The web dev soap opera; 'the days of our website!' How do I get traffic to my site?

Search Engine Optimization

With any CMS / dynamic website or even static pages,,,, getting indexed into Google or any search engine is one thing, getting traffic is another thing but still not always useful, getting targeted traffic is the key and sometimes just not possible!

...........................Not possible unless your willing to do the legwork because we have all heard it before,,, but nothing in this world is free and that includes good quality traffic to your website.

The length of time it takes to get indexed in any search engine could be a week or several months. Google even has something called a "sandbox effect" which means that they will not rank newer websites until they have proven their viability to exist for more than a period of "x" months. Anywhere from 3 months to 6 months at times. So you may have backlinks but they are essentially given no value for a while,,, but you probably need a whole lot of more backlinks anyway so keep working! There are many other factors such as how many links you have inbound and outbound and the quality of. Google even has patents on search algorithms that evaluate a domain/sites worthiness by how many years you have your domain name registered for. So while the theory is not proven, if you can afford it, extend your domain registration for 10 years to show the search engines that your site is serious.

You will want to have good content and plenty of it. Hire a ghost writer if you need to. Hire a programmer to implement that feature that you cannot. Implement "search engine friendly URL's", make sure you have a lot of text. Utilize Google Sitemaps and make sure you have RSS output. Etc.

Blah.

We've all read a million stories on how to get into the search engines or how to get traffic to our websites.....

Here are some thoughts that usually surface or that we notice when exploring studies that look at how to get website traffic or optimize your website for search engines:

• much of it is repetitive
• some of it is old news
• highly technical
• sometimes outright silly
• often tedious
• sometimes completely wrong
• deceptive?
• impossible?
• makes sense but is hard work
• requires investment of time and /or money
• etc
• etc
• etc

These are the thoughts not the methods but regardless, the consistency here is that there is no consistency. Every website and the SEO tactics you choose for it might be different.

You have to know your topic, and you have know your audience and move forward from there. All of the above factors will likely apply to any strategy you choose but the key here is to make a 'game plan' so to say.

People Optimization

Depending on your topic you might not be able to compete in the search engines anyway, so regardless of your sites topic, treat it like a niche topic. Treat your website as a niche website with a niche audience and consider non search engine promotional techniques. The direct promotion efforts that you make will get the search engine ball rolling when it is good and ready to roll.

Explore targeted link exchanges or distribute articles with author credits back to your site or get involved with popular website/communities surrounding your topic with appropriate signature or post advertisements. Look at ways to syndicate your site with other networks / look at ways you can partner with or value add to another website and vice versa. Start blogging or commenting on other blogs. Utilize social bookmarking and press release services. Find out what your users want or would benefit from, what is lacking on other websites that you could provide. Create contests or draws and promote those, give something away, just do something!

Do something and let people, not search engines, know about it!

If you just have a website, a page or two or three, and are trying to sell something or just wanting visitors to show up to your website period,,,, it won't happen. Target a local audience perhaps? Setup a Google Adwords campaign or similar service to target your audience.... do something, just don't expect any traffic let alone targeted traffic to stumble into your website and generate revenue or activity.

In short: If you want to worry about search engines, don't as in the beginning it is a waste of time. Concentrate on YOUR audience and build your site around them,,,, create content for them, then create some buzz around it all and then in good time the search engines will come to you.

We'll revisit this topic again with some of our top resources, links, search engine tips and "people optimization" thought.

Cheers!