One of the keys to making your website your number 1 employee is actually getting people to your website. Although there are a lot of methods being promoted for getting traffic to your site, here are a few to avoid.
1) Link Directory Submitter
Sure, your Google ranking is affected by who is linking to your website. However, that doesn’t mean that more is better. Link Directory Submitter is bad news for a lot of reasons. First, if your website goes from no inbound links to 2,000+ overnight, don’t you think Google is smart enough to figure out it was done by a software program? And as soon as they do, they will discount all the links. Second, you are known by the company you keep. Not only will it not help your website to have 2,000 inbound links from a Chinese spam farm, it will actually hurt your ranking to be associated with them. A quality link-building campaign is a lot of work, but well worth the effort.
2) Buying canned content
Yes, Google likes to see fresh, relevant content on your website every week. But what they hate to see is the same content repeated on hundreds of different pages. One sure way to get your website de-ranked is to post the same articles that are being sold to lots of other people. If you’re going to blog, hire someone to actually write the content, or better yet, write it yourself.
3) Buying a bunch of domains
Back when a lot of people still had not heard of the Internet (Yes, Virginia, I’m old enough to remember those days), when someone wanted to find a product or service, they would simply type it into the address bar. (JoethePlumber.com anyone?) It made sense then to register a bunch of search-term domains and point them to your site. Nowadays, people use a search engine to find what they want. And, contrary to popular belief, having a bunch of domains pointing to your site has no value for search engine optimization. In fact, if they are pointed incorrectly, you can even hurt your search engine ranking. So, save your $20 and go buy your spouse some flowers instead.
These three methods of “driving traffic” are persistent myths, but myths nonetheless. To learn more about how to actually get good rankings and real traffic to your website, here are some posts that may help.
To your success!
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