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Increasing Traffic to Your Website
Tips on building a loyal audience for your website.
If you've decided to jump into online publishing -- putting out an online newsletter, a magazine, or website content that will interest your business's customers -- you may think that designing your website is your biggest challenge. But that's the easy part. Much trickier is gathering an audience that will sustain the publication. Here are some tips on building a loyal audience for your site.
Develop Online Connections
The Internet is a surprisingly personal place. A thousand people, each with unique personal interests, can spend the same 60 minutes online together and never come close to crossing paths. It follows that the key to Web publishing success is forging a lasting, personal connection with people based on your own skills, interests, and contacts. The best place to start is with the connections you already have online. Then use those connections to build a community of like-minded people and keep expanding from there.
Create Value
Your goal should be to create unique, valuable information that meets the needs of your targeted audience. On the Internet, there are many ways to provide that information that aren't available to print publishers -- for example, you can offer searchable, interactive databases and encyclopedias. Study the information that is already available in your niche, looking for gaps you can fill. Then, fill the gaps with valuable information nobody else provides.
One online publisher, for example, is creating an online publication about his passion, electric vehicles (EVs). In his spare time (he's a magazine editor during the day), he's been using his skills as a journalist to study the EV market, scoping out who the players are, what they have to say, and how the industry is developing. He also travels to auto shows to test drive new cars, combs the Internet for information about EVs, and studies the technical literature about EV engineering and design. Using all of the connections he has developed and the information he has gathered, he has launched EV World online (www.evworld.com).
Promote Your Site Throughout Your Niche
Get to know the online habits of your prospective audience. What other sites are they likely to visit? Make a list and try to develop a relationship with each one. There are a variety of ways to do this. Your best options include offering to write articles (informative and not self-serving) for other sites or posting messages with your Web address on their bulletin boards. You might also trade links and ads with other sites in your field, and, if you can afford it, buy classified ads at related sites.
One Web publisher doubled her traffic by spending two months (and a small amount of advertising money) working through all the sites in her niche in this way. Another got similar results by hiring and supervising a Net-savvy high school student.
Don't neglect offline ways to publicize your website. Send press releases and emails about interesting features on your site to print as well as online media in your niche. List your Web address wherever you also list yourself: business directories, professional associations, and chambers of commerce. Speak at trade shows or conventions.
Use Advertisement Exchanges
An organized program of exchanging ads is a way for sites with modest traffic to break into an ad revenue business. Ad exchange programs work like this: You join an advertisers' group, called an exchange, and trade banners or other ads on your site with other exchange members. You can specify where you want to run your banners, and the exchange takes care of all the bookkeeping. Members get detailed reports about when and where their ads were run so that they can measure their effectiveness.
Each member makes available slightly more ad space than they use themselves, with the exchange selling the excess inventory for a small fee to other advertisers. That's how the exchanges make enough money to cover their operating expenses. You can find listings for advertising exchanges by using your search engine and plugging in terms such as "banner exchange," "link exchange," or "advertising exchange." Exchanges are free to join and use, making them a risk-free and sensible way to go.
Work the Search Engines
Lots of people will find -- or not find -- your site by using online search engines, where they type in the words they're searching for. You need to do a little work on search engine optimization to make sure your site will turn up when a potential reader conducts a search. Here are three good places to go for tips on making your site stand out to search engines:
- Search Engine Watch
(www.searchenginewatch.com) is an online newsletter that offers comprehensive, practical tips about making a site that search engines can find. There are also some good links for Webmasters here. - The Web Marketing Information Center
(www.wilsonWeb.com) has several articles including one called "A Web Marketing Checklist: 23 Ways to Promote Your Site," by Ralph Wilson. - Microsoft bCentral: Submit It
(www.submit-it.com) is a website specializing in search-engine submission tools and services.
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