how have you attracted people to your site?

Nique Zoolio

Nique Zoolio

hi all,
i'm wondering how you've attracted people to your own sites?
word of mouth on other forums?
submit to search engines?
i'm not far from publishing a site and i would like to get it as much attention as i can.
thanks for your help.
Nique
 
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Just write a few articles with Bush, Dick and Rummy and include some "spicy" terminology (may I suggest the word of 2006: "sectarian"), post them on political blogs that accept articles, and people will come to your site, if only to praise or ravage you in nice/nasty comments. Just make sure the articles have a thoughtful substance behind them, or people will get turned off right away.

But I guess it depends on your content- obviously, that works if your site encompasses politics. For you, I'd get creative- since your site is about "love" and "life", make profiles on all the dating sites that basically act as big billboards for your site. You can also advertise on other forums, but unless you're already a contributing member (or want to build up a bit of a name there) they'll probably leave it be.
Seach engines is a must- optimize for Google as best you can, and you should place high in the others. Some people go to lengths to optimize for every engine. I'd spend more time refining keywords, and making sure all of your content is specific enough, yet general enough for a seach engine to niche it in as many categories as possible.

I dunno, because our site is pretty lame (I'll work on it later, alright!), but most of my traffic and readers come from places where I "cyber-hang" anyway- indietalk, myspace, fxhome, matthew good's site, the scribosphere, etc. Find communities that represent your project, and then try and become a known entity there. That's the best advice that I can give, but there are probably better ways others can throw in... right, others?

OTHERS
Don't look at me dude; I'm fucking baked
 
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Read up on SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Then submit your site to as many of the search engines as you can. once it's on a couple, it doesn't usually take too long before it gets crawled by the rest.
 
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We haven't eaten for days and I'm getting hongry!
Click to expand...
You could always just walk to the Burger King, since our boat is still in the marina. Does anyone know how to pilot this thing?

Just so I am not totally hijacking this thread, my server logs show that I get a large portion of my hits from searches on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Search engines are a good place to start, if you want people who are looking for your site to be able to find it. If you know where your target demographic "hangs out", you can request links from established and related sites and you can make posts in appropriate places. Any marketing guru knows that targeted advertising is the most effective, and you can do the same thing on the internet, if you can identify the people most likely to buy your product and identify the sites they are most likely to frequent.

It's an age old question, and I'm afraid the answer will continue to elude us even after we leave the harbor. All aboard!
 
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No joke -- post pictures of famous people. I posted a picture of Gloria Estefan (I met here -- no, I'm not gay -- and the local paper ran a pic with me and her in it) and it is where most of my traffic comes from.

Poke
 
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site unseen?

Search engines (keywords, meta-tags) and coming to message boards like this one and posting helpful answers - which leads to word of mouth.

Don't underestimate content - I have a *free* screenwriting tip (2,000 - 4,000 words) every day - and if they don't come *that day* they miss the tip. You need a reason for people to come to the site in the first place.

When all else fails - Judy Dench upskirt pictures.

- Bill
 
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Yeah, I was gonna say, out of all my Youtube videos, the ones that got the most hits quickly were the ones with Terry Gilliam, Bruce Campbell and Matt Good. Piggybacking on established celebrity, I guess. I think the point is, to have some aspect of your site that uses some sort of pop-culture to lure people in, and your original content to hook them.
That could mean pics, video, articles, whatever, that infuse some kind of established pop-icon (person, object, activity, etc) with your site's content.

So if your site is about funny things you find on the beach, you could try and write a funny article or video of a mysterious big-foot-like creature that screams at night, but turns out to be David Hasselhoff, trying to save his career from drowning. That way, it's original material, but has a hook to bring in that fresh audience. Because nobody friggin searches for "Supergun Cinema" or "Macbeth 3000" unless I've touched them in real life, in a non-sexual way.
 
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I like to extoll the virtues of DV vs. Film on a large industry forum...I always get lots of hits that way...I give out business cards with the address too. :)

Henerally, people click if they like what I say in postings on the various fora I am a member on.
 
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Traffic...

Nique Zoolio said:
hi all,
i'm wondering how you've attracted people to your own sites?
word of mouth on other forums?
submit to search engines?
i'm not far from publishing a site and i would like to get it as much attention as i can.
thanks for your help.
Nique
Click to expand...

I can't let all my tricks out of the bag because this is the OTHER thing that I do for a living... LOL. But I can give you some straight up advice that will get your site some traffic...

1) Definitely posting in forums helps but a huge note here... DO NOT SPAM. Forum visitors can tell a spammer from a mile away. Find posts that you FEEL you can contribute to... Find posts that interest you and then ask questions (as long as you are truly looking for information). Your posts and replies need to be genuine and always include a catchy signature link at the bottom of your post...

2) Never underestimate the power of a signature file in all your outgoing email. Come up with a catchy tagline and include the link directly underneath and you'll be happening.

3) Give away something for FREE at your site. Offer it as a PDF file or a video download. Even if it's a compilation of information you've researched from the net -- you've saved people from having to do it themselves and they'll appreciate it. Inside the file that you give away, be sure to include a link in several places back to your site. Also inside this file, make sure that you let your reader know that they have your permission to SHARE the file with as many other people as they want. In fact, it's always a good idea to allow others to post the file on THEIR site(s) as a free download. The more sites that provide YOUR free giveaways, the more traffic you're going to drive to YOUR site.

