Day 28: Traffic Odds & Ends

Start with a great product
I cannot stress enough how important it is that you start things with a great product.

Whether it’s an email course or a seminar that you are selling or website with baby names you must have a quality product.

Your success in getting traffic depends on this.

Getting others to bookmark your site and come back to it is a difficult task if all you offer is crap.

Google and other search engines are increasingly able to track visitors behavior on various sites including how many pages they visit and how long they stay.

Google can even determine how often visitors hit the back button when visiting your site. This factors in to your sites’ ranking in the search engines.

The point is if you offer crap you will have difficult time getting consistent traffic.

Be Remarkable
Be remarkable – What does this mean exactly?

Most people think that remarkable means neat or really cool, but it also means something is worth making a remark about.

Being remarkable means your product or company does something that causes people to remark about it to someone else. It’s word of mouth advertising. People of their own free will talk to their friends and family about your product or company or web site.

There is great video explaining the power of being remarkable:
http://www.nickstraffictricks.com/seth-godin-sliced-bread-and-other-marketing-delights/

Remarkable websites get a ton of free word of mouth traffic.

A good example of this is GoogleFight.com which is a silly site that serves no purpose except to entertain. I heard about the site from my wife who heard about it from some 13 year old boys. I have told many people about this and now I am telling you about it because it’s remarkable.

Choosing a Name
Choosing a name for your product, company, and website are very important. You want to choose a name that is memorable and easy to spell. When I buy domains I nearly always purchase a .com as it is easier for people to remember.

Eben Pagan has 3 great videos on marketing and the third video deals almost exclusively with choosing good names.

View all 3 videos:
http://www.nickstraffictricks.com/3-great-marketing-videos-from-eben-w-pagan/

Choosing the Right Domain

Choosing the right domain is an important decision. But there’s more to it than just picking the right name if you want to rank high in the search engines

In the last decade or so over 300 million domains have been registered:
http://www.domaintools.com/internet-statistics/

Of all the search engines out there Google has risen to be the undisputed 900 pound gorilla when it comes to search engines.

I believe it’s number 1 in large part because of it’s commitment to giving quality search results. Google is constantly refining its ranking process.

The problem facing search engines like Google and other search engines is web spam.

Web spam consists of sites that are put on the Internet with absolutely no valuable content. What they display is total rubbish. Their sole purpose is to get visitors to click on their advertisements.

Their presence degrades search results for everyone.

The last thing you want is for Google to mistake your newly purchased domain for web spam.

In order to avoid this we need take a look at what web spammers do and then make sure we not do those things.

One thing they do is usually register their domains for only 1 year.

I recommend registering your domain for 2 years. If you have money to burn then register it for longer. Registration length is one thing Google looks at in ranking sites.

I also recommend getting a .com and not a .info for your domain. A huge percentage of .info sites are web spam.

Some experts have speculated that it is best not to have secure registration for your website (where your personal information is hidden).

Hiding contact information is something web spammers frequently do.

Learn more about web spam:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/051111-230626

In picking a domain, try to get something with your keywords in it.

For my site on Poodle Manicures site I might look for something like:
PoodleManicures.com
BestPoodleManicures.com
A1PoodleManicures.com

Generally speaking, shorter domain names are better. They are easier for people to remember and less prone to people misspelling them.

Avoid fancy spellings or strange names. This is especially important if you are advertising outside the Internet, like on signs, billboards, on radio, etc.

You want people to be able remember your domain. Keep it simple.

Hosting Matters

Picking a good web host that will not go down at random times is very important.

I mean what’s the point of working so hard to get traffic to a site if your hosting is unreliable?

Read about my experience with a bad web host and what I recommend.