 How to Quickly
Gain Traffic to Your New Web Site
By
Herman Drost
© 2005
The problem with
a new site is that it often takes a long time before it is indexed by the
search engines. This means you are missing out on getting traffic and making
sales. Google places new sites in the "sandbox" which means they are on "hold"
for a period of time before they rank.
Here are some ways to generate immediate traffic to your web site:
1. Start a PPC (pay per click) campaign you can begin a Google Adwords
campaign and start generating visitors the same day you set it up. Of course
it is going to cost you some money but you can set a limit for how much you
wish to spend. You will soon get a good idea what keywords produce the most
clicks for your ads. You can incorporate these keywords in your site when
you optimize it for the search engines.
While you run your PPC campaign get busy with preparing your site for the
main search engines. Once you have been indexed by the main ones such as
Google, Yahoo and MSN and start moving up in rankings, you can scale back
the amount you spend on Google Adwords. Your goal is to eventually rank high
enough that you won’t have to use PPC anymore because you are getting
enough visitors.
2. Optimize your site for the search engines the keywords that generated
the most clicks from your PPC campaign, should be included in your web pages.
Research alternative keywords using utilities such as Wordtracker or the
Overture Suggestion Tool. You can determine the popularity of those keywords
by seeing how many Google Adword campaigns are running. You accomplish this
by entering the keyword or keyword phrase in the Google search engine and
see how many ads appear on the right hand side of the page. If there are
a lot, that means the keyword you chose is very popular and in high demand.
Integrate a few of your best keywords within the text on each of your web
pages. The home page should contain the keywords which have the highest demand
(most searches) with the least number of competing web sites. Then proceed
with the other pages in descending order of keyword popularity.
Make sure you also include these keywords in your meta tags, title, h1-h3
tags, links and file names. Don’t overdo it for you may get penalized
for spamming the search engines.
3. Increase link popularity this refers to how many external and internal
links are pointing or linking to any particular page. External links include
those that come from web sites other than your own whereas internal links
are those that come from within the same domain name. Link popularity is
not based on the "quantity" of links but the "quality" of those links as
well. Therefore increasing link popularity does not necessarily require having
a large number of links pointing to your site but rather a good number of
quality links.
4. Submit to the top search engine directories many of the top directories
have good link popularity that can be passed on to your site. They also have
specific category pages that are related to the nature of your site. The
major directories include The Open Directory, Yahoo and Zeal.
The Open Directory is one of the largest that is still free, however it can
take months or even years to get listed. If you become an editor for Zeal
you can get your site listed free. Yahoo costs $299.00/year to be included.
It is worth it if you can afford it.
Here’s a couple of articles on how to properly submit your site to the
search engine directories:
http://www.searchrank.com/resources/art007.htm
http://www.searchrank.com/resources/art015.htm
5. Submit to specialty search engine directories you may wonder why
I haven’t mentioned submitting to the major search engines. When you
work on building the link popularity of your site, it automatically places
you in the main search engines. Once you have submitted your site to the
main directories, find specialized directories related to your business.
Here’s a good resource:
http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/2156351
You can also research the link partners of your competitors’ sites by
entering your favorite keyword in the search engines. Once you have found
a number of top ranked sites, download the Google toolbar and check their
back links. This can save you a lot of time researching other areas to find
quality links.
Once your site been indexed by the search engines and included in the
directories, focus on adding more content and continue building your link
popularity. This will help you to maintain and/or increase rankings with
the result of gaining more traffic to your new web site.
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