 19 Tips for Blowing Up Your Traffic
Saw a similar post on another forum, but thought some of the ideas were kind of, ah, sub-optimal. I’ve winnowed them out, taking the list from 64 tips down to the 19 I thought were best.
Would value this gang’s feedback and ideas.
1. Write a “why I love this niche” article or post, with at least 1 concrete tip, and e-mail niche bloggers to let them know. You’re giving them an easy blog post, and generating a lot of traffic.
2. Forum sig links (with at least somewhat clever copywriting).
3. Leverage the crap out of social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and StumbleUpon.
“4. Leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic).” (This one I left as-is, because I think it’s a really good one.)
5. Rail against the conventional wisdom – stake out an opposite stance (even if, at the end of the article, you wind up coming back to the CW).
6. Leverage .sig links in Google Groups. Try to load your posts with keyword phrases, rather than just “yeah, right” style posts.
7. Leverage 404 redirect pages to turn on the marketing juice! The original tip was “redirect them to your home page,” but I think that’s a really, really bad user experience – instead of knowing where they are, they think they did something wrong.
8. If you have an info product, don’t be afraid to let parts of it hang out for free (or behind a squeeze page). The value of organic search results outweighs the value erosion of freeing your IP… IF you structure the experience carefully (i.e., if you have 10 chapters, make 10 pages. Each chapter page should point only to your home page and your payment solution. Your home page should point to none of your chapter pages).
9. Review a high-value product. Send a letter (not an e-mail) to the company with a printout. Ask for a sample or some accessories you can give away in a contest.
“10. Write a Press Release and submit it to PRWeb (make sure it is newsworthy)” (left this one as-is)
11. When arbitraging PPC traffic. Use Excel and Access, in conjunction with misspelling generators, to create keywords and phrases that others are unlikely to bid on.
“12. Add a mailing list subscribe form in a high profile spot on your site” (as-is)
“13. Add a bookmark this site link in a high profile spot on your site” (as-is)
14. Leverage free classifieds sites like Craigslist and Lycos (which gets redistributed by Vast and Oodle). Don’t spam, but be unafraid to mention your site and some keywords.
15. If you’re running a dynamic site (where pages populate into templates from a database at click-time), consider switching to a static-page model. If you can’t, at least hand- or machine-build some static pages Google can crawl. (Amazon invested all their money in SEO stuff like this, rather than brand advertising, and look where it’s gotten them.)
16. Pay for links. It’s a little sneaky, maybe, but are you in this to win, or not?
“17. Buy reviews about your site on other people’s site” (as-is; the institutionalized version of the above)
18. Invest in professional copywriting. The risk is low, the cost-benefit is usually outstanding.
19. When building a new site, begin with the SEO in mind.
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