You’ve got your website up and running and you have done the hard stuff and put loads of content on your site. Your website is search engine optimized and you have web analytics installed on your website so you can see how many visitors are on your site. Problem is, only a few people are visiting and your most loyal vistor is you. So one of the most frequently asked questions is how to get traffic to your site.
There are three main ways of getting traffic to your site:
- Organically (using on page SEO)
- Organically (using off page SEO and backlinks)
- Paid (using Pay Per Click advertising)
But before you do all of that, you want to make sure that search engines can find your website. It can often takes weeks before a search engine will find you. So a way to speed up the process is to submit your sites to the major search engines – Google, Yahoo, Bing and DMOZ.
Getting listed in the DMOZ open directory is relativelty straight forward. You just need to submit your site details to the directory. Make sure that your site has lots of content and useful information before you submit as you risk it not being listed. You should also be aware that it may take some time to get listed as it is manned by volunteers.
Google also provide a site where you can Add Your URL. Google admits that they don’t always add every site that is submitted but it is well worth giving it a go. By taking action, at least you give your site a sporting chance of getting listed quickly.
Like Google Bing also provide a site submission service. Yahoo’s direct submission service is also worth checking out. There is also a free website submission service called Addme that can be quite useful and you can also bookmark your site using Only Wire which syndicates content to the Ask search engine as well as the top social networking sites automatically. You got to love that!
And if all else fails, another alternative to help get your site listed quickly is to get links from other sites to your site. Having a link from a site that is already listed will help because when the robots visit the other site with the link to your site, it follows the link and then adds your site to their search engine listings. This will help get your site listed with Google, Bing and Yahoo. Getting a link to your site from another website is not as hard as it sounds. Some options for getting backlinks to your site are:
- Upload a video to You Tube and put a link in the description to your site
- Visit forums relevant to your wesbite and post comments in the forum with links back to your site
- Visit blogs relevant to your website and post comments with a link back to your site
- Find a website that that operates in a similar territory to yours and request that they put a link back to your site
Finally, some tips when submitting to search engine directories:
- Do not keep re-submitting your site. Try and be patient. Constant resubmission means you will run the risk of being banned.
- Make sure you have adequate content on your website before you submit it. Search engines work on the concept of “relevance” and need content to match the search terms the searcher is looking for.
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