There are three ways to have a strong website that will do well in search engines. That is to have people come back again and again, not just randomly finding your page. You should not have to build links, rather focus on a website that is a reason to come back to. Ask yourself, would you personally come back to the site you have? If yes this will attract links and get your website on search engines ranking high. Here are the three main type of sites that rank on search engine.
- Have a website that is a resource site
- Have a website that is community site
- Have a website that has a following
The reason these types of sites do well is because search engines are looking at user behavior. If someone lands on your site and penetrates one or two pages it is OK.
But is someone goes to you website over and over again and is all over your site, looking at different pages and spending a lot of time there, it sends a message to search engines there much be something valuable here. If people find your site from various IPs and keywords and the traffic is organic this is the best sign to a search engine that your site is of value. It only makes sense. Search engine companies are trying to serve their users better, and reward valuable sites.
Sites that do not take off for no reason. Website that do not have a focus or bring anything interesting or organized to the web, tend to draw low levels of traffic.
For example, most people do well with a blog and a website. Any good CMS system, be it WordPress or CMS made simple, helps you organize your content. This is not a bad way to build a site.
I build this WordPress SEO site this way. It is a hobby site for me so not my main site, I blog when I feel like it. It is slowly growing based and ranking better on search engines as it attracts links now and then.
However to make a site really grow lets take a look at the three basic methods I mention above to have a strong website. Remember it is all about user experience and the message the users are sending to the search engines.
Having a resource site for website traffic
I have a website on the Russian language. I put this together not only in the form of a blog but I organized it in a methodical way from A to Z to teach the language.
It is a real resource and people find it and go back to it over and over. I still add pages and post, but the core foundation is set. Why do people not create resource blogs? I think they are lazy. All it takes is a little organization. Even if you do not want to start from scratch, I think you can organize posts that you have.
For example what would I do on this SEO site? If I were to organize this site, I would take my most valuable posts on search engine marketing and create one main page or landing page that will summarizes search engine marketing with liberal wiki type links to my other posts. I might link out to trusted sites that add value. It will be designed for people so they can easily find information and reference with a glossary and clear summaries.
I would do this for each valuable topic and then create a master page with an SEO training page or something. This would be much more organized than tags and categories, which no one goes to. This is in my opinion the easiest way to increase website traffic and have a strong website.
- organize your blog posts with hierarchical pages and an easy to follow sequence of information.
Creating a website with a community
I was telling my wife last night that even when I feeling a little down, I go to one of my community sites and reply and hang out there. Why? It is fun. People go to community sites because the people on the site are interesting and fun to interact with. WordPress has BuddyPress and BBpress to create a community site for any niche.
However, at this point my most successful sites are my blogs that have a forum like aspect. The problem is people do not like to register to leave a comment, they prefer the blog style open registration. If people come back by subscribing to your comments RSS feed this is the same as a forum. Try to encourage them to subscribe.
However, I have found interesting content is the best way.
- Reply to every comment and make your topics hot and something that gets people blood flowing.
Having a strong website with a following
It would be great to be free of search engine traffic. What if one day your site just disappears from the SERPs. This happened to me, one day as one of my WordPress sites got hacked. It took me a while to repair all the damage and was really never effective again. I cancelled the domain and moved relevant content to a new site.
However, if I had a following I would not care as much and could have waited even years for my site to return in the SERPS. Therefore, if you can somehow get a strong following you will be more diversified. Many people just focus on getting direct traffic.
If you have a following you can sell physical goods off your website easier than if people just land on your site. Many affiliate marketing guys want to create a snazzy website and rank high in Google. Sell does not work this way. People buy from people they trust. People buy physical things from people when the trust rating is high, that is usually people they know (via the web).
For you to have a following:
- Put your picture and about page as a central focus
- Make it easy for people to subscribe
- Encourage people to subscribe
- Write long posts that are worth something, and not many short posts that annoy people
- Create a logo so your site looks more serious
People basically have to fall in love with you to follow you. Try to impress them in ten seconds with a wow amazing about page that is both real and sincere and compelling. If you have weakness, you can admit them. Be honest but people like girls, fall in love with sincere guys, but guys pumped with falseness.
My success with SEO has come from building resources and communities, however, I tend to be weak in terms of getting a following. I would say my community sites are the most successful website traffic wise. If you ever can build a site with a community, it will be self-perpetuating with user-generated content. I would be curious about your experiences with building resource sites, community sites or having a following for having a strong website and lots of traffic? Or what methods have you use are you trying?
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