When I had uploaded my first page at www.tripod.com, I used to log on tens of times in a day to check the number of hits on my site. Even an increase of one unit used to increase the speed of blood in my veins.
But, no matter how hard I tried I never got listed in the search engines. It was a collection of my short stories. In two months, I just got a few hits from my sister, my cousins and a few of my friends.
Then I uploaded another page. Within two months, it was listed in all the major search engines (yes, even the big guy Yahoo! And those days they were not choosy) and there was such tremendous response (10 unique visitors a day was a “tremendous response” for me) that I had to create an off-line Access database to track the inquiries. That was a page to exchange ideas on hacking.
It was a long time back, and now I have a satisfyingly successful web site. Just to write this article, I found those two old pages [I don’t remember the tripod URLs], and came out with the following points that got traffic to the second page.
1. My second page was sharply targeted. I had used just a couple of keywords: “a web site for hackers, hacking”. Often I have seen web designers including more than 50 words in the “keywords” Meta Tag of the web page, that confuses the search engines. Always have a target audience in mind while thinking of the keywords, and try to limit yourself to 4-5 keywords per page.
2. Repeat the “keywords” in the content of the web page that you intend to submit. Don’t turn it into a nonsensical rhetoric by unnecessarily repeating the words. Spend some time with the copywriter if you can’t consummate your own verbal marvel, and come up with something that sounds good and “really” explains the purpose of your web page. Remember that at some search engines like Yahoo!, it’s the humans who decide whether to accept or reject your web page. Even the spiders and robots used by search engines are smart enough to gauge that you are spamming your page.
3. Include the critical words in various tags, for instance, in the ALT tags of the images. Use your keywords in the H1, H2, H3 headings, as it is being realized that these things matter. Give an appropriate title.
4. Exchange links with the like-minded people. But before that make sure your exchanging party is not competing on your turf. Find exchangers whose links enhance the content of your site and the visitors don’t find them out of place. Exchanging links also helps you improve your ranking as the search engines give importance to the number of sites linking back to you.
5. Participate in various forums. There are numerous online forums catering to your field of expertise and if you continuously send relevant posts, you increase your credibility and the other forum members click on the link present in your resource-box.
6. Maintain your own contacts database and occasionally send them (ok, don’t harass them out of their wits) information regarding changes at your web site.
7. You can organize various events on your web site and then advertise about those events in press releases or other forms of promotional exercises.
8. Hmm this is the second article I’m planning to finish at point 9. Nothing Satanic about it I hope. Anyway, what I plan to say here is, quality web site attracts quality visitors. Don’t rush. It is a wrong notion that everything happens very fast on the Net. After more than a year of trying I have begun to get more than 20 hits per day. Sure I haven’t spent money for getting “hits”. But I plan to, in the near future.
So in the end, avoid short cuts, work hard and remain focused. It’s not important how many visitors you attract. What’s important is, what type of visitors you attract.
Amrit Hallan is a freelance copywriter,
and a website content writer. He also dabbles
with PHP and HTML. For more tips and tricks in
PHP, JavaScripting, XML, CSS designing and
HTML, visit his blog at
http://www.aboutwebdesigning.com