Forum Moderators: mack
i'm sorry to burst your bubble on your first post but...
I also don't have any ideas for useful content, and can't be worried about right now.
That is the reason no one comes to your site. The only reason to visit a website is because you want to view the content on that site.
You need to be worried about it right now. That is the main thing that will bring people. Give them something useful to look at.
There are 3 main avenues of traffic open to you. search engines, directories and links. but to be honest good content has to happen before any of the others will. generaly in order to rank well in a search engine you need to have links pointing at your site. In order to get the links in the first place you need to have something worth linking to. If you build on your content. People will link to it, directories will list you and search engines will be able to follow links to your site. The more links search engines are able to follow to your site, the better they tend to rank you.
You can almost think of a link as a recomendation. Lets imagine a website owner is surfing the web. he/she finds your website and likes it. You then discover that the site owner has linked to you. Thats how you build link popularity. You need to give people something to link to before the links start to happen.
Mack.
But I dont understand why people voluntarily provide one way link to you in their site which would eventually drive their traffic out?
Mack.
Agreed. You need to have content. And the more original the content is, the better are the chances of your success. Without content who would visit a site.
So, first decide the content and develop it then move to adverstising.
As to advertising, there are lots of posts in forums over here.
Regards,
MB
But I dont understand why people voluntarily provide one way link to you in their site which would eventually drive their traffic out?
We publish an online reference source. When we come across good, indepth information about subjects, we offer a "further information" link at the end of our own, brief information article about the subject. We feel this helps our readers, and also improves the overall quality of our site as a source of information, so we are not actually being altruistic, but acting in our own interests by giving our readers what they want.
Matt
Check to be sure every page is validated and all the links work. If I mess up the code on a site that is ranking well it will drop in rank and stay down until it's fixed.
Also check the Google site command:
site:www.YourDomain.com
and see if there are any pages with supplemental results. if so, your site may have been penalized for duplicate content. If you see any of those check to see if the content is posted elsewhere.
If your site validates and has no broken links and no supplemental results I would focus on getting more links coming in with higher PR than your own site.
Re getting good traffic-it depends on your major keywords. If they aren't very competitive then you may be able to rank with little effort other than gathering links. If you have competitive keywords then you may need to PayPerClick inspite of getting massive links. It all depends on your focus.
quite a handy search string to search your site only for "searchterm".
Mack.
what does that site:www.mysite.com command do within Google? It brought up quite a few pages in my site. Are those the pages that Google has indexed?
Yes, I watch it occasionally to spot problems. If a page shows up with only the url and no title or description this is also a warning flag.
Can I force Google to stop cacheing these dead pages since the content is live and updated elsewhere? From what I've read, the answer is no.
However, if you have a valid page with original content and it has supplemental results on it then possibly the content has been copied somewhere and the engines think your site was the copier. this can be verified by copying an important line of text and putting in Google search. If another site comes up with the same text--there you have there you have the culprit.
Content = Traffic = Clicks/Impressions = Revenue
Enough Said.
What is the real secret to getting traffic?
Listen to yourself. On the Web, common sense still apply. Transpose what you've tried on the Web to another domain, say book publishing :
I just have to know. What is the real secret to becoming a successfull writer? I'm sure that it depends on what your book has for content, but I don't know much else. I have been trying to write a book and get known to it for...um...well I think it us safe to say 7 years. Anyway, tried a couple of times and failed. I don't really enjoy writing, but I do love paper, and I know how much money can be made just from publishing books, so I am determined to be successful. I just dont' know how to get people to read my book. I also don't have any ideas for useful content, but that is something I continue to think about, and can't be worried about right now. Any information will be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time!
Does it sound logical to you?
People with different backgrounds think the web is different things.
Programmers think it's a place to put active server applications.
Graphic designers think it's a design medium.
Desktop publishers think it's a desktop publishing medium.
And, in a way, it is all of these things.
But first and foremost it is an information medium and all the scripting, graphic design and layout is secondary to the information your website provides.
If you don't have enough content to write a fanzine or put together a thirty minute TV programme (at least), you probably don't have enough content to make a website which will ever see much traffic.
Your main traffic should come the the search engines, untill people know your site, and you must offer excelent content with regular updates, what you've got to know is that if people are driven to your site off of the content, is the more you update the more reason that they will have to keep returning to your site. And a return vivitor is the same as repeat business, they will tell everybody that they know about your site.
And if they return, they will more then likely tell their freinds about your site.
Also I believe that linking is the next best way after you get a good ranking in the major search engines I.E. Google, Yahoo and MSN. Also you want to research that keywords for your site, don't just pick a word out of thin air, if you choose a keyword that results in no traffic to your site, it's very hard to get the search engines to rerank your site for the new keyword, so research it and choose it right the first time.
Also a good link section where people can add links is a very good idea, but you wnat to maintain this really well, because links from sites with a poor ranking can hurt your site also, so beware of all aspects of linking, if you link only to quality sites with good content that relates to your site, it will drive traffic to your site.
A blog is an excellent way to add new content to your site and be fast about it.
