If You Build It,They Will Come...

If You Build It,They Will Come...

by:
Adrian Kennelly

...No they won't.
On the web, building a web site is not enough. If there are no
links to the site anywhere, no-one is going to visit it. The site
won't even be listed in any of the search engines without some
incoming links. To get traffic, you will need to do some promotion.

Web Directories
The basic part of any promotion campaign, web directories, whist
they may not generate much in the way of traffic, will help in
your site's search engine ranking. A good list of free, non-reciprocal,
search engine friendly directories can be found at http://info.vilesilencer.com.

Pay Per Click Advertising
This is advertising such as PPC Search Engines, like Yahoo!'s
Overture, and contextual advertising, like Google's AdWords. Be
warned, it is very easy to go through a substantial amount of
money for no reward using these services if you are not careful.
AdWords (amongst others) lets you pick a maximum budget a day,
but, although $5 may not sound like much, $5/day is $150+ per
month. Better make sure your keywords are correctly identified,
and, in preference, not highly competed on, and that your sales
copy is good enough before doing this.

Quality Traffic, not Just Traffic
It's what everyone is after, more traffic to their website. Traffic
is easy to obtain, though. Autosurfers, manual hit exchanges and
purchased traffic will all send visitors to your website. However,
this traffic is just visitors, many of whom will just burn up
your bandwidth for no reward. Unless you are receiving decent
money for pay per impression advertising, such as banners and
popups, this traffic can be totally valueless.

Repeat Traffic
Unless you only require visitors to visit your site once, because
you are selling a one-off product, and your sales copy is fantastic
enough that they are hooked to buy on the first visit (and if
you are regulary doing this, write an ebook explaining how and
sell it), you will want visitors to return. If there is nothing
of value at your site, visitors may come once, but they won't
come back of their own accord. Typically, it is estimated that
a prospective customer will be exposed seven times to a product
etc. before buying.

Reciprocal Linking
Whilst somewhat frowned upon, and generally thought to not be
as valuable as one-way linking (see below) for search engine optimization,
a relevant reciprocal linking campaign can be an important traffic
generating tool. swap links with sites in a related, but non-competing,
business to your own. It isn't really a good idea to link to competitors;
although visitors will be interested in your product, there is
a good chance you will lose them to your competitor, especially
if their website or product is better or looks better than your
own. Not a desirable outcome. For example, a web hosting site
could link to a site that sells scripts and programs; visitors
to one will more than likely use the other, but the sites are
not in direct competition. You can also swap links with web directories
that require a reciprocal link.

One-Way Linking
Considered the best form of link for SEO purposes, this can also
be a good source of traffic. There are a number of ways of getting
one-way links. The easiest is submission to free web directories
(see above). Another good source is by writing articles relevant
to your site or industry, putting a resource box at the bottom,
then posting the article on the directories such as GoArticles,
or by sumbitting to the ezines. Webmasters and ezine publishers
are always in need of fresh content, and will publish your article
for free. The hardest way of getting one-way inbound links is
by having websites voluntarily link to you. The only way to do
this is by providing a valuable tool, service or resource that
other webmasters will want to direct their visitors to

About the author:
Adrian Kennelly is the webmaster of DirectoryGold Web Directory
and Portal at http://www.directorygold.com


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