Beginners guide: How to get traffic to a new site
This post is a follow up to my previous article, “Beginners guide: How to build an Affiliate site from scratch using WordPress“.
Most people think their is some dark art voodoo needed to start building traffic to a website, there really isn’t. There are only 2 things you will ever need.
1. Inbound links
2. Regularly updated content
Get those 2 right and that’s all you need. Seriously, there is nothing else, so don’t let any so called SEO expert tell you otherwise.
So, with regard to inbound links, how do you go about getting them to your new site?
1. The old fashioned way - email and ask for them. You need to employ a bit of detective work first of all so go to Google, find out the top 20 or so competitors who are ranking well for your chosen keywords and then see who is in turn linking to them. In my experience the best way to see what sites link to your competitors is to use Yahoo! Site Explorer. If you plug in this blog for example, you will see that at the time of writing it has over 14,000 inbound links.
So, find as many sites as you can that are relevant to your site and then simply emai the webmasters suggesting that your new site may be of interest to their readers and would they be kind enough to place a link. Unfortunately this is a time consuming and tedious process but it has to be done. As your business grows there are companies out there who will link build for you but for the purpose of this article I’m assuming you have no budget. Which is also the reason why I haven’t suggested emailing sites and offering to pay them for a link. Anyway, here are some other methods used to get sites to link to you…
2. Write articles containing links - there are thousands of article submission sites/directories out there who rely on users submitting genuine hand written content. You won’t get paid but you will be allowed to insert a link into your article. Here’s an example of an article that links to UKOffer here.
There is a good list of directories here and here. Have a browse through and pick some that will be relevant to your market. In other words if your site is about sport then don’t go looking for links in a directory devoted to art galleries! Keep on topic. Also, the only directory site I have ever paid to be included in, is BOTW, I can really recommend it.
3. Forums - join a few forums that are relevant to the topic of your website. In each forum create a 1 line signature in plain text, no stupidly big multi-coloured HTML or silly banners, just a simple 1 line sentence that includes a link to your site. The key with forums is to establish yourself as an authority on your subject, and to participate in discussions that allow you to share your knowledge. Don’t just barge in and write stupid posts that “hey I’m new, what do you think of my site?”. Instead join in the debate and don’t even mention your site, people will see it in your signature and visit it if they wish. It’s pretty widely known that links in forum signatures don’t count for much in terms of pure SEO link juice, but they will help you more by people getting to know who you are, and what your site is about. I’ve gained lots of readers to this blog purely from forum links.
4. Press releases - write a press release about your site and submit it to as many relevant sites as you can. Use services like PRWeb and PressBox to distribute it further. Some charge a small fee for this but some also have some element of free service available too.
5. Blog comments - join in discussions on blogs relevant to your niche too. Same rule as forums, don’t spam, just join in the discussion where you can. Also, there is no harm in emailing the blog owners direct and simply introducing yourself. You never know, they may choose to link to you without even asking.
6. FaceBook - chances are you have a FaceBook profile already so simply add your WordPress blog feed into your profile and whever your blog is updated it will be reflected in your FaceBook page too. Easy!
And that’s all there is to it. If you follow the above steps then the bots from the search engines will discover your site and begin to crawl it.
IMPORTANT BIT: The more regularly you write content, the more regularly the search engines will visit and the more regularly your site will be updated and pushed up in the SE’s index.
I simply can’t stress enough how critical it is to write fresh unique content on your new WordPress site as often as you can. This has loads of benefits, the main one being that users will keep coming back to your site for more, repeat business in other words. And because the search engines “know” that you update regularly they will give you better positioning above your competitors in the search engines. Trust me on this, I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Conversely, I’ve also seen my own sites drop like a stone once I’ve stopped adding content regularly.
Of course another reason why keeping your content fresh, unique and relevant is that other sites will start to link to you, negating the need to spend as much time link building yourself. A prime example, is this blog. Of the 14,000+ inbound links I’ve maybe asked for 10 of them. No matter what niche you are in, if you write good content and become well known, people will link to you without asking.
