How to get your site noticed, how often to promote it, recommended networking sites and more.
Here's a guide that you might find useful if you have a web site or blog.
Want to be at the very top?
The quick way to get very high rankings on a search engine is to place a sponsored ad. These will cost you money. The amount varies between search engines. Typically, you will only do this if you're running a site for business, or you're very well off.
If you're not prepared to pay hard cash for a high search engine ranking,
there is no guarantee
that you'll ever be at the top of a search listing, or anywhere near
the top for that matter. If there was an easy way to do it for free,
everyone would do it - and how can every site be at the top?
For everyone else, your best bet is to maximise your chances. Here are some tips to help you do that.
Build first, promote second
Trying to get a half-finished site onto a search engine is pointless. Don't try and promote your site until you have something to offer people that can't be found elsewhere.
This doesn't mean you can't publish your site as a work-in-progress. Just don't exchange links with people until your site is worth visiting.
Keep it current
Some people think that a web site is something that can be put online and doesn't need to change. You may do well on the search engines in your first few weeks, but if you don't update your site, recently updated sites will take precedence over your own.
Some sites may not be updated as often as others, but there's no excuse for neglecting a site for months and months. If time is a problem, ask yourself whether you have the time to run a website in the first place.
Avoid "last updated" scripts that use today's date, regardless of when you actually updated the site. I have seen people doing this - it's just dishonest and people will soon figure it out if you don't change anything.
Link to, and get linked from, as many sites as possible
Linking to other sites can provide references and supporting information for your posts. An occasional link that is relevant to your post can be very useful to your readers.
Don't go overboard with links. "Link love" posts, i.e. simply listing several sites you like, may not be of much use to your readers. Make an effort to write something about each link - give people a reason to visit it.
Avoid web rings. These may seem like a good idea, but they never tell you where you're going to, or what the quality of the next site in the ring will be like. Include your own directory of links rather than relying on someone else's.
Don't ask other sites to link to you. Just link to them. If they like your site, they'll link back. Some sites may link to you regardless of whether you link to them first. Don't feel you have to return the favour if you don't want to link back. Refer to
how to initiate a link exchange for more information.
Use keywords sparingly
Keywords are the words and phrases that people use to find your site. For instance, a web site that lists free software may be found by searching for "free software". However, this will bring back a huge number of sites, so you'd need to specify a lot more information, e.g. what type of software you're listing.
There are several ways to specify which keywords should bring up your site. My
search engine optimisation guide lists a few things that you can try. But don't go thinking that you can include some totally random keywords and get unexpected visitors. If your site obviously has "FREE SOFTWARE" plastered all over it and it's not even a free software site, it won't matter where you appear in search engine results. As soon as someone sees your site, they'll just leave. Don't mislead people.
You can certainly use search words to help people find your site, but try to keep them hidden from your visitors, or put them at the end of a page and not at the start. Don't bombard people with things they don't need to see.
Posted by Ben on December 08, 2006 21:28 | 2 comments | Permalink |
I recently stumbled across StumbleUpon. I've tried various ways to get new visitors to my site, so I thought why not give it a try? I downloaded the toolbar and off I went.
About StumbleUpon
You choose from a variety of interests, click the Stumble button on the toolbar, and you're taken to a website. You use the thumbs up / thumbs down icons to indicate whether you like or dislike the site. You can add a short review and move on to the next site.
Read what's all about.
There is one thing that seems rather odd though. Have a look at this:
How do I suggest a site to be included in your database? The bit that stands out as being strange is this:
Please submit sites which are good starting points for exploration rather than deeply nested pages which are very specific.
By the time I'd read this, I had already submitted a few pages from my site. Armed with this knowledge, I was able to look at my stats and see how well my submissions fared.
What did I submit?
I submitted the following pages:
Ben Barden dot com (home page)
Redefining the album concept (blog entry)
Hidden in the Beyond (listen page)
Besidewalk Plight (listen page)
The Path of No Return (track page)
All of my submissions generated a good deal of clicks. The blog entry jumped from 40 to 260 hits in a couple of hours. My referrals were boosted. But how many of these were "good clicks"? How many people stuck around and browsed my site?
The rather disappointing answer is that not one of these pages had the desired effect. I got the visitors, just not the "real" activity.
So what happened?
