Perhaps you are new to website design, or had someone build a site for you. Maybe your site has been indexed on Yahoo, and Google, so you expect site visitors to start rolling in by the hundreds. You start watching your site statistics only to see a few visitors here and there, which is probably not nearly as many as you expected.
No doubt search engines are an important part of gaining site visitors, but they can easily be over relied on. Getting the number of visitors that you want to your website can take a whole lot more than just getting your site indexed by search engines.
Forums
Becoming active on a forum with a subject related to your website can be a great way to start getting some more visitors, especially if it is a really active forum. Most forums allow you to put your website URL in your signature.
Be an active participant in the forum, and make useful posts. Also be careful not to spam forums (post irrelevant content, or post threads simply advertising your website), as it is very likely to get you banned from the forum (i.e. kicked off).
Start A Blog
One problem that a lot of websites have, especially new ones, is that they don’t have a whole lot of content. Now your site may not really need a lot of content to serve its purpose, however continually having new content for your visitors to read will help keep them around, and also help you earn new ones. A great way to do this is to start a blog related to the subject of your website.
WordPress has free blogs, and a variety of free themes that can alter the look of your website. If your hosting service comes with WordPress chances are good that you can have someone make a custom theme for you so that your blog looks similar, or even identical to the rest of your website.
If you do start a blog make sure that there is a link to your website on your blog so that people can get from your blog to your website.
WordPress is just one example of a blogging service
Social Networking Sites
Social Networking Sites can be helpful for getting customers in its own right, you may not necessarily just want to rely on your website alone for new clients/customers. You can make posts about your business and services on different social media sites, and post links to your website. Facebook allows you to make fan pages which can be dedicated to your business, or even just to a particular subject.
Social Networking site examples:
Linkedin is an example of a business specific social networking site
OkCupid
OkCupid primarily is set up to be a dating site, however plenty of people use it in a similar way to how Facebook or Myspace is used, for general social networking. You can put links in your profile to your website, and they are do-follow links, which means the can help search engines find your website, and give you a little SEO boost.
Read and comment on other people’s blogs
Many blogs allow people to comment, and link to their website URL (address) in their username. Just as with forums, be careful not to spam, as many bloggers will just delete your comments if it looks like you didn’t actually read their blog entry, and if you have nothing relevant to the subject of the blog in your comments.
You might get away with spamming blogs here and there, but most bloggers will eventually catch on and start deleting such comments. You can do this sort of commenting on any blog regardless of subject, but it will be most helpful when you comment on blogs that are of a subject related to your own website.
Join Website Directories
There are a number of website directories out there, and while many of them are very general, there are subject specific directories. I recommend searching for web directories related to your website’s subject and adding your site to the directory. Keep in mind some directories will charge you if you want to add a business related site.
Flickr
Flickr is a great website where you can upload photos for free. Especially if you have a site that features a lot of photography, Flickr can be a great additional place to post your photographs, and let people viewing your photos know that you also have your own website which they can visit.
Other Photography/Art Portfolio Sites
Flickr is certainly not the only photo/art site out there which you can build a portfolio on, here’s a few others.
ElfWood
ElfWood is a fantasy/sci fi specific website where you can build a portfolio of your art, and writing.
You may be lucky enough to be surprised by the flood of people whom visit your site, but chances are good that, especially if your site is new you will find it to be more work than you expected to get visitors. I hope that you have found some of these suggestions useful.
This is far from an exhaustive list of resources that can help you get more visitors, as well as more clients and customers. If you have any of your own ideas to share about resources that can help with getting website visitors feel free to post them as a comment.
I am new to blogging. My blog content are only few, and some do not attract readers. I have been using my social sites to promote my blog. I concluded I have to start posting more on my forum sites in order for my blog to discover and of course write a very interesting content to be remembered.
These are not new but thanks for gathering all of these into one post.
Really this was very nice informative post. And then directory submission we cannot easily get link from that site, How we can improve directory submission, except paid list
Im currently working on Diantart portfolio thanks for the links.
wow. Must start on these then. thanks!
These includes all the website-promotional ways. Website promotion helps to let people know the services offered by the firm. Thus all steps must be taken to attract visitors to the website.
Good stuff. I have also heard time and time again about link exchange programs. Have you seen success, or would recommend such a thing?