Web site traffic w/ o Google: survival guide
New sites have (practically) no chance to rank well in Google - most significant traffic source for ANY online resource. Taking into the account the number of new websites and blogs that pop up in thousands daily it is hard to get top rankings in Google - the number of top positions is limited. There are established and authority sites that make it hard to compete with for the top places.
Established sites also search for new and additional traffic sources. No site can get enough traffic.
So, what is left for us? What are the ways to get extra traffic, besides Google, for established sites and new ones?
Below is a short survival guide. Certainly, not every technique works for every type of the website and it is not 100% guarantee that the traffic you generate via below ways will help you greatly and you will stop dreaming of Google traffic. But every bit helps…
1. Contests. Weekly, monthly, any. Remember to add it to special contest directories, also to Volition.com and FatWallet.com sweeps forums.
2. PPC. You can test second tier PPC (in addition to Yahoo! Search Marketing and AdWords) engines – they are chaper, but be ready for high % of fraud clicks.
3. Social bookmarking websites (del.icio.us & similar). A nice free tool that allows to bookmark your content with a number of the most popular websites: www.onlywire.com – saves tons of time.
4. Much unique and good content that can work as viral marketing to spread word about your website.
5. Many quality links – they are valuable for SEO to improve your search engine rankings, but they also can become an important traffic source.
6. Press releases. Find angles monthly. A great list of services to submit your press releases to is here
7. Tests for $ (buy a few links; an established site; expired domains; directory listings; e-zine adv)
8. e-Mail marketing: be in touch with your visitors
9. Target other search engines: Yahoo!, MSN, Ask
10. Affiliate programs (if you have a product or service for sale): build a network of affiliates. It is better to run an in-house affiliate program.
11. Participate in the top forums of your industry. Remember to add signature that will be automatically displayed with your every post.
12. Search webmaster forums for traffic generation techniques specific to your type of the website:
13. Classifieds (incl. Craigslist).
14. Award sites (top 100 sites, etc)
15. Mega traffic mega quick: read this great post on fast traffic generation ways
16. Join some blog carnivals
17. Buy traffic – useless, but it exists as a technique and you can waste a portion of your adv budget
18. Explore your logs: where your visitors come from: more efforts to that channel promotion
19. Alexa top 100 traffic sites: need to discover ways to get your tiny traffic stream from them. For instance, from
a. eBay (signature in e-mails, ‘about me’)
b. Flickr: submit best images with the description & link, create a user group
c. YouTube (see above)
d. Wikipedia
e. MySpace (profile blende with your website, friends generation, bulletins)
f. Craigslist
That’s it. I think there is something for you to test from the list. Good luck.
[tags]google, traffic generation, ebay, myspace, flickr, wikipedia, youtube, craigslist, ppc, affiliate marketing, yahoo!, msn, alexa, press release, affiliate program, digg, Slashdot, shouwire, ebaumsworld, fark, blogs, blog carnivals[/tags]
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