Building Site Traffic

Submitted by Corey Smith on Mon, 04/28/2008 - 18:46

So, I have been trying to figure out a number of ways that I can build site traffic.

I mentioned last week that I have doubled my traffic in a couple of months. Here are some of the things that I have done that have made a huge difference.

  1. I write on a more regular and consistent basis. If I want people to visit, I have to continue to write. Not imageonly do I write for my blog a lot, I maintain OfficeProductNews.net, I write for HP and I write for other publications. Every little bit helps.
  2. FriendFeed - I just started, but I have seen some traffic already. You can subscribe to my FriendFeed if you like. Of course... I would prefer you just subscribe to the right. But, I can't deny that I have gotten some traffic this way.
  3. StumbleUpon - I have had thousands of hits from StumbleUpon. I must admit that I am not as good as I should be about recommending sites, but the toolbar they have is pretty good. If you want to add me as a friend, my StumbleUpon Page is at http://coreyasmith.stumbleupon.com/. If you would like me to Stumble a page for you to get more traffic, let me know and I'll tag it and write a note for you.
  4. FuelMyBlog - I just signed up the other day for this service. I have already seen a few hits. You can see the widget on the right. You can help me out by Fueling My Blog there. You can get an account at FuelMyBlog.com. Now... to be honest, I am not really sure how it works. I get a little message that says that I haven't added any friends yet, but it isn't really clear on how to add friends... so I don't know how effective it really is going to be. Help me out here and I'll add your blog as a friend if you ask... even if you don't ask very nicely. I don't even know how to link to my profile... but I have seen hits.
  5. ShareThis - I like to make it easy for people to Share a post. You may notice at the bottom of this post (and every post) is a Share this icon. Sign up for your account at ShareThis.com. They have an easy WordPress plugin. You can send this post to other people via email or various social networking sites. If you have an account, you can see what was shared. Share this post with someone... it will make me happy and will make me notice you :)
  6. Technorati - I have seen a lot of hits from my account at Technorati. I like the authority component. If you link back to my blog from yours, my authority goes up. So, why not a little link love... you want me to review something on your site and give you a link back... just let me know. Of course, a little link love my way doesn't hurt.
  7. Directories and link exchanges- A great link building activity. In bound links have helped my site go from a Page Rank of 2 to 4. I am not exactly sure when Google made the update... but it was in the last day or so. One catalog that I am submitting to... if you are interested it is at 4 Your Information. Their Page Rank went from zero to two during this page rank update. The advantage of these types of services is they want a link back... so, as their rank goes up, the better the link back to you. I would expect my blog to show up there in a day or so. I'll let you know. The reason they are doing this is to get a link back to their gift site where they sell incentive gifts to help improve performance. The likelihood is that you will only see the benefit in the search engines and not likely to get direct traffic... but it is still worth it for the inbound link.
  8. Feedburner - I really like this service. Sign up at Feedburner.com. I like that people can signup via email or RSS Reader. Of course, I would love for you to subscribe to this blog. I think it is pretty cool. You'll see the signup at the right sidebar at the top.
  9. Email signatures - I have my blog in my email signature. I am surprised at how many click-throughs I get from people through an email client. If you simply add your site or your blog to your email signature, you'll get traffic that you didn't expect.
  10. Blogrush - You may have noticed Blogrush on the right. Everyone in the network has this on their site. Now, I have been syndicated at least 5000 times and have had 3 clicks.... so, I don't know if it is any good or not. I am leaning to no. But, it is real estate that is easy to give up... especially since I pulled off advertising. I would be interested to hear your perspective. Add your blog using this link and let me know your results. They wouldn't let me add my copier and printer news service to the system... so you'll need to add a site with original content.
  11. Commenting - I get clicks from comments I have left in the past. I know that professional link builders use this approach, but I don't want to hire them. I only want my comments to be very relevant to the conversation as that reflects on my brand.

Well.. that is the short list of what I do... it may seem long. But, if you want results quickly, you have to be willing to put in the time to make it happen.

Let me know your approach to building traffic. I want to find new approaches and with the evolution of the web, it can be daunting to stay on top of it. So, any advice you can give will be very helpful.