I hope this article has been of use to you, if anybody has any further questions about link building or content then please do leave them in the comments section below.
What I’m listening to right now: Busta Rhymes Feat Teddy Riley - “Lights, Camera, Action”
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Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 11:33 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
April 28th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Been reading for a while now. Just wanted to say good job.
Chris Tackett
April 28th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
The only problem with many of these directories is that Google has done a major clamp down on them.
To find out if its worth submitting - navigate to the page you would be listed on and then find out if there is a Google cache of the page. If there isn’t then there’ll be unlikely to be any benefit to you in the short-term.
Also go over the lists on a six monthly basis.
April 28th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Thanks for the post Kieron. have you, or any other readers ever used any SEO software such as WebSEO or SoloSEO for link generating?
I agree that building links is very slow and tedious, anything to speed it up is welcomed.
Also, a couple of great Mac tools for checking your links and also SERPs are Domainer and SERank, Both from Rage Software.
Thanks,
Andrew..
April 28th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Hi Kieron,
Thanks for taking the time to write this post, very useful as always.
Cheers m8,
H
April 28th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Andrew - no I don’t use any SEO software, to be honest I can’t see this type of automated stuff working. Personally I outsource all my linkbuilding to a third party.
April 28th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Well there is a little more to SEO that just that Kieron, but certainly for beginners thats all they need to know.
This is a great tool for analysing links and does a very neat job of crawling yahoo site explorer to show links, for starters it eliminates 100’s even 1000’s of duplicate links from identical urls!
http://www.linkdiagnosis.com/
April 28th, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Ash - interesting point. What more is there to SEO? If a new affiliate has built their site using WordPress then the on page SEO (structure) is more or less taken care of. Sure, you could go on and measure keyword density and other stuff but really what’s the point?
Then if you follow my guide and get some inbound links and add lots of fresh content what else do you need? I’ve never done more than that and have been more than happy with my results.
April 28th, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Wordpress is’nt as optimised for SEO as people think, infact it can vary wildly depending on what theme you choose for your site.
There are a whole host of plugins and modifications you can make to optimise a wordpress site indeed any site.
A quick example for this site might be to add this plugin:
http://www.g-loaded.eu/2006/01/05/add-meta-tags-wordpress-plugin/
(although you could argue that they don’t make any / much difference having a meta description tag certainly would’nt be a hinderence.
I’d also think about moving the javascript code into external files, your code is very top heavy at the moment and gives Google a whole load of extra code to ‘junk’ everytime it views every page on your site.
I 100% agree that thinks like keyword density is a total waste of time!
April 28th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
A more important flaw with many wordpress installs is that some themes / settings allow duplicate copies of articles to be shown on many pages.
For example the post page, the archive page and the category page(s)
You have it sorted on this blog though
April 29th, 2008 at 2:23 am
I dont use wordpress. I have a blog through googles blogspot. Does that mean number 6 doesn’t apply to me? Also most of these blogs, press release sites, article submissions sites, forums and others use the ‘no follow’ tag.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I think it’s very dangerous to say this is all there is to it.
People need to be aware of duplicate content, on page relevance, outbound links (bad neighbourhoods) and so on and so on.
I agree that it is not some dark art, but to say you only ever need two things is just not right.
April 29th, 2008 at 10:48 am
[...] further reading in this area, check out Kieron’s guide to getting traffic to your new site. He mentions some areas I’ve not touched on in this article which I think a lot of people [...]
April 29th, 2008 at 11:47 am
b-road - it’s not dangerous at all. The things you mention contribute maybe 1% to SEO. I’ve never worried myself about them in my life and probably never will. Far too many people get bogged down with the little things like that, that just don’t matter.
April 29th, 2008 at 1:12 pm
Simply content and links is all we do to Kieron
Doug
April 30th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Hi Kieron,
It is vital to be aware of what the SEs don’t like - duplicate content, bad neighbourhoods, link buying, etc.
