video, images etc, making sure all your alt tags are accurate so that they all contribute to people finding your site in all forms of search.

[Clinton]

I've stickied this thread now, thanks grynge, so anyone wanting to add anything - your post is going to be in a sticky thread and get read by the thousands of casual visitors we get from SEs and elsewhere.

[Clinton]

any advice please about how to avoid getting it wrong?

In this market it's difficult to impossible to prevent against them gunning you down. They don't have to see a libellious comment to tie you up in legal paperwork. Suffice if they don't like what you've said or you've proven their PR line a sham. They have millions invested in that PR and so will do whatever it takes to get you to remove your comments. That said, these people aren't interested in compensation, they're more interested in preventing bad publicity so would likely leave you alone if you played ball, published and apology and removed whatever they ask you to remove.