I’ve seen a few other people talking about increasing their website traffic by advertising on various sites. I suppose it could be anything from using Google Adsense, to paid link directories like the Yahoo directory or even advertising on some of the paid blogging sites.
I’ve been trying to think of ways to get more traffic to my sites. I’d like to do it without spending money if possible. Unfortunately the only way to get more traffic to your site without paying for it is to work very hard at it.
I’ve run websites, and now blogs for many years. I’ve never paid for advertising. Ever. I’ve worked very hard getting my sites listed in all the major directories and even smaller directories that suite the site. Niche directories. Where my websites are concerned I’ve made contact with other site owners and traded links, or given them permission to publish one of my articles on their site.
I’ve used similar methods for my blogs. I do think it’s a bit easier with blogs because you can leave comments on most blogs quite easily. Comment often enough on a blog and make your comments interesting, though provoking or humorous and more than likely the owner of the blog will come and visit your site. If you have good content on your site they might even add you to their blogroll or write about one of your articles.
What do you do to promote your site and get more traffic?
Comments, linking, and contests. Everyone loves to get something for free, so once in awhile, hold a contest. It can be a cheap prize, but people love to win stuff.
Pft, I still don’t get web traffic. I comment, I tried submitting to some directories. My traffic is still pretty minor on my main blog, between 5-10 hits per day.
I just try to make worthwhile posts and hope people link to them…
Hasn’t worked too great, but I get some google traffic.
Thats for my main blog I’ve been running around six months. My other blogs get nothing.
=P
Hello..I just came across your blog and wanted to let you know that I enjoy reading it. 🙂
-I keep telling my family and friends about my blogs.
-Put my blogs on my Myspace and Facebook profiles. And send out the occasional bulletin.
-Do the occasional blog carnival (I need to do a ot more of this)
-Stumble and Digg my best posts. I have had some good stumble success but nada so far on Digg yet.
-I have been trying to be a lot more social the past month or two.
-On one of my sites I have rushed to put more content on because the content is very search engine friendly. It is a cooking site and it is becoming a recipe database. I get more and more traffic from directed search. e.g. “Molten Chocolate Souffle” and I come up on the first page. My other sites are search engine friendly enough to really affect it much so far.
-And we have a small local user group to try and build up our blogs and we meet once a week.
commenting on blogs is a new method which I just recently have started to try. Hopefully, it will convert into me on getting more traffic; I too don’t spend advertising money on my sites either.
Commenting on other blogs that have embraced the Do Follow movement is a great way to build links AND traffic.
And of course, joining My Blog Log and other “social networking” type sites is a great way to “advertise” without spending a dime.
The problem with Ad Words is that Google will “grade” your site based upon your content based upon keywords. If you don’t have lots of targeted content, Ad Words WILL charge you more than someone who has LOTS of tightly targeted content.
The best “low cost” way to promote your blog is by sharing the link love…. that and including your URL in your email sig so every time you send an email, you’re “advertising” your site.
I have expermiented quite a bit with the yahoo catalog and my opionon is that it may be good for your search engine positions but it doesn’t bring any traffic
I found that mybloglog is pretty useful. Also I found that submitting my feed to numerous sites increased my traffic. And always try to exchange links with other blogs.