Starting your first website? Five Tips to get that initial traffic!

"My website is on-line now. I don't see any visitors. Submitted the site URL to some search engines, but nothing seems to happen! How am I ever going to get that traffic you talk about?"

The above is a slightly edited version of an email we got.

Yes, getting that initial traffic is not very difficult if you already have another established website. But what if it is your very first website?

Here are five different ways to get started!

Before doing any of these make sure that your site does have something substantial to offer. Otherwise the site will just fall back into obscurity after an initial burst of traffic. What you need, is to turn your first set of visitors into evangelists who will talk about your site on forums and their blogs. If your site is just another "Me Too" site, this is not going to happen. There has to be some thing unique or different about your site. A good "Wow!" factor will also help!

Get Links

Get one or more  established websites to link to you. If it is a well known site and you get featured at a reasonably prominent location on that site, you will get a quick flood of traffic. A blogger friend or some one with an established website can help you. If you don't have any one to help you, you will need to be a little creative. If your site is software related you can submit your product to one of the known software download sites.

Get Help from an On-line Community

Get involved at a related on line forum and talk about your interests. Make sure to follow the forum rules. Most forums will allow you to include a signature at the end of your post. Ensure that you also contribute something of value to the forum.

Write Articles

There are sites that accept articles for publication. Write a series of good articles about your field and submit it to such sites. Include information about your site at the end. You can even get articles written for you for a fee. Make sure that your articles are original and provide valuable information.

Issue a Press Release

This is probably the best method to get your site noticed. Create a good newsworthy press release and submit it using one of the on-line PR sites sites like prweb.com or PRNewsware.com. Again, you can get experts to create a good press release for a fee.

Do PPC Advertisements

Create PPC advertisements and use Google Adwords or Yahoo advertising network. Please see the posts on Pay per Click strategies.

Taken From: http://www.seolab.com/strategy/traffic.php