All websites exist to serve a different function, but it wasn’t always this way. In the beginning, all websites were operated for the sake of sharing information, and the internet wasn’t always open to the general public. That is, until the World Wide Web was invented. Since Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web in 1990, the game changed, and websites no longer fit into one category.
Today website types range from personal ones, to sharing ones, to mobile ones, to blogs, to catalogues, to directories, to e-commerce. They don’t necessarily stop there, but one can generally lump every website out there into these categories, give a few more.
With any purpose being a valid enough reason to start a website, it’s important that your website stands out amongst the masses. Maybe you want to start a blog about the art of nails, or maybe you want to start a website that teaches people about hair and the secret to bringing those dull, worn down locks back to life.
Whatever your goal, the number one goal needs to be bringing people into your site so that whatever you’re offering can be enjoyed by as many people as possible. Here are 3 secrets the biggest websites use to bring people to their sites.
Answer Questions with Yahoo!
This isn’t the first thing people think of when bringing traffic to their websites, but it’s actually an underutilized resource. Yahoo isn’t necessarily leading the pack of search engines, but it is still number one in the questions and answers category. If you’re knowledgeable in your field, answer people’s questions on Yahoo Answers, and you’ll have people naturally clicking your links. It’s free, and it works surprisingly well.
Social Bookmarking
Social media sites rule the internet, and they are the biggest tool that marketers use to get out information about products and people. If you don’t capitalize on this aspect of website trafficking you’ve already lost the battle.
Social bookmarking puts the power in the hands of the people and allows them to bookmark their favorite sites and it will automatically share that site with everybody else on that bookmarking site. Because of this, the potential for increased traffic is endless. Popular bookmarking sites include Reddit and digg.com. To find out more about social bookmarking, check this out.
Online marketing can be a pretty tricky thing to understand, but luckily for you, there isn’t one way to do it, and it doesn’t require you to pay a lot of money to increase your website traffic. By using simple things like Yahoo! Answers, or social bookmarking, you’re increasing your chances at being trafficked at a higher rate. It’s a good start, but if you want to do more, look into things like Google Adwords and SEO optimization. We live in a digital age. Make your mark on this world.