A Comprehensive Guide on How to Build Long Term Traffic to Your Website

Jul 29th, 2007 by Leonid Shalimov | Scroll down for comments

Monthly Roundup - second most commented article on Cashbulge. Joe’s sitting there at his computer having just uploaded the last folder of his website information to his FTP and he sits back to look in wonder as his great new site loads.

100%, its up, it looks beautiful, has some good content. Joe goes to sleep thinking about all the users that will be enjoying his site overnight. Joe wakes up to reality. Checks his webstats and sees that only 4 users came to check out his new site. In disgust, he thinks that he has failed. “Let’s give it a week,” he says.

A week later and only 223 users have seen the site. Joe decides to give up, deletes the FTP content and starts from scratch. I was that ‘Joe’ about three years ago.

OK so where did Joe go wrong? He gave up too early. Gaining traffic isn’t some overnight miracle, it takes time, work, and more work. There are however some ways to build a relatively good amount of traffic in a short amount of time (three-four days). Always remember though that traffic doesn’t mean much if people aren’t reading your site.

People are the backbone of your site: Without people, there would be no internet (and no revenue for that matter). Check out Networking 101 - People Are Your Best Resource for more.

Here are some quick steps to boost your traffic quickly.

1. Create juicy, valuable, and interesting linkbait.

Linkbait? What the hell is this guy talking about. For those who don’t know what linkbait is, heres a simple definition:

Link Bait is the act of doing something that causes others to link to you voluntarily. Source: Jim Boykin

Linkbait is the type of stuff on the front page of Digg and Reddit everyday. Linkbait is fodder for your target audience, something important or influential (depending on the niche) that people want to read. Matt Cutts did a good article on linkbaiting that I think most people should look over. Also take a look at CopyBlogger’s link article on how to increase traffic (great resource).

OK, I get what linkbait is, how do I create it?

While there’s no way to instantly create great linkbait there are a couple of ways to get started on the right direction. You should be posting content that’s interesting and eye-catching to make it linkbait, here are a few ways to do that.

1. Be controversial. - Yea, we had the whole iPhone hype and that was great linkbait but its old now, I’m talking down and dirty controversial up to the minute rumors, anything basically that is hot at the time.

2. Use lists. - We do a lot of these here. I’m talking about ‘Top 10′ lists, ‘5 Quick Tips’, ‘4 Easy Ways to’, etc.

3. Create tools. - Make some kind of ‘tool’ on your site, something that will help users in your niche or be fun and interactive.

4. Start contests. - Contests are a great way to get your readers involved and it shows that you want to give back to the community.

These are just some examples, another good article going more in-depth (in a general way) can be found here: Art of Linkbaiting.

Created some linkbait, now what?

Get the word out! You have your linkbait, now roll with it. It’s time to let people know about your site. The best way I think to do this is..

1. Social Bookmarking. - Use all the social bookmarking websites to get your story out there, if its effective and you get a lot of votes, you’ll hit a front page (which cause a traffic tsunami, trust me).

2. Forums. - Use Google and other resources to find a forum in your niche. Register, and get your article out there (make sure not to be too spammy).

3. Press Release. - There are a lot of ‘free’ PR submission services out there, use them!

4. Contact other site owners in your niche. - Pitch them the article, see if maybe they would link to it (and of course, link back to them as well). Leave comments on other sites, it will get noticed.

Remember, linkbait means compelling content, spend time on the things you write, be proud of it. Always be sure to go back and look over your work before you publish.

If you have anymore suggestions for building quick traffic, leave a comment!

Leonid Shalimov posted this article under Traffic Tips, Blog Improvement on Sunday, July 29th, 2007 at 10:58 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment or trackback from your own site. View Technorati Linkbacks.