(Back to the first page.)
By now, your site should be doing fairly good. Traffic is at about 10-50 hits a day, which is good for a start. Now let us make sure you get more than that!
Promote your site
BUT DO NOT SPAM! It is easy to get carried away and tell everyone about your new exciting site, but that would probably annoy them. It is good to do some publicity, but not too much. Also, you could advertise a section at a time. For example, do not say "Come and visit my new webmasters' page" but something like "Download our latest PERL scripts". Choose where you promote your site carefully. Signitures are amazing visit promoters. Add a signiture to your emails, your posts to newsgroups, and also, add your site's URL to your business card. I am no PR expert, but you get the idea.
Win an award
This will drive traffic to your site like crazy. However, to win an award, you need to have most of the above correctly, so make sure there is something worth an award before submitting your site for review.
Exchange links
If you find a site with similar interests, approach the webmaster to exchange links. You add a link to their site and they add a link to yours. It is simple, and makes sure you get some traffic if the other site does not cover all grounds. The key to the success of this is that make sure the visitors like your site better than the other site, so that they come back.
Join a web-ring
You can also start your own. Web-rings will do plenty for your site, but make sure the other members will be proud to take you on. Also, choose which webring(s) you join carefully.
Submit your site to all search engines you know of
According to some reports, as much as 85% of Internet users find sites using search engines. Assuming a figure of about 60 million Net users, that works out to 51 million people. Now imagine only
half a percent (0.5%) of these know about your site. That works out to 2.55 million users. I am not saying that you will have 2.5 million hits, but I am talking about exposure. Search engines like to find meta tags, and so make sure you add meta tags to all of your pages. You can use the home-brewed
complete meta tag generator to do this for you. All you have to do is cut and paste. Nothing to it, and plenty of reward.
However, the most important thing you can do to make sure your site is a success is to be dedicated to making it a success. Make sure all links work, make sure you listen to what your users say, and do not be afraid to change something if they ask you to! Fame and fortune will not come overnight, but as a definite trickle that grows. Also notice how it all depends on content, so make sure you have plenty of that on your site. Also, make sure you update your site regularly, to make sure that the people that do come back, come back even more. It does not have to be daily, but it is nice that about once a week, something new comes up. Of course if you are running something like a news site, a weekly update may not be appropriate. Make sure you do it often enough. YOU DECIDE!
Good luck and happy coding!
