There's no place like my home page!

By Mike Banks Valentine
Posted Tuesday, September 21, 2004

In operating WebSite101 I get one question *far* more often than others. So I thought I'd address the single question more frequently asked than any other online query,

"How Do I Get Lots of Traffic?"

The question is always a variation on the theme of the one asked below. I wish that it were possible to answer with something like,

"Put your feet together and click your heels three times, then say, "There's no place like my home page", over and over.

Raul asked:

I've a Web Site that I made 3 weeks ago. After promoting it on:

- Search Engines
- Directories
- FFA
- E-mail
- Ezines
- etc.

I can only make about 100 visitors a day. Could you please give me some advice on how to get more visitors. Where can I promote my Site so I can have lots of visitors? I've a low budget, but I would also like to know the best places where someone can advertise a web site and have lots of visitors.

Thank you for your time,
Raul

My answer is frustrating to many beginning webmasters.

You are doing GREAT to have 100 visitors a day for just a three week old site! It often takes that long just to be spidered by the search engines. I'd presume that it's your other efforts bringing the traffic, because I can't find your site in *any* of the search engines, *yet*.

The thing that you need to accept is that it's a never-ending task! You should NEVER stop promoting if you want to continue to improve your traffic and your search engine visibility.

You'll find differing opinions on the *best* places to advertise, but my opinion is that the place to concen- trate your energy is in writing articles for ezines and establishing your own ezine.

Take a look at (http://website101.com/ezine.html) to review places to advertise, write articles and how to get an ezine of your own launched and listed in ezine directories. Look at the book by Rick Beneteau called "Ezine Marketing Machine" (It's subtitled, "How I make a fortune using FREE ezine advertising") there is a link to the book from the page referenced above.

If you don't want to write your own material, there are lots of authors willing to contribute to your ezine. Take a look at (http://www.egroups.com/group/Free-Content) where you can subscribe to a list and receive free articles regularly from business writers about marketing on the web. Use these articles in your ezine and write your own to contribute to the list as well.

You include what's called a "resource-box" at the end with your web address and e-mail link so people can visit your site. You make the articles available to others to use free in their ezines and your articles (read, free advertising) are accepted by others to run in *their* ezines. This is a powerful traffic generator.

You should also re-submit your site to the search engines each time you make a change to the page, so that they index the new material and the "spiders" keep returning to your site each time you've made a change. Don't overdo those submissions though or you'll end up "banned" by the SE's!

It's a long process to rank well in the search engines. I recommend subscribing to many of the excellent lists about search engine optimization and submission. One of my favorites is Danny Sullivans "Search Engine Watch" news- letter (http://www.searchenginewatch.com), he keeps you up to date on search engine news and changes.

A great discussion list for search engine discussion where you can learn from the experts and ask questions about how to improve your ranking. To subscribe, send an e-mail to mailto:join-i-search@list.mmgco.com and you'll regularly receive *great* information on how the pros accomplish the difficult task of search engine optimization.

Of course you could also pay someone to do this for you, but not if you have a small budget. As you can see, it's quite a time consuming task to generate traffic unless you can figure out what I've left out of that magic spell.

Aren't you forgetting your ruby slippers or something?
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WebSite101 "Reading List" Weekly Netrepreneur Tip Sheet Ezine emphasizing small business online (http://website101.com/arch/) e-tutorial online at: (http://website101.com/shortcourse.html) By week's end you're ready expand your business to the web!

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