Many people publish a new site and expect their servers to tremble under the pressure of a traffic deluge. They are usually disappointed.This article is for the less experienced webmasters who want to get traffic to their new websites.

Let's look at some of the ways that we can increase traffic to our new site.

Ways To Get Traffic To Your New Site

• Wait. Have patience. Yes, I know this isn't what you want to hear, but sometimes good things are worth waiting for. Assuming that your content is good - and extensive enough - it will be found for less competitive search phrases and will eventually attract links. More links means better search engine rankings, meaning more people will see your site and will potentially link to it. The cycle repeats and your traffic blossoms. Eventually.
• Link to it from your other sites. This option is only possible if you already have other sites. As long as your other sites are in some way related to the new site, link away. Doing this has the potential to bring your new site referral traffic and visitors from search engines.
• If you do have other sites in the same niche, find the people who linked to them and ask them for a link to the new site.
• Do some social bookmarking. I'm not a fan of this method, but the option to do it is there. Be warned: you will only have success with this method if your content is so spectacular that first time visitors become repeat visitors, otherwise you'll discover what many others have before you: that when you stop bookmarking, your traffic plummets.
• Buy existing sites in the same niche and link them to your new site. The site you buy must be related to get the maximum benefit. You can buy expired domains to do this, and you needn't spend a fortune, either.
• Buy advertising on other sites. There are different methods of finding sites to buy advertising on, and we'll explore them in upcoming articles. It really helps if you are an opportunist, though. For example, when I'm travelling around the internet every site I visit is a potential purchase or link acquisition. If your content is good enough - and I mean really good - you shouldn't be afraid to proposition other website owners with a request to advertise on their site.

The standard of your content is crucial for the success of your site. It has to be high. Successful web publishers are always coming up to me and saying:

Get out of my garden!

They also tell me that there can be no success with poor content.

Building On Previous Success

Let's look at a couple of methods mentioned above. Linking from your existing sites. Buying advertising on high profile sites. What's the key point here? Existing success. You are using the success you found with your previous sites when you use them to link to the new site. When you buy advertising, you are using the success of someone else's site to help yours. And there's nothing wrong with this. Use it!

The Right Kind Of Links

You want links to your site for two purposes: better search engine rankings and referral traffic (i.e. the traffic that comes directly from visitors clicking the link).

Links For Traffic

If you want traffic, then the link to your site should be:

• on a closely related site. There is no use having a link to your iPhone unlocking site on someone else's wedding planning site. Visitors who are interested in planning weddings probably aren't interested in unlocking iPhones in that internet surfing session. Your link would probably get better qualified traffic if it appeared on a site about mobile phones. Obviously.
• on a site that gets high traffic itself. If the site you're advertising on gets only 10 visitors a day, then you'll get a mere trickle of traffic from this source.
• prominent. You want visitors to the linking site to be able to see your advert. In fact that doesn't go far enough. You want their eyes drawn to your advert. This requires consideration of three things. Firstly, you need to consider the position of the advert on the page. The higher the better. Next, think about what company your advert will keep - i.e. how many other adverts share that page? If yours is one amongst 20 other adverts, you have less chance of capturing a visitor's attention than if you were the sole occupant. Finally, pay attention to the design of your advert. You want it to be eye-catching and to convey a compelling message. You don't always have control over the first two factors, and the link you get may not be ideal, but it's up to you to create a good promotional message with your design skills (or pay someone else to do it).
• nofollowed. This is a trivial matter for you, as the consequence is merely the stemming of the flow of link juice to your site. But you didn't buy the link for a search engine rankings boost, you bought it for traffic. No hay problema.

Links For Search Engine Rankings

We are entering dodgy territory here, as Google take a firm stance against links being bought to manipulate search engine rankings. And make no mistake, this is what you are doing. If you do decide to scorn their admonitions, then you should consider the following:

• contextual links are far better than those that are isolated at the side/bottom of the page and grouped with other bought links. Contextual links not only are more powerful as far as ranking goes, they are harder for Google to identify. But what do we mean by contextual links? These are links that appear in the actual content.
• make sure there is no nofollow on the link. I know, I'm patronising you, but it needed to be said.
• you should advertise on related sites, as the Power Of The Link will be much greater.
• the higher the PR of the linking page, the better. Yes, it's true that the PR of your page usually doesn't have an influence on where it ranks, however, the PR of the linking page really does help. Think of the force of the link as being the PR of the linking page x the anchor text of the link. I read that somewhere and haven't tested it, so don't start!
• the PR of the linking page is only half the story when thinking about how much ranking benefit is being passed by your link. The other half of the story is the total number of links on that linking page. The greater the number of outbound links on that page, the smaller the benefit passed by each link. This is important: go for high PR, few links.
• ideally, you should buy a text link. The anchor text of your link helps your page rank for that phrase. If you use a banner link, it is the contents of the alt attribute on the image that is used instead of the anchor text. Accepted wisdom says that anchor text is more powerful than the alt text of the image link, so try and get a text link.

In a nutshell, if you are serious about getting traffic to your new site, you'll think about buying some advertising. In the right place, this advertising will funnel interested visitors to your site, some of whom will subsequently link to it. Be prepared to pay good money for your links. Think of it as an investment that you should weigh up against the potential revenue your site could make.

Getting Traffic To A New Website - Case Study

I'll use one of my new sites as a model for the process you could follow. I bought the domain and hosting for the site on 22/06/2009, installed WordPress and made my first post on 25/06/2009. I was quite prolific in posting at first and then frequency of posting tailed off. What I wanted to do quickly was get the site into a state where I thought I could promote it. You can't polish a turd, after all. Here's a chart showing how my content grew over time from 0 to 21 pages:

Let's jump forward in time to the point where I have enough content to start thinking about getting visitors to it. To make this easier to digest, I'll detail the sequential steps I took.

1. Put a link to the new site on two of my existing sites, which also happen to be in the same niche. I'm building on previous successes here.
2. Submitted the site to joeant (a "better than most" directory).
3. I happened to buy an established site that was in no way related to the new site, as a separate venture entirely. But lo and behold there was a page on the established site that was very much related to the new site. This wasn't my intention when I bought the established site, but you have to seize opportunities when they arise. I put a link to the new site on the established site.
4. 6/08/2009: approached 2 website owners who had previously linked to my other sites and requested that they link to the new one. The sites are related so the links were added.
5. 8/08/2009: I made 2 video tutorials for the site and uploaded them to Youtube, each with a link to the site. This was solely to help my visitors, because that's the kind of guy I am.
6. 6/10/2009:  I bought a link on a high traffic site that is in the same niche to mine for $240/year. Considering the calibre of the site my advert will appear on, this was a steal.

You can see that a lot of the good work I did above is dependant on other sites I own. That's why I'm a great believer in holding on to sites that are successful. Lots of people buy > develop > sell, buy > develop > sell etc. I prefer to build on prior success. And you can see the benefit of doing this above.

Note that the links I added above actually help the visitor. They aren't blatant attempts to jimmy the search engines, though there will of course be some ranking benefit to be had.

Here is how my traffic has developed over the same time period:

The traffic is distributed between teh following sources:

I'm fortunate that my new site is a content site, therefore the 21 pages are generating a significant portion of search engine traffic. I'll expect that traffic to grow as the links I've acquired age and give more rankings benefit.

Read more about building links the right way, to get some pointers on getting the word out about your site. So many people start running in the wrong direction when it comes to link building. Read that article and start doing things right!