How Do I Drive Traffic To My Website? Like This…
Driving Traffic to your website can be done the hard way or the easy way.
The Hard Way
Spending countless hours writing comments, begging, kissing up and making yourself look bigger than you are. I call it “the Peacock Feathers Dance”.
The Easy Way
Make a plan, like this one. Head over to Yahoo Site Explorer and do some recon on your closest competitor. I’ll use the undefeated master blogger John Chow as an example because he’s fresh out of hospital and vulnerable (and ok, I wan’t to be like John when I grow up but who doesn’t?!).
On Yahoo’s site explorer I want you to type in the competitor’s URL and click “explore url”. Next click on the “inlinks” tab and switch the “show inlinks from” tab to “except from this domain” and leave the “to” tab at “Only this url”. It should look like this when done…
Next click on the “Export first 1000 results to TSV” link and open it with firefox.
So far you’ve invested about 30 seconds of your life and you have a list of your competitors precious incoming links for free. As you likely know incoming links, especially to your site’s index page, are required for long term success. The following technique is 100% white hat, you’ll never get into trouble doing any of it, in fact Google TELLS you to inform relevant sites that yours exists.
1 – Start from the top of your list and visit each linking site.
I find that Yahoo seems to place the best incoming links up top on the list but that’s not always the case. A quick look at John’s list shows some heavyweight pro blogger names I’m sure you’ll recognize like Joel Comm, Tyler Cruz, Ms Danielle, Nate Whitehill, Zac Johnson, Andy Beard and even Search Engine Land! If John was your competition you’d be thinking “sites this big will never link to me!” and you’d be wrong. I’ll give you an example further down.
2 – Cross out the following types of links, they don’t help long term…
Ignore incoming links if they come from the comment section of a blog or any plugin in which the site owner wasn’t the one MANUALLY entering the link. Comments are deeply discounted for several reasons but especially because they weren’t there when the post was first crawled. Fun widgets that provide a link for an action also don’t last long enough to be worthwhile long term.
3 – Look for the following type of link – they drive traffic
Place a checkmark on your list next to any link that is in the main body of an article, especially if the author was talking about the site being linked to. Place another checkmark next to links in a blogroll but be careful that it’s not of the paid variety. An easy way to tell is by visiting the other links in the blogroll and seeing if they are authority sites or not. If they’re not, move along.
4 – Launch your link tug-of-war campaing with your shortened list
You’ve got your competitor fully in your sights, now execute. Again start at the top and evaluate WHY the site linked to your competitor and devise a plan of action in which you will receive the same love if successful. You’ll be able to duplicate some of the links by simply contacting the site owner and pointing out that your site or blog is equally as worthy to link to. You’ll need to provide extreme value for other sites to link to you such as offering something their visitors might find useful like an auto loan calculator.
It’s actually kind of fun to figure out a way in which you’ll land that all too precious incoming link. While you’re scheming it’s important to remember two things. You want links on freshly published pages when possible. A link that existed from the moment a page was published is more likely to receive full value than one added later on. You also want links that portray you as an authority on your subject or that are directly talking about you. A link in an article that had nothing to do with you doesn’t seem right and too many of them may throw up a red flag to a human evaluator. Look for relevant, not flavor of the day.
5. Improvise and be persistent
Your efforts won’t all pay off immediately but if you stick to your plan (and list) you WILL improve your rankings vs your competitor and thus you will find that it becomes easier to drive more traffic to your site. Don’t forget to interact with sites not on your list too, the list is only a beginning, but having most of the quality links your competitor does and many he/she doesn’t should be your goal.
I mentioned earlier that it wasn’t impossible to land even the biggest of links, don’t get discouraged if your competitor has some seemingly unattainable links, but you will need to make the most of every opportunity you can and then build upon each success. The sites I mentioned in #1 are all authority sites on their subjects, earn their respect and you may find yourself working along side them on future projects.
One of my success stories – I was contact by Jeff through a forum I’m active on last month, he’s a representative for Chitika, and he asked me if I’d like to test run the new Chitika Premium service. I graciously accepted his offer, I tested the program on a couple of my sites and worked with him to improve results quickly. Testing went amazingly well (it’s an excellent program). A review I wrote about my early experience was well received and he then referred me to another rep who handles PR for a “success story” article on the official blog. There is no way I’d have thought of trying to get a link on the front page of any major affiliate site like Chitika but by being honest, following through and taking the time to interact and work together with the representatives that’s exactly what I got which leads me to the following “tips”, hopefully they help you land premium space links too.
- Be understated instead of pushy.
- Be sincere instead of full of BS, if you don’t like something – say so.
- Don’t be disappointed if you don’t get a link you could use, work harder.
- Work on YOUR strengths to improve the odds that you get recognized for them.
- Most importantly – follow through! Don’t break promises, you’re as good as your word.
Following through in this case would be to selflessly do what you say you will when interacting with other webmasters and bloggers. If you know someone who is a pro at “such and such” and you run into someone who could really use some help in that area… refer them without expectation. If you let someone know you’ll get them in touch with someone, do it. If you tell someone you’d like to work on a project or article together – do it. While you’re working on your list you may very well find yourself offering to do some of those things. Traffic comes to those who earn it, those who cut corners tend to fade away quickly.
I took a screenshot of the front page of Chitika when they ran their story on me, If I wanted to be more bold I’d include it in my trophy case but I think I’ll pass on that and just include it in this post instead to hopefully inspire you to do the same. Enjoy your success when it comes but don’t let it get to your head, nobody likes a big ego. Good luck!
Oh, and get well soon John. Gallbladder stones are the worst.