Many online money make newcomers to the web make the mistake of thinking that just by buying a domain main and putting up your site visitors are going to happen by - something like when you buy property and build a storefront in a busy part of town.
It just doesn’t work that way. The web is harsh. You can have the best looking site in the world with great resources and content and go entirely ignored or unnoticed. It happens.
Here are 5 simple things you can start doing right now to help drive traffic to your online money make site.
1. Get some quick links from trusted directories
Link building is a long-term process with long-term goals, but for brand new sites with no history you’ve got to start somewhere. There are a number of directories out there that offer free and paid listings (subject to editorial review, of course). Here are the ones I recommend:
* Yahoo!
* Business.com
* JoeAnt.com
* DMOZ.org
* BOTW.org
2. Start blogging
OK, blogging is a great way to build relevant content at your site on a consistent basis. It also gives your visitors/customers a way to engage with you. But please don’t make the mistake of being too “corporate” on your blog - do yourself a favor and check your Public Relations cap at the door. Don’t be afraid to discuss your mistakes, missteps you’ve made, and what you’ve learned from them as well as your triumphs. In short, be a human, not a brand.
3. Guest Post At Relevant Blogs
This certainly requires some up-front investment, mainly in terms of building relationships with bloggers in your topic (a little brown-nosing never hurt), but it can help get the flywheel turning for your site like nothing else can. Take the time to make your guest post remarkable and smart - your host blogger will appreciate it, and it’ll improve the likelihood of attention coming back to your site (which you’ll link to in your guest post, of course). Links from blogs are some of the most powerful editorial links you can get - don’t underestimate them for a second.
4. Consider Paid Search
For new websites, often times paid search campaigns are a great way to get your site in front of your target market today. Be sure to keep your budget modest, though, until you’re confident in your ROI. Be sure to do your keyword research to find lower-cost “long tail” keywords - going after the big traffic keywords might be tempting, but it gets expensive the ROI is often not the best.
5. Use Article Marketing To Build Links
Article marketing is, essentially, trading words for links. It can help with link building, but the quality of the links it garners is usually less than stellar.
Here’s how it works:
* Write an informative article on your site topic (or something related)
* Include an “about the author” section as well as links in the article that point to your pages using relevant anchor text
* Submit the article through one of the many article syndication services (such as EZineArticles.com or GoArticles.com)
* The deal is, anybody can come along and publish your article on their website - provided they use the article in its original format including the “about the author” section. So when the article is published, any links you include back to your site are published as well.