It’s not something to get bogged down in or takes much effort, but something to be aware of.
Otherwise an innocent mistake could undo weeks of work.
I would just advise anyone starting out to be fimiliar with what SE don’t like as well as like.
April 30th, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Kieron,
This is a great post - im just starting out an dthink this is really valuable advice, thanks for sharing it!
Mongoose
May 1st, 2008 at 1:41 am
Hi Kieran
I was just reading your previous article re setting up a Wordpress site and your comments about a cheap 1&1 hosting account. I have a basic 1&1 account and was under the impression that it’s not possible to install WP as MySQL & PHP are not included. In fact the home package doesn’t have MySQL either.
Can you just clarify this for me - i.e. how can you install WP on a £1.99 1&1 account? It would be ideal for one of my sites but right now I don’t really want to get a new hosting package.
Thanks
Kate x
May 1st, 2008 at 10:09 am
Kate - sorry but I have no idea. Best call 1&1 technical support.
May 1st, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Nice post Kieron,
Good to see someone dispel the myths and just get on with it! Sure there is more to SEO, but as long as your site isn’t a complete monster in terms of accessibility it’s just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s in comparison. If you’ve built your site on Wordpress or Blogger you’re off to a good enough start that you can just get on with content and links.
I see far too many people spend all their time tweaking code in the hope of better rankings, but if you’ve no links to your site it’s like rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.
Couple of comments for people above:
Andrew - I’ve used IBP to help identify sites for link requests and it’s pretty good, it just automates a lot of what Kieron talks about. Don’t go trigger happy with the emails though, take the time to find the right contact details and compose a RELEVANT note to the website owner and you’ll get far more out of your time.
Kate - the very basic service on 1&1 doesn’t have a database included, you need the 8.99 business package. The only ‘cheap’ hosting company I can recommend are eukhost.com. there’s a £23 a year package suitable for one site, or £190 a year VPS package that will let you set up loads of sites on one server. Personally I think 1and1’s service sucks big time and have been moving away from them gradually all year. I finally got my first Rackspace server this month and my blood pressure has dropped several notches as a result.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:40 am
Good post. However, I’d say your open statement is a bit misleading
“There are only 2 things you will ever need.
1. Inbound links
2. Regularly updated content”
That is two of the things you need, but certainly not the only 2 things you will ever need. If I made a site about purple fluffy elephants from the planet Goganon, then I’m sure I would not get very much traffic!
I think one of the most important points that you missed is the need to pick a good, focused niche theme for your site. And I don’t mean theme as in Wordpress theme, I mean in the sense of what the site focuses on. That must be researched properly, or people will end up fighting a losing battle.
Just my 2 pence worth.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Blair, that’s exactly what I talked about in part 1. This article is a follow up to that.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Oh. right. Fair enough then! Sorry, should have read that as well
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I’d add a third thing you need:
1. Inbound links
2. Regularly updated content
and
3. Patience.
too many people go out and spend all day emailing for links, then spend the next two days writing content, and when they’re not No1 on Google within a week, give up.
Many of my sites are still at the stage where I’m writing shedloads of content that isn’t going to get read, but by sticking with the Content+Links+Repeat formula through the lean traffic times, the sites end up a lot stronger.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:08 am
Hey Kieron,
Great post. I think it points to a lot of same things I always preach to my readers - stick to the basics, there are no magic beans. I work in the article distribution industry and am still amazed at the steady build it gives in traffic. But like everything else online, it is a means not an end. All of the things you mentioned here, acting in concert, is what will drive targeted traffic consistently to a site. Well done.
Brad McGovern
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:00 am
link building is best given to a third party because they know what they are doing, they are full time pros, you can concentrate on the things you do and enjoy best. I am always happy in life to outsource for results - I’ll pay for results every time!
May 30th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Great post here. I found you through Kirsty’s blog. Link building has to be themost boring job in existence but it is well worth the effort in terms of traffic