Attract web visitors

gillmc

Can anyone throw ideas at me on how to attract visitors to a website which will be general in content, national news, entertainment etc. What does it take: free email accounts, free samples etc. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

SlitheryImp

Could you give us a link to the site? Put your website in your signature, people will click on the links, and if they like the site will most probably bookmark it or tell their friends about it.

There are a lot of different ways to get visitors, the cheapest (as far as money goes) is to get yourself listed in the SERPS, this can take a while though. Make sure you have good content that is updated frequently and the spiders will re-visit and re-index your pages. A great tool for doing SEO and analysing your webpages is at http://www.webceo.com/ (they have a free version)

Also, try link exchanges with related sites. Send the webmaster a polite e-mail asking if they would be interested in linking to your site in exchange for a link back to them. Use a webform/contact form if there is one on the site so that it does not look like a spam mail. Remember that they will be doing you a favour and some webmasters do not want to link to a brand new site with little or no content and few visitors.

Another way is PPC advertising (Google Adwords, Bidvertiser etc.) but you will most likely make a loss if you are not selling a product/service.

Best thing to do is check some of the bigger webmaster forums for advice. http://www.sitepoint.com / http://forums.digitalpoint.com/ http://www.webmasterworld.com/

Nobody is interested in free webmail anymore, unless you have a *very* catchy domain name, and can compete with GMail as far as Storage capacity goes.

forbairt

If its a service which they log into ... you could try having a monthly prize ... of an ipod shuffle lets day .. or similar mp3 player ... it can be a cheap enough way of getting a few thousand users to your site ... people are always interested in free stuff ... It costs <€100 per month and can generate a lot of hits ? ...

paulocon

If you are in the process of launching a site, get it up as soon as possible and get it linked from a site already indexed by Google. Google is operating an Aging Delay on new sites so it could take your site from 6-9 months to show up properly in Google's search results.

whizzbang

A link in the signiture is definitly a good way to start! Works for me! Also try spamming your friends.

It sounds a bit like the web site is very broad. Perhaps you should start a bit more narrowly focused and spread out when visitor numbers increase. There is no point being a jack of all trades, be the master of something instead!

jrey1981

Submit your URL directly to search engines as well like Yahoo and Google. I did this not that long ago and my blog is already showing up in searches through Google and getting hits that way. I have another site for business as well and the search engines have been bringing in a small but generally steady flow of enquiries for several years now.

You might think about running a blog alongside the site offering an expert or original viewpoint, interesting stories or something, which will encourage people to keep coming back to the site.

TheWaterboy

Word of mouth is the best advertising you can get. Also how about handing out some flyers...Trying getting your website address out there - lots of people will vist it out of curiousity even.

SEO is very important too but very hard to master - Thing to remember is it all takes time so dont loose heart if things dont take off after a month or two

rsynnott

TheWaterboy wrote:

Word of mouth is the best advertising you can get. Also how about handing out some flyers...Trying getting your website address out there - lots of people will vist it out of curiousity even.

SEO is very important too but very hard to master - Thing to remember is it all takes time so dont loose heart if things dont take off after a month or two

However, don't shill on boards like this guy did; you'll get caught. "Word of mouth" indeed.

tom-thebox

banner exchanges maybe, depends on the sort of site you are running

Gordon

Well obviously the best way to attract visitors is to have unique content! Why make a website that doesn't have fresh, individual content? If your site is one of these sites that simply sucks information from other websites in order to get people to click on your ads then I'd be surprised if people will actually keep coming back to your site.

Dave!

Some good ideas here, cheers! I might give the "prize" idea a shot at some stage... Only finished my website, so haven't had a chance to embark on my advertising campaign just yet

tom-thebox

can i have the prize?

Seohelp

Hi gillmc,

Lots of good ideas given to you by the forum members already. If you are offering a website that will be targetting a particular country try to use SEO to target your audience by region (e.g. by Ireland, by county, by town, etc.).

The more precise your targetting is the less competition you will face when competing on the organic listings within Google and the other major search engines. This will also mean that your site won't get as much traffic, but if you offer something that is interesting and unique then word-of-mouth will kick in and you will see site traffic increasing.... people will tell other people, links will be created in blogs and forums, etc.

Search engine optimisation is not as tricky as some think. Do the basics right... effective keyword research, creating unique title text for each page, putting fresh content on your site regularly and making your site accessable to Search Engine spiders (use a site map and develop quality inbound links).

Overall, developing a site that people will keep coming back to will mean that word-of-mouth will take care of your marketing so you can focus on learning more about Search Engine Optimisation.