The 7 Ways to Get Traffic on the Web
Search engines have the potential to drive millions of visitors a month. Make sure your site is optimized for search engine traffic.
Establish SEO
friendly architecture for the pages w/optimized URLs, Title Tags, and H1 Tags Track and Increase the # of in-bound links to your site Track and Increase the # of pages your site has indexed: “site:nameofyoursite.com”
Helpful Resources about Search Engine Traffic: 68 Helpful SEO Tools
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Press
The more sites that link to you, the more sustainable traffic you build over time. Make sure you maximize the potential for referring traffic.
Populate a target list of blogs in your vertical that could cover your product or content Monitor a list of 15 comparable websites and track all their online press from major publications Track all sites linking into you and link back to them whenever possible
Helpful Resources about for Getting Referral Traffic: Top Blogs List (with email contacts)
Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, Twitter and others are set up to help discover content on other sites and can be powerful sources for driving a significant amount of traffic.
Produce content appropriate for each community, each site has a different bias on what gets popularized Track the number of friends you have in each community and have easy access to communicate with them (IM)
Maximize Pageviews by featuring related content in key positions on landing pages users visit from social media
Helpful Resources for Getting Social Media Traffic: The Social Media Manual and Promoting Yourself on Twitter (by geekpreneur)
Get other major sites to integrate some core functionality of your site into their own as a value add
Get the list of the Alexa or Compete most popular sites on the web, and find all web properties that have a crossover with your site. Widgets, Widgets, Widgets. Be creative and persistent.
Helpful Resources for Getting Traffic from Partnerships: Web 2.0 Distribution Deals
On the web, Content is King. Find ways to integrate refreshing content into the pages people visit most on your site, and you’ve given them a reason to come back for more.
Track your most trafficked pages & add in refreshing content Identify ways to automatically generate refreshing content without having to manually edit and input it Adapt your site structure to add in refreshing content if that is not a component
Helpful Resources for Getting Traffic from Refreshing Content: How to Write Great Blog Content from Problogger
The viral loop is the process of turning users into marketers and thus exponentially increasing your traffic via your user base.
Promote a registration process, making sure to capture user emails Integrate awards, points, leaderboards, recognition, self-Promotion. Establish auto-emails that are triggered based on various user behavior
Helpful Resources for Getting Traffic from the Viral Loop: The Viral Coefficient
People come back to sites that solve a personal compelling need. Most of the time, we’re either thinking about Money, Health, or Love (or some derivative)
QUESTION: If you were the most popular site in your category, would it give someone a reason to come back to the site every day/every week?