How To Build A High Traffic Website

I know how to build a high traffic website. I’ve done it twice so I know a thing or two about creating an Internet destination out of thin air. There are a lot of ideas, suggestions, tips and tricks out there and I could easily write a book on the subject.
Getting a lot of traffic to your website or blog is a major undertaking, and it’s full of nuance, persistence and often frustrating. Some methods work better than others. Here’s what I did:

Create Valuable Content

The first rule to follow when building a high traffic website is to create valuable content. By valuable, I mean that what you post on your website or blog should solve a problem, clarify a confusing issue, entertain, educate, encourage, motivate, inspire… You get the idea.
Create the content that you would want to read yourself. Don’t just slap together a four paragraph “fluffy” article stuffed with keywords. People see through this. They’ll skim the article, not learn anything and back out of your website for good.
You can do all of the tricks the traffic-building experts tell you to do, but if your website is filled with fluffy keyword-stuffed “made-for-AdSense” content, you’ll never succeed in the long run.
Create informative, engaging content. Read my tips for how to write a better blog post.

Write About What People Are Looking For

A great traffic building tip is to look at your referral logs and see what people are typing into search engines when they find your website. Oftentimes, people type in a search phrase or keyword and they end up clicking on an article that you wrote that touches on the subject. If you find multiple searches for that same keyword or phrase, then write articles that explores the topic in more depth.
When Tracy and I started Incredible Smoothies, we’d pay attention to fruit and vegetable combinations that people would type into Google, and ultimately end up on our website. We would then create smoothie recipes using these popular ingredients. Our traffic would go up because we’d create content that was more relevant to what people were searching for.
We also did that with questions. We’d look through our search engine referral logs and whenever we’d see a question that somebody had typed into Google before clicking on our site, we’d then write an article answering that question.
A fantastic service to use that will help you come up with ideas for traffic-building content that people want to read is Hittail. Hittail shows you a detailed list of search engine terms people use to find your website. You can then use this information to target content to these high traffic topics.
In the article I wrote about choosing a topic or niche for your website, I recommended Wordtracker. Wordtracker is a keyword research tool that helps you in the topic selection of your website. You can use it to determine supply (number of searches) and demand (competing websites) in order to predict profitability of certain keywords. Wordtracker also functions as a content idea engine because you can find relevant keywords to write about. You can then use this data to create content that will rank highly in search engines, thus boosting your traffic.

Build Traffic Organically Through Search Engine Optimization

I confess, I don’t really pay too much attention to SEO. I mean, I do have an SEO plugin that I use on WordPress. I am conscious about my keyword choices for article titles, the URLs (permalinks), and I make sure that what I write includes certain keywords so that the Google bot has no doubt what each article I write is about.
But that’s about as far as I take it. I never go back and tweak articles to try to boost search engine ranking. I don’t go out of my way to get back links (if you write valuable content that people are looking for, then you’ll never need to worry about back links because you’ll have a ton of people link to your content naturally).
I’ve never had a problem getting listed in Google, or ranking highly on most of my keywords. My advice is to simply create valuable content, make sure your keywords are sprinkled in, make sure your title and URL (permalink) is relevant to the topic and don’t fret too much about it. Give yourself a basic familiarity with legitimate, ethical SEO concepts, then just keep on writing more and more valuable content. The more valuable content you write, the more traffic you will get, the more people will link to you, tweet about you, and share you on their social networks.

Utilize The Social Web

Twitter and Facebook have been instrumental in the growth of our website. Not only does Twitter and Facebook provide an avenue for updating followers about new content, it also helps you establish relationships.
The relationships we’ve established with other websites and blogs on Twitter helped get the word out about our website beyond our circle of contacts. For example, we would come up with recipes using a product that we love and use ourselves. We share