The home page seems like a good place to start. It looks busy, but anything less would mean that the people who do like my site don't find most of the good content (the "What's Popular" sidebar is particularly handy). The home page didn't set the pulses racing.
Next, I tried a blog entry. Sure, I got the clicks and the hits... but no comments. Did anyone like it? Did anyone read beyond the first paragraph or two? It's very difficult to tell without comments.
I submitted the two "listen" pages at roughly the same time. These generated no downloads of my tracks. To download from those pages, you have to click into a track, then click the download link. Not one person did that. So I submitted a track page, which would only require the download link to be clicked, and also removed the element of choice. Again, no downloads.
If I had linked directly to the music file, if people had actually listened to it and maybe even liked it, how would they have got back to the site? That's why I drew the line here and took a step back to assess the situation.
The figures
On Saturday I had 143 unique visitors.
I submitted on Sunday, and had 438 unique visitors.
On Monday, I had 260 unique visitors.
I've had a total of 631 referrals from StumbleUpon in the space of a couple of days.
From the figures, I've done very well out of StumbleUpon - but I haven't really made a real impact yet. Not only did nobody download anything as a result of those clicks, nobody said they liked the site (or disliked it, for that matter). Why is that? Don't people rate the sites they visit?
I'm not giving up, but it's frustrating to be no better off in terms of knowing whether I'm doing the right thing or not.
Posted by Ben on October 23, 2007 23:05 | 4 comments | Permalink |
Well, it seems like I've had better luck with my latest StumbleUpon submission.
A quick recap
The first blog entry I submitted,
Redefining the album concept, generated lots of interest but no comments. I submitted several other pages and watched the results, writing about them in another blog entry,
StumbleUpon and a visitor's attention span.
Second time lucky?
After making
a couple of area redesigns, I submitted my follow-up blog entry to StumbleUpon itself - and it's done a lot better. 400 hits and 4 comments so far - although two of the comments are from me, and one was from someone who already reads my blog before I embarked on this adventure. Still, my latest visitor also downloaded a track and commented on it, so things are definitely looking up.
Something changed.
What's different this time? I'd say the redesigns helped. Also, the album concept blog entry may have been a bit too far-fetched to grab people's attention just by reading a small bit of it.
But it's probably much more simple than that. It makes sense that an article about the site it's submitted to would generate more interest than something less focused. After all, this is a site the readers use.
What happens next?
This was really just an experiment to see if the site was likely towork for me. So far, it seems to do a lot more good than any othersite I've submitted to.
I don't plan to submit dozens and dozens of blog entries just to get my site out there. I might go back and find a few of my more organised ramblings and submit those, but I'll stick to the better entries. There's not much point submitting entries that don't really have much of a purpose.
Just a few days ago, I said I was frustrated at not being able to know what people really thought - but the figures were good. Now, I'm learning a bit more about how to spread the word when I've got something worth sharing.
That seems to be the key: write something good, spread the word in the right places, and people DO come and visit. But write any old nonsense and try to get your name out there for that, and you don't get very far.
Maybe my blog entries are improving. I guess that's what happens when you move from weekly to daily blogging.
Posted by Ben on October 26, 2007 23:19 | 2 comments | Permalink |
Submit to
StumbleUpon! Add to
del.icio.us! Digg This! These links are quite common on a lot of blogs. So why are they usually a waste of space?
What I think people say when they see these links
Most people will see them and say one of two things:
1. I don't know what those are, so I'll ignore them.
2. I already know what those sites do. If I want to submit your site, I'll do it anyway.
So who is the target audience for social bookmarking links? I think they are the kind of people who say one of these things:
3. I like your post and I hadn't even thought about submitting it. So I'll click your link.
4. Hey look, 10 people already "dugg" your blog entry. I wonder what they said.
5. I don't know what those links are. Let's see what they do.
But I think there are fewer people who say statements 3, 4 or 5 than there are people who say statements 1 or 2. Especially statement 5! Why should people have to guess what a link will do before they click it?
Making assumptions about your readers.
Adding social bookmarking links makes the assumption that your readers know what they do, or will be able to figure them out on their own.
To be fair, I've made some big assumptions with my thoughts as to how many people say one of the above five statements. Chances are it'll vary a lot from one site to the next.
Just remember,
not everyone is technical, and not everyone knows what you're talking about even if they are technical!
Terminology confuses me too!
