How to Grow Your Site’s Traffic

To prepare for the Mixergy sessions on “How to Grow Traffic to Your Site” I did a pre-interview with every speaker. I thought you might want to see some of my notes.

5 traffic lessons from Michael Dorausch of Planet Chiropractic

Use Google Trends to see what people are searching for. If you see a subject that they’re likely to keep searching for, write a story about it for your site.
Write for others. Offer to write articles for popular blogs in return for a link back to your site.
Write about others. Write articles about important people in your industry as a way of getting them to look at your site.
Shoot video interviews with presenters at conferences. People who can’t go to the conference will want to hear what the presenters have to say.
Focus on a niche where the competition doesn’t know as much about the Web as you do. (Like chiropractic.)

5 traffic lessons from Andrew Sorcini of TheDrillDown.com and Digg’s top user

If you want your pages to get more attention, you can ask the top users of social news sites (like digg) to submit your pages.
If a top submitter can’t submit your site, s/he can introduce you to someone who can.
When you’re designing a Web site, make it easy for your users to link to any element of your site to social news sites. (Andrew & I looked at goodreads.com for example, and he liked how the site allows you to link to individual book reviews.)
If you want to network with social media site’s top users, start by adding them as friends and commenting on the stories they submit.
Stay in touch with the top submitters on every network you can: twitter, digg, Facebook, their blog, etc.

5 traffic lessons from Elmer Thomas of ThemBid.com and a top user of social news sites like Digg, Mixx, and Propeller

Getting traffic from social news sites can help you get investors. Investors see the traffic growth as a sign of success.
It’s more than a 1-time traffic hit. Sure, when a story on one of Elmer’s sites is “dugg” most readers bounce in and out of his site in a few seconds–but he says the traffic spikes help his sites rank higher in Google and has gotten him into Lifehacker, Mashable and other influential blogs.
Connect with and support the top players first. When Elmer does joins a social news site, he adds all the top users as his friends on the site and then he votes for the stories they submit.
Have a memorable avatar and keep it consistent. Think of your online avatar as your personal logo.
Give your submissions a lighthearted spin. We talked about how eduFire might write a story for social news sites. Elmer suggested a blog post called “10 situations where not knowing a foreign language could get you hurt.”

10 traffic lessons from Mark Deming and Blake Newman of BlueSEO

Create an account on Amazon.com in your company’s name and review books that are relevant to your company. Because Amazon is ranked highly, your Amazon profile will be ranked high. Do the same for other big sites.
Decide what keywords you want your site to “own.” These are the words that you will use consistently throughout your site to describe yourself, so when users search for them in Google, they’ll be more likely to finding you.
Your keywords need to be in the language your customers would use. Don’t use “certified automotive technician” if your customers say “mechanic.”
Give your site’s images meaningful names. Don’t label them “Image01.jpg.” Give them descriptive names that include the keywords you want your site to own.
Blog every day for 30 minutes. Search engines value lots of fresh data.
Your sites URLs should be like this: domain.com/this-is-right not like this: domain.com/this_is_wrong
Start building your site with search engines in mind. Don’t have your designers build a site and then try to jam your keywords into it.
Be humble. I warned the BlueSEO guys that we’d have search engine experts in the audience. I asked them what they would do if some people in the audience knew more than they did. They said, “We’ll ask those people to teach us.”
Own your name. When people do a search for your company’s name, all the top search results need to refer to your company. Your customers shouldn’t have to struggle to find you.
Check out SEObook.com and SitePoint.com

After the sessions, we had wonderful hors d’oeuvres by Chef JoAnna and a mixer so guests and speakers could get to know each other. Chef JoAnna’s menu was:

CanapÃ©s of Roast Beef with Sun-Dried Tomato Spread
Granny Smith Apple with ChÃ¨vre and Toasted Pecan
Tamarind Chicken Salad in Wonton Pastry cups
Smoked Salmon on Blini with Dill Sour Cream
Black Olive and Caper Tapenade with Cream Crackers
Crostini with Tarragon Butter, Radish and Smoked Salt

Thank you Cause+Capitalism for sponsoring the open bar at the mixer.

Thank you TechZulu.com for being our media sponsor.

More coverage of this event here:

Elmer Thomas posted his notes here

Andy Sorcini’s The Drill Down mentioned the event

TechZulu video