Forum Moderators: phranque
You are listed in SE's;
are you on the 1st page when someone searches?
are you listed for terms that people search for?
Have you considered using a PPC campaign to get your site off the ground?
M
Well, its only a month old. I am going for web design help, html help, free logo and banner design, etc... I know these are highly competitive, but I know so much about them.
I'd say just keep doing what you're doing, but also try to keep building links that point to your site as well. If you have good content, people will eventually find you and link to you. Just remember to be realistic about expectations of traffic and rankings.
Some things you can do are in the meantime is put the URL of your site in your forum signatures (not this one, of course), get an RSS feed up and running and then put it on sites such as Jordo which are RSS directories, get a link to your site put on your school's website, link to it from your myspace profile, etc etc. Good luck!
I've found that I can pull a decent amount of 3+KW search traffic and occasionally hit on a few unusually long phrases that are pretty popular. In fact, the majority of my sites get over half their search traffic from 3+ keyword searches.
When people go looking for a designer, they rarely shop for one through Google. It’s all about the references.
When Veloxi said that your target was "frightingly competitive"...true words.
And don't take this wrong. You are only fifteen. You probably cannot compete with the more experienced gurus out there. I am not trying to say that you shouldn't persue your knowledge of the subject because if you have a passion for it then you should.
But, if I may be so bold, I have a suggestion. Rather than try to get traffic in such a competitive market, why not defer to something else you're passionate about. Do you like skateboarding? If so, write about skateboarding. Do you know alot about skateboards? Then you should write about skateboards. Want to talk about skateboarding with other skatebaorders? Then include a skateboarding forum for repeat traffic. And then....
Hit them with skateboarding products. Turn that niche traffic into profit.
Skateboards are just one example...you could do the same with playing the tuba or plastic modeling. Surely you have many interests that you can narrow down into specific niches.
If you do, you will gets lots of focused traffic and the probability of making a nice profit by offering associated products.
Oh no, I just like helping people with web design.
Then why fret over traffic levels? Just putter along and have fun.
I completely redesigned my site about a month ago and just had my 8th person sign up on the forum and 24th person sign up for the cart system. I am using PPC though because I'm in my thirties. ;)
I think the hardest thing about starting a web site is that you start to loose patience when it doesn't pick up as fast as you want it to. Don't get caught up in that. Use your forum as a personal blog for a while, make sure you post as much as possible and keep the thing growing. Eventually you won't be talking to yourself anymore and you will have a working community.
The more you add to your site, the more traffic you will eventually get. Just keep pluggin along, it will build eventually.
(I think it's great that you are starting something like this at 15. There is so much you can learn about marketing, business and technology that you will never learn in school.)
First off, I think your traffic stats are awesome. You're getting 3000 uniques a month on a brand new site. If you are getting people signing up, you'll get links too and traffic should double quickly. If you keep adding good content, you'll keep doubling for a while.
One thing to consider is to keep a blog where you throw up little pearls of wisdom that don't merit their own article and where you announce your more important articles. Every time you post an article, give it a day, then blog about it, then ping Technorati and let people know it's there. It's not that you'll get much traffic, per se, but you will get traffic from people who actually are looking at technorati tags like "xmlrpc" and "RFC-8834" and so forth. If your article is good, they will link to you.
Also, if you have five article ideas in your head, do a google search on all five. If the results on the first page of Google are all better than what you can do, pick your poison. But probably some topics will have great articles and some will not. Focus on the topics where you think your article will be as good or better than what's out there. This, by the way, is also more or less how you will pick your interface design PhD topic ten years from now, so it won't hurt to get good at it ;-)
Then why fret over traffic levels?
I know what you're trying to say, but authors like to be read. Otherwise, what's the point? If there's no traffic, why go to the trouble? You might as well print it out and post it on your fridge, where at least your mom/wife/dog could read it.
