Easy Tips Bring You Web Visitors & Indie Virus Fans

Let's say you've got some kind of online presence. It could be a flickr page -or an eBay sellers page - or a flapr map page - a blog - a website - whatever.

So you need to get some traffic to the site. It's likely that you don't realize the huge amount of control you have in who finds you and learns about what you do

To do that you can rely on WOM (word of mouth, a golden tool if there ever was one) and after that you need some help from Search Engines like Google, Yahoo and Technorati to point people your way.

A super way to get both Word of Mouth "free advertising" and help your reputation with Search Engines is what I'm going to teach you to do today:

We'll use this highlighted and annotated image of one of my blog pages as an example

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First click the image to get an enlargement of the "show and tell"

You'll notice that I've made notes on the page to point out areas that will help you market yourself, your blog, your photos - whatever.

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A.) Option #1: Comment on a post.

The comment form asks for your Name & a URL - which can be whatever you want people to see. Your Flickr Page? Your Frappr Map? Some Photo album website? Your Blog? Your eBay sellers page? Your Cafepress Main Page? All your choice entirely what you put in that box.

To show you how this works:

Take a look at the "Recent Comments" list on the image of the sample page. Now click on Laura Ricci's name in that list.

This takes you to her comment on an article. Next click on her name right there in front of the comment. Voila! You find yourself at her blog.

She has just gotten incoming traffic just from your reading her name and looking to see who she is and what she is showing us.

more tricks ahead . . . read on . . .

So that's a pretty easy way to get an incoming link and unlimited traffic.

B.) Get more attention by talking about us.

Here's how this works through some kind of techno-magic I don't understand:

The "Sites Who Link Here" list (see the grey box at left) is automatically updated by those smart people at WhoLinked.Com.

A link back to your site is provided every time you talk about us! This gives YOU incoming links from a respected and popular site. And that raises your ranking in the search engines. It's a win-win situation.

C.) One last inside trick -

Remember - the link you take your traffic to does NOT have to be a blog. Remember - ebay, webshots, flickr, etc?

But here's why linking from your blog is a Great choice. Blogs are updated multiple times a week - sometimes daily and even more than once a day. So your blog gets "spidered" by the search engines much much more often than static pages.

This means that your link to us will be "discovered" by the spiders and pop up in the list! So talking about us in your blog might just be the easiest way to make - and keep - a great spot on our hot "blogs who link here" list.

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Above all - Don't forget John Scott, the indie virus, Copyblogger and how generosity a guiding principle as we enter the era of  Web 2.0 can never be a bad thing.

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Linked at common folk - plancks constant.org - is it just met -

Comments

[Cecilia]

As a new blogger trying to establish my art website, this is exactly what I needed to learn! Thanks so much!

[Andrea Coutu]

I've been blogging for a couple of years and I'd never heard of WhoLinked. It sounds really interesting -- I'm going to test it.

[Bill]

Good points there. I think the most important by far would be visiting and commenting on other blogs, and writing about things that really interest you. I can knock out a 500 word post that I've been dying to write for days in half an hour and know it's good, while a topic I'm not that into can take 3 hours and read like the most boring business blog in existence.

Providing links to other sites in the form on a never ending blogroll can detract from a blogs readability. Sure it provides outgoing links and may lead to reciprocation, but the bottom line for all blogs is that quality and readability are what really matter. Keep the content fresh and good - don't sacrifice for the sake of links.

Look at www.waiterrant.net, one of the more popular blogs of the moment. No blogroll, no links, just really good content.