4) Reciprocal links. Have a RESOURCES section of your site where you allow other RELATED sites to post a link to their site in exchange for them sticking a link on their site to your site. I prefer to use a link exchange script to do that -- that allow STRAIGHT LINKS to the exchanging site... Then once a day, approve or disapprove the exchange as needed.

5) Articles. Write articles about your SUBJECT MATTER. Once written, go ahead and optimize them for Google. Don't EVEN worry about other search engines... They all spy on what Google's indexing anyway so if you optimize for Google -- you get everyone else. Upload these articles to your site after having optimized them for the subject matter of the article. Let's say you write an article about the simple capturing of video to your hard drive. Trust me... Lots of people interested in even the most MUNDANE things that WE all take for granted. Write the article -- optimize -- upload -- always making sure you provide a link from that article page BACK to your main site. People surfing the net and performing searches on said subject matter will find that article -- read it -- then check out the rest of the site.

6) More articles. LOL. There are a LOT of sites out there that will take YOUR article as an upload to their site as pure information. eZineArticles.com is one that I can think of off the top of my head. Because they use a content management system to run the site, the pages rank really high in Google ESPECIALLY if you optimize those articles. They allow you to include a link back to your own site. Ten simple articles about SOMETHING within your subject matter will send hundreds of visitors to your web site every month... Possibly even thousands DEPENDING on the subject matter.

7) Blog. Blogs are the NEW doorway pages... LOL. Except that blogs are white hat and doorway pages were always black hat. Google LOVES blogs AND, if you know exactly the right plugins to use with your blog (assuming you use WordPress), you can easily double or triple the traffic... I have a blog right now that is getting between 25,000 and 30,000 hits a month on average (and I'm not even trying to get traffic) and I just added some plugins that IMMEDIATELY increased my traffic and page views. However, if and when you start blogging, you really need to have a style that makes people want to come back over and over... Along with that style, if you're adding informative content -- SO MUCH THE BETTER. The REAL BEAUTY of a WordPress blog are the plugins that are available... Almost all are free. One that works astonishingly well is the Google Sitemap generator plugin. Just make sure you ADD all the other directories/pages of your site when configuring the sitemap generator. It automatically pings Google each time you rebuild the sitemap so Google comes a running and respiders the site. *HINT: Once you have between 50 and 75 posts on your blog, Google considers your site an EXPERT SITE on that subject matter hence, they start crawling your pages several times a day... Not once a month or once a week... SEVERAL TIMES A DAY. Once Google starts doing that, traffic increases like crazy. The blog posts need to be optimized i.e., your title should contain at least one keyword/keyword phrase and then the body of the post should contain THAT keyword/keyword phrase at least 4 more times throughout the content of the post along with some related keywords/keyword phrases. Each keyword/keyword phrase within the BODY of your post should be tagged as a reference link. At the bottom of each post, you should tag the same keywords/keyword phrases for Technorati. Along with Technorati, there are some other social bookmarking sites that you can include in your posts so that others can create bookmarks about your posts which in turn sends others to your site.

8) Autoresponders... You can purchase your own script and host it on your site or purchase an autoresponder service from one of several popular services. What I would do is create a newsletter for your site... i.e., create a lot of newsletters IN ADVANCE and have them loaded up -- ready to go. Provide a form on your site for your visitors to subscribe to your newsletter. Then, have the autoresponder set up to mail out a newsletter once a week or so with some interesting information... Possibly a short article with some valuable information... Links to other informative sites... Stuff like that. By having the autoresponder set up, you can then send additional mass emails whenever you like -- AT WILL. However, these special emailings should provide time sensitive news and information so that you don't offend your readers by sending a pointless email. Inside the content of the autoresponder, always let the reader know that they should feel free to forward that email to anyone and everyone they think could benefit from the information.

9) Spatula mentioned the YouTube videos... Definitely create trailers, interviews, documentary/behind the scenes footage to sites like YouTube and BRAND the video with the URL of your site... Great way to get traffic... In fact, check out Revver.com which is taking the online video world by storm right now because if you allow them to add a commercial to YOUR video and the video is a hit, you make money. The Diet Coke and Mentos video has already made the guys that created it over $20K. If you create a hit, YOU NEVER KNOW. Just imagine if the guy that created THE EVOLUTION OF DANCE had submitted to Revver INSTEAD of YouTube... LOL. With over 42 Million views, he would have easily made several hundred thousand dollars. Oh well. There are other video sites as well... You should utilize ALL of them in some way, shape, or form.

10) JVs or Joint Ventures. Find others with similar or related sites and get them to write a little something about YOUR site on THEIR site. The more LIKE MINDED sites you can do this with, the more traffic you're going to get -- extremely targeted.

Whew... That should get you started...

Good luck!

filmy
 
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I recently saw an article about search engines and Google gets something like 80% of all searches performed so I would concentrate on google SEO and you should be good. I do a lot of SEO work and google is where its at. Make sure and add META tags and descriptions and keywords to your pages code as well as ALT tags for all of your pictures with relevant keywords, that is a good start. Next is inbound links, the more you have the better you are.
 
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