Corey Smith is the Chief Web Architect for Dealer Marketing Systems.



Corey Smith is the president of Tribute Media a web development firm providing high performing, industry specific websites. He is a businessman, writer, technology fanatic, graphic designer and web developer. His greatest passion is teaching, consulting and speaking.

You can find him on Twitter, FaceBook, FriendFeed, and LinkedIn.

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Submitted by sylvied (not verified) on Tue, 04/29/2008 - 00:17.
Hi, thank you for the the vital feedback we are always keen to listen and improve the site in order to make it more user friendly, here is a link to the userguide: http://www.fuelmyblog.com/index.jsp?t=userguide which shows you how to get the best out of Fuelmyblog. The main idea is to browse other blogs on Fuel with common interest, you can use the search engine available with key words relevant to what you are looking for. A list of blogs should follow, besides each blog will appear the various options: View, Fuel, Snuff or Add as friend. Alternatively you can also hover your mouse over the pages of Fuelmyblog where floating windows will pop up giving you the same options. Fueling will give a user a vote, more votes means more exposure as the blogs with the most fuels are displayed in the first page of Fuelmyblog. It is always nice to also leave a message to the blogger that you vote for, the idea is to engage with other fellow bloggers and get talking. Welcome to Fuel and don't hesitate to email us direct if you wanted to give us feedback or have any queries ;) Sylvie

Submitted by Corey Smith (not verified) on Tue, 04/29/2008 - 05:06.
Thanks for the comment. I guess I find it intersting on the account page at FuelMyBlog it tells me that I haven't added any friends but doesn't provide a link to do that. It will be interesting to see if this turns out to be a good service or not.

Submitted by Ken Stewart (not verified) on Tue, 04/29/2008 - 15:56.
Corey, I really appreciate the input. I am having to learn about these various tools the hard way, and appreciate your perspective. I know you have been a great help to me in getting rolling, so thank you. Here's what I'm seeing so far: I found FriendFeed through reading Scoble's posts, and have really liked it as a feed aggregator. I am seeing a lot of people using this method to get their various information. I don't get a lot of hits from this yet, but I have made some quality contacts and really enjoy those conversations. Twitter is interesting, and this is an on-going experiment with me. It is true what Scoble says about social media, it is really lonely at first. So I finally decided to go find some people and have found some really interesting blogs and friends that are very willing to share follows, follow you on FriendFeed and subscribe to your blog (triple hit). Of course I usually offer the same. Throw in AlertThingy, I can keep track of things in a little more real time - but the update frequency is not fast enough for me. It's pretty cool b/c I can post to any number of outlets and it does the work for me. All 3 of these work very well together. Blogrush isn't working to well for me, but I think I have found some tricks... I'm still trying to figure the game out, but I have had 2 posts with over 1100 syndications each and 4 links in total. It's definitely a headline and numbers game, but I'm not sure it's a viable method either. Feedburner is cool, and I'm still sort of trying to figure out stumble-upon. That's just weird to me. I don't really do a lot of idle surfing, and I don't follow a lot of people so that's probably why. Comments are another great way I have found to interact. I only do this with those I typically follow and respect what they have to say. I started reading Scoble's blogs (which aren't as frequent as I'd like) and writing a few posts about thoughts on what he says. I just keep getting hits from comments I post or trackbacks. That guy has a mad following. I think you are absolutely correct in that you get what you put in. You get known as being the "something" guys or gal and people start finding you. Ultimately I have to believe it's about good content, but without advertising and link backs, all else is lost. I have just be really enjoying the community interaction. That's what my blog is about, just trying to converse about things I love and hopefully someone else does too!

Submitted by Eric Go (not verified) on Wed, 04/30/2008 - 18:42.
I came across your site through BlogRush. And I thank you for these wonderful informationon increasing traffic. Since my site is pretty much, I do look forward to going into these portals and sites wishing to double my traffic as yours.

Submitted by durgesh nautiyal (not verified) on Sun, 05/04/2008 - 07:56.
thanks for the information , i'll make sure that i use your suggested t traffic building ways.
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