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When opening a new website perhaps the biggest hurdle to get over is getting the first 1,000 or so unique visitors. You could look into some paid promotion techniques such as text or banner advertisements but what if you're stuck for cash? This article aims to introduce you to a number of ways to increase traffic to your website - and all for nothing! Be warned however, most of these ways will require a bit of work, time and effort. Before we begin I suggest that you already have your website fully ready and working - there is little use in promoting a website which is still being built.
1. Friends, family & colleagues
The best place to start off is with those you know - tell them about your new website! Even though they may not be interested in the content themselves they may have a friend who is and will pass on the address of your website. Word of mouth advertising is not only a great way to get traffic to your website - it's dead easy too! It also has two other advantages: You know that the people visiting your website will be interested in your site's content. This should mean they will stick around longer and return regularly. Secondly, word of mouth has the potential to reach thousands, if not more, people. Imagine you mention to your friend your new website about cooking. He may tell two friends, who in turn could tell two of their friends, who go on to tell their friends about it. Of course this only works if the content of your website is good - as mentioned at the start of this article - make sure it's ready go!
2. Posters, flyers, business cards - offline promotion
A surprisingly large amount of webmasters don't even consider promoting their website offline - well, you should! You're more than likely to have access to some office or design package, so spend a bit of time creating a few flyers, posters or leaflets about your website to put around your local community. Your workplace, college or town centre will most likely have a notice board where you can place such flyers for free. Be sure to include your websites URL, name and a bit about what it is you offer. A note of warning to not litter or place flyers where they are unwanted - remember that your URL is on it.
If you do however have some money to spare you may want to look into business cards or branding on other items such as clothes, mugs and mouse pads. You can do this very cheaply online nowadays or visit a local printing service.
3. Search engines
So now you start online promotion. The first thing to do is tell search engines about your existence. Chances are they will quickly find you - but it's best to give them a helping hand. Most search engines will provide a simple form to tell them about your website. It must be noted though that submitting your website does not guarantee that your website will be added to their index. Here is a list of the "Add URL" page of some of the most popular search engines:
It can take months for your website to appear on search engines so don't expect to see any measurable increases in traffic overnight. In time, however, as more of your site's content is indexed you should start to see a regular and steady stream of visitors from search engines. Traffic from search engines can be greatly improved however by making use of so called 'SEO' techniques. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and is a process of increasing your rankings in search engines with the end result being increased traffic.
4. Directories
I've never been a great believer in increasing traffic from web directories - but it seems to work pretty well. So what exactly is a 'web directory'? Well it's quite simply a database of websites; they may cover a whole range of topics or just focus on one niche. The majority will allow free submission, whilst others may require a small payment. There are two directories (both free) which you should definitely submit your website to - these are DMOZ and Yahoo. Unfortunately, getting into these directories can be hard and can quite literally take years due to the queues. There are hundreds of thousands of other directories though - but do not go submitting to each and every one you come across. Make sure to submit to ones relevant to your site's content otherwise you may do more harm then good.
5. Forums and blogs
Most forums and blogs allow you input a website URL when you comment or into your signature - make you do it! You may already be a member of many forums or comment on some blogs, it takes a few seconds to add your site URL when making your next comment. Be sure not to spam though as you'll be doing your website a lot of harm rather than good. In fact, do the opposite - become part of the community, visit and post often and get to know the members. Like with directories though be sure that the forum or blog is relevant to your website.
6. Social bookmarking
I talked about word of mouth earlier in regards to offline promotion - but the same type of thing can be achieved online. There are a number of websites that offer so called 'social bookmarking' services. These allow users to bookmark and share a URL with either friends or the whole world. Often popular links can easily provide tens of thousands of unique users in a very short period of time. Whilst you could just stand by and hope visitors bookmark content themselves, you can prompt them. Services such as AddThis allow you to very easily insert a 'Bookmark/Share with' box on any page of your site. This enables users to add pages of your website to such services with a couple of clicks.
7. Create a community
Software like phpBB allows you to easily add a community to your website
A great way of increasing traffic and the popularity of your website is to create a community. Give your visitors a voice. You may wish to add a forum which can be quite easily done using phpBB or vBulletin. You could allow users to comment on pages of your website and give feedback direct to you. Why not open a blog? Again, this can be easily done with free and open source software like Wordpress. Going back to the cooking website example at the start of this article - add a poll or two to your website - get visitors involved and interacting with the website.
8. Improve and progress
This is a long term method to increase your traffic but it is one of the best - for you and your visitors. Take feedback from users on board, get reviews, ask friends what they think of your website and improve. No website will ever be perfect but you can keep on trying. A good website is going to have a lot more traffic then a bad one, so make yours damn good! Continue to add content, pages and new features too. Don't leave the same 10 pages you may have started with.
9. Share your knowledge
Chances are there will be many who want to learn more about your website's niche - so help them out and share your knowledge. You can sign up to sites like Yahoo! Answers and reply to questions in your topic area - post your website as a source. If someone emails you asking for help, don't ignore them; help them out as best you can. Write content to help others learn. Here on spyka Webmaster I write tutorials about writing HTML and programming in PHP. Again, going back to the cooking example, there are endless tutorials which can be created about learning to cook.
10. Usability, design and appearance
Even if your content is the best in the world if it doesn't look good users will turn away - yes, some visitors are that shallow! That being said you also need to balance the design and appearance of your website with usability. You may have a great looking site... but that is no use if no visitor has a clue how to navigate it. Your family and friends come to your aid once more - get their opinion on how easy it is to use your website. Can they find a certain page, or a certain section of the website without trouble? Do they know what everything does?
11. More is always better
Give your users a bit more than they may have been expecting in a page or blog post. They'll be happy that they read the page or article and will be more likely to return, increasing your traffic. It could be as simple as having 11 tips in a list of 10 or you could offer some sort of freebie - a free download relating to the page content, for example.
