Promoting a website

[Farang]

I'm trying to promote my website and was interested to know if anyone had any ideas. I've sent out link-swapping requests to some similar sites, submitted to the Yahoo directory (which for previous sites provided around 95% of the traffic), and am wondering if there is something I'm missing here. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[intogamer]

Depends on what content you have....

I would go to lower name search engines and submit your site there

 

[Farang]

Originally posted by: intogamer
Depends on what content you have....

I would go to lower name search engines and submit your site there

I haven't done this for a few years but I was really disappointed how most of them want to charge me to submit a site now. I'll still try doing that will all of the free ones though.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Is this for the site in your signature?

Generally, search engines are where you should first focus your efforts. It won't be an overnight effect, but it will open your site up to a lot of potential traffic. The best way to get traffic from search engines is through content. Track the visitors to your site and what they searched for, when you see certain things doing well, see if you can tweak them to get listed higher in the search results for them. It's not uncommon for a site to have 4-5 statistics analyzation (sp?) scripts. Once you see traffic and where it comes from, make sure you're getting the most possible from it.

If you're doing something similar to others, exchange links with them, that's a good way to get people who are already interested in the topic to visit.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: Farang

Originally posted by: intogamer
Depends on what content you have....

I would go to lower name search engines and submit your site there

I haven't done this for a few years but I was really disappointed how most of them want to charge me to submit a site now. I'll still try doing that will all of the free ones though.

They should pick up your site anyway over time, the submission is just to get it going a little sooner. If you've got it with the largest search engines (google, msn, etc.) then don't waste your time doing more of this. If you find a good free subsmission script/tool, go ahead and use it. If you do use one, make sure to use an email address you don't mind getting spammed - if it's going out to hundreds of search engines, chances are that either the service doing this or one of those search engines will sell your email address to someone else.

 

[Farang]

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo
Is this for the site in your signature?

Generally, search engines are where you should first focus your efforts. It won't be an overnight effect, but it will open your site up to a lot of potential traffic. The best way to get traffic from search engines is through content. Track the visitors to your site and what they searched for, when you see certain things doing well, see if you can tweak them to get listed higher in the search results for them. It's not uncommon for a site to have 4-5 statistics analyzation (sp?) scripts. Once you see traffic and where it comes from, make sure you're getting the most possible from it.

If you're doing something similar to others, exchange links with them, that's a good way to get people who are already interested in the topic to visit.

It is for the site in my signature (shameless self-promotion). I'm going to try to turn it to more appealing content in the next month--travel tips, pictures, etc.

I guess I'll have to research how to use search engines to my advantage. Like I said I'm used to the Yahoo directory doing all the work for me. Maybe about ten years ago I ran a site that had 5,000 uniques per day, about 95% of those came from Yahoo. Now I see I must be more creative

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: Farang

Originally posted by: AgaBoogaBoo
Is this for the site in your signature?

Generally, search engines are where you should first focus your efforts. It won't be an overnight effect, but it will open your site up to a lot of potential traffic. The best way to get traffic from search engines is through content. Track the visitors to your site and what they searched for, when you see certain things doing well, see if you can tweak them to get listed higher in the search results for them. It's not uncommon for a site to have 4-5 statistics analyzation (sp?) scripts. Once you see traffic and where it comes from, make sure you're getting the most possible from it.

If you're doing something similar to others, exchange links with them, that's a good way to get people who are already interested in the topic to visit.

It is for the site in my signature (shameless self-promotion). I'm going to try to turn it to more appealing content in the next month--travel tips, pictures, etc.

I guess I'll have to research how to use search engines to my advantage. Like I said I'm used to the Yahoo directory doing all the work for me. Maybe about ten years ago I ran a site that had 5,000 uniques per day, about 95% of those came from Yahoo. Now I see I must be more creative

Ooh, so you've been around on the web for a while too?

I do agree that it was easier at that time, at least it was for me. If I had an idea, I tried it, and a few times it worked very well. Doing the same thing today? Much harder, lots of competition, restrictions, etc.

Anyway, today, content is king. Simple, easy to follow and understand content is even higher. Some sites will have tons of text and that turns a user away. Being concise and giving just enough information is what people want today, media through images/videos helps a lot too. You might want to try making short videos if your camera allows it and compiling clips that you can post on YouTube. Youtube will let you embed these videos into your site as well. You'll get videos on your site, but at the same time will also get traffic from Youtube.