For all of us bumbling newbies out there, I decided to write a discussion of how I got indexed and some good ideas for getting web traffic.
If you are planning a site, or have just written a web site or blog, I have learned that the hardest thing seems to be getting traffic. I am trying to learn more about how to bring traffic to the site, but, the main thing is that with all the content in the world, it could languish in no person's land forever, if you do not promote your site. So, that is what I have been trying to do. How?
First of all, I am going into blog sites like "blinkbits" and "bloglines" and creating accounts. So, if you like the content on any of the pages, you can, as of today, add it to those two sites by pressing the buttons right to the side of this page. Apparently, if you do, it helps my site out, but I am not sure yet how it works. There are other sites where people add links, but I am going slowly or else it is overwhelming.
I have also been actually "marketing" the site the way you would market anything else -- I tell people I meet, friends, family, acquaintances, salespeople, anyone we think would get some value out of the site. While it seems old-fashioned, it has generated some people coming in to take a look. I have made it a signature on all of my e-mail so that when I send e-mail, people can learn about the site.
A major marketing device is the blog carnival. When I first published the site, I had no idea what a blog carnival was; now, I understand it a bit more: it is really a place to showcase your articles along with others who are showcasing their articles. On the days of submissions, I do get more traffic; some of it leads to revenue, some of it leads to just people looking at what I am saying. Traffic, however, is very important: if nobody is at your site, nobody can read it. I try to follow up by reading other people's posts and linking to them when I can.
The best place to find carnivals is at www.blogcarnival.com/bc/clist.html. Not only will you find lists of carnivals on a variety of topics, but there is a submission form which you can fill in to submit your post to the particular carnival in which you have an interest. That site has been an excellent source of information and one that I visit on a very frequent basis.
So far, I have submitted several articles to the Carnival of Personal Finance, the Carnival of Investing and the Carnival of Debt Reduction. But, Carnivals exist on tons of topics, not just personal finance: so your website/blog articles need not be on a financial topic to find the carnivals useful. I even posted an article on the Carnival of Bumbling, Struggling Newbies, which I hope will grow as time goes on, because it is a good place for all of us newbies to join forces and support one another.
You may be reading this at e-zine. That is a source of articles on a lot of different topics, and, this is the third article I have submitted there. (For a list of my articles, click on the author name).
Getting on to Google and other search engine indexes is not so easy, but, it does happen if you are patient. Within a week of establishing the site, I finally came up in a search. So, it's like the Holy Grail -- in the Monty Python sense of the term, I got on Google Search. Actually, if you type the exact words "taking control over money" into Google Search, you do get my web site popping up first (as of today), although I cannot figure out exactly why based on all the site optimization advice I have been reading, but not following. I just stumbled into the number one spot by pure, dumb luck.
However, I did not get indexed by luck. I asked Google to index my site, and I have gone onto every search engine I could think of and done the same. I know I am indexed on Yahoo and I am hoping to get into a category index in the open-site directory (which includes AOL). Each search engine has their own rules; be patient and go to each one and let them show you how you can get indexed.
Being indexed does not mean that people are reading your site: it does mean that the words are being read by the little spiders and other tools that search the web automatically. Real people may or may not find my site through searches depending on what search terms they use.
There are a lot of people out there who can teach you site optimization techniques. I have found that such techniques are not so useful for me based on the top of software I am using to create my site and my level of skill as a site designer. Jon at http://www.successpart2.com offered a free e-book on site optimization on his website today. I downloaded it, and will go through it after I am satisfied that the words on the site, the content, is as good as it can be.
I really do feel like it is the content that should count. I have not only seen that a number of times written by people with far more experience, but I have found that wasting my time playing with things that take a lot of work to learn have not paid off as much as my plain old common sense approach to the site: keep it going, nurture it, add to it, and fix it up all the time. The traffic will come. I read a lot of free materials about gaining traffic and when I get a good idea, I try to do at least some of it. That is what led me to e-zine.
Be aware though: Only you know why you are writing your site. If it is because you have information that you wish to share or a product you wish to sell, then keep that focus in mind. My reasons -- to share what I am learning, to learn more about my own personal finances, to be accountable to someone for maintaining my new system of personal finance -- have led me to reject joining certain offered programs. I will not disparage programs, but, I was given an opportunity to try a "training program" for 14 days. The free materials were very good and readable, but once I got closer to having to sign up, the posts started looking very much like a sales pitch for a "pyramid" scheme. They wanted to use my site to promote their site was what I could gather. I have no interest in junk sites: I am not trying to "get rich quick," and I while I am trying to monetize my site, I am not doing so at the expense of my integrity. I just do not believe in the idea of creating a self promoting site that offers no real content value (the original program had content; the sites "affiliated" with it did not. If I had joined, I would have owned a site without content which would lead people to their site: I had no interest in that.
How did I decide that the program was a scam? I actually went to the sites under the "customer testimonials." Every site was similar in tone to the training program's marketing materials and like just fronts for the training program's site. There was little content on the affiliate sites, they were mainly "link" sites bringing people to the training site. What I got from that experience is what I have known: if someone says they have the secret that will o make you money, and guarantees you will get rich without a lot of work on your part, I would run from that. They are appealing to greed; if that is you, cool, go for it. I would not do it.
But you can make money from the ads you choose to display on your site. Before you worry much about affiliation, I would suggest focusing more on traffic and content. There are a lot of affiliate sites out there and you could spend far too much time affiliating; however, good affiliations are only useful if your content attracts traffic. I spent a whole day trying to affiliate with different companies and it was exhausting, tedious work. I am back to my basic affiliation strategy after that experience.
My strategy is simple: affiliate with natural fits and Google Adsense which is the simplest affiliation of all. I try to connect to affiliates based on products that I use or are useful or tie in to my site. When I started affiliating, I went straight away to the web site of a store that sells the file solutions filing system that I talk about in "Taking Control Over Finances." I also went to the store from which I buy my office and school supplies, as well as Quicken and Amazon. Those are products I use.
If you are looking to affiliate, most company web sites have a link to their affiliate programs on the home page or in the "contact" page. Sometimes, you need to search around a bit. Many companies belong to networks such as Linkshare and Commission Junction. So I ended up getting accepted by their programs and that led me to affiliate with other companies whose products I think might be useful to my readers. If you look through my site, you will note, that, for the most part, other than the adsense ads, I put ads to other affiliates on the pages related to their products.
For example, my Quicken ad is on the page where I discuss how I use Quicken, a link to Amazon is on the page where I have reviewed Jim Cramer's Real Money, and a new site that I found, that offers coupons to major stores is on this page as well as on the article, "Getting More Value Out of What You Buy." I chose to place my ads that way because I want them to really be a natural fit with my content; I don't just want the site to become a big advertising space. Also, I do not want to spend a ton of time on affiliations: I want to spend time on content and traffic. The affiliations are not hard once you get the hang of it.
The main thing for newbies, like myself, is creating a good, solid web site with excellent content. You can submit parts of it, the articles, to other places to help you build traffic. You can place ads very simply using adsense and affiliate based on "natural fits." And keep working on what works for you. I have learned a lot so far and you will too.
Come back to the site for more marketing tips and drop in and add a post to my new feature: 10 or less.
If you do get here somehow, please "drop a line my way." (Counting Crows: www.countingcrows.com)