When you saw the title of today’s post you may have wondered what it really has to do with getting traffic to your site. It has everything to do with getting traffic.
To begin with let me tell you a little bit about a site called Google Fight that my wife introduced me to.
My wife is a school teacher and one day one of her students was raving about a web site called Google Fight. The student proclaimed that is was “coolest, awesomest” site on the Internet.
That evening my wife told me about it and so I decided to look it up.
She wasn’t certain of the url so I just typed in googlefight.com and the site came up.
What I found was a stupid site with stick figure fighting, that was simple to use.
Doing a little research I discovered the site to be wildly popular.
So what can we learn from Google Fight?
Pick your site name wisely
I learned about Google Fight via word of mouth. If you have great content you will get a lot of traffic from word of mouth. Whether people are talking about your site in real life or mentioning it on a forum, having a memorable name is very important.
Tips for choosing a good name:
* Choose a name that is descriptive. Don’t try to invent new words or try to be the next Google or Yahoo. If your site is about poodle manicures, then try to get a domain with the words poodle manicures in it.
* Avoid names that are hard to spell or are prone to misspelling. See http://www.yourdictionary.com… for a list of common misspellings.
* Keep your name as short as possible.
* When thinking of a name for your site make sure the domain (and .com is preferred!) is available.
Navigating your site should be a cake walk
When I first saw Google Fight it didn’t take me long to figure out what the site was all about or how to work the site works.
When people come to your site do they understand what they have come across and how to navigate the site?
You may think so but you gotta test this to be sure.
Go find 5 people who have never been to your site and ask them to go to your site and navigate around. Ask them to locate a specific piece of information on one of pages and see how they go about things. Watch carefully what they do. You may be suprised how hard it is for some people to navigate your site.
And if people have a hard time navigating your site they won’t come back.
And they won’t tell their friends about it.
And you won’t get any traffic.
Pay for quality hosting
Awhile back I talked about my experience with a bad web hosting company.
Not only did this kill my traffic during the week or so, but it had a lasting effect as people began to think that my site was just down permanently.
If you are serious about getting traffic then it is worth shelling out a few extra dollars a month to make sure your site stays up when your traffic spikes!
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