A good example of this can be found in Google Analytics, a service that provides detailed statistics for your site. I understand most of the terminology, but one thing confused me: "bounce rate". What's that?
The service is free and the support is not free, but why doesn't Google explain what their terminology means? In the end I posted a thread at
Authority Blogger Forum to ask what "bounce rate" means.
I had a guess, but I'm not sure if I'm right.
I'm a highly technical person. If I can't figure it out, what hope is there for non-technical people?
A site that does it right.
I think the BBC News website has got it right. Have a look at
this news article to see what I mean. At the bottom, you'll see five links in a box entitled "Bookmark with". Notice the link that reads,
What are these? That is precisely what I think all sites should do if they include these links.
So why don't more sites do this? Why do some sites assume that we all understand what these links are for? This is pretty basic stuff - and I don't mean the concept of social bookmarking links. I mean the idea behind including a "help" link for people who need an explanation.
Social bookmarks are not useless.
Don't get me wrong, I think sites such as StumbleUpon and del.icio.us are great. StumbleUpon has brought me a lot of traffic.
The problem lies firmly with the sites that link to these services but fail to provide a link to explain what they are for.
It is up to you to do this. You choose which links to put on your site, so you are responsible for educating your readers. If you know that every single one of your readers is technically-minded - perhaps you write a programming blog - then that's one thing. But I'm fairly certain this lack of explanation may be keeping a lot of people from starting their own website or blog.
What do you think? Is it worth including these links? Do you provide an explanation for the non-technical readers?
Posted by Ben on December 15, 2007 13:54 | 19 comments | Permalink |
I'm currently running my first competition where you can
win 100 Entrecard credits. I did a little research before I launched the competition, and I've learned a few things along the way too. Here are some tips I'd like to share with you all.
1. Keep it simple.
The competition I'm running is very simple - post a comment on the above blog entry and you're in. No duplicate entries. I have had 10 entries so far - not bad considering my blog is not very well-known at the moment.
Compare this to
the competition over at CK Marketing. You have to write a post and link to the blog, leave at least 10 meaningful comments on other blogs, and post the links at CK Marketing. I only discovered the competition when the site owner posted asking for more people to enter.
I do think it's good if you can get people to link to your blog, but these rules just complicate things. Honestly, I would rather not link to blogs just to enter competitions - I'd rather link to a blog entry that would be of interest to my target audience.
I am sure some people are thinking - what's in it for them? Well, if you're giving stuff away, that should be good enough promotion in itself! CK Marketing is giving away four times as many credits as I am, but the competition is just too much effort to enter.
Don't think of a competition as something to benefit you - think of it as a benefit to your readers. If you get people linking to you, consider it a bonus.
2. Be realistic with your choice of prizes.
I recently heard about a blogger who ran a competition with some very desirable prizes. Apparently, most of the winners didn't get their prizes. I think it was explained by a lack of time, i.e. unable to get the prizes in the mail. This is no excuse and a pretty good way to wreck your reputation!
If you're giving away money, vouchers, electrical equipment and the like, make sure you actually have the prizes before you advertise them. For instance, if I advertised a prize of 500 Entrecard credits but I didn't have them, that would be pretty risky as I'd have to build up the credits before I could give them away.
Don't just go bigger and better than the next blog - be realistic!
3. Promote it a lot on your site, but only a little on other sites.
I've linked to my competition several times since I first announced it. But I usually link to it from other blog entries on my site. I did promote it in the appropriate Entrecard forum, but only in one thread.
Remember that you want people to find your blog because they are interested in your blog content. If you heavily promote your competition, people will just come for that. They are a lot less likely to keep reading your blog if they only want to win your prizes.
4. Make it fun.
It's important to keep it simple, but make it fun too. You could post humourous updates on the progress of the competition. Or perhaps make a special post to announce the winner, maybe get them to post a little acceptance speech!
I have an extra idea for this but I'm keeping it under wraps for now -
subscribe to my feed so you don't miss out on this, it will be worth waiting for!
5. Treat competition-related comments as you treat blog-related comments.
Even though it's competition time, it should still be "business as usual" on your blog. Don't ignore comments. Reply to them as you usually do.
That's all from me - over to you!
Have you ever entered a competition? How well was it organised? Have you ever run your own competition? How did it turn out? Will you be doing it again?
Posted by Ben on December 21, 2007 21:38 | 2 comments | Permalink |