Alternative sources of your traffic
Investors constantly preach the benefit of diversifying a portfolio to reduce the risk of investmënt fluctuations. The same strategy needs to be taken with developing your website's marketing strategy. Diversify the sources of your traffïc. Becoming over-reliant on any single type of traffïc sets your website up for failure if that type of traffïc happens to fail for some reason.
Unfortunately, many website owners simply do not know how to generate traffïc to their websites. These website owners would do well to think about their website in more traditional business terms. Traditional businesses do not have search engines to bring people to their doorstep.
Rather, the brick and mortar businesses usually rely on
- word of mouth
- good solid promotion
- good customer service
- a good location
- quality products
Websites can incorporate these same techniques in developing traffïc
- article writing
- press release
- participation in forums
- development of a mailing list
- and developing a strong public relations campaign
which are all solid promotion techniques. Most important
- entering into partnerships with industry websites
- doing joint promotions such as co-registrations
- developing community interactivity (forums and weblogs)
- transforming your website into reference point for your industry, products and services
can help position you in a location where your visitors can find you. Offering your visitors the ability to recommend your site to a friend, adding community interactivity to your website are all ways to help promote your site effectively.
Obsessed by optimisation and link popularity
That means don't rely exclusively on search engine optimisation and trading links. Although it is perfectly acceptable (and expected) to do a cursory amount of SEO, many website owners do too much to the detriment of their sites. The purpose of your website is to offer information and possibly a service to clients and visitors. Your SEO activities should not define how you develop, structure, and word your website.
For more information see also
By Mark Daoust from Site-Reference.com. This article has been integrated and alterated with some of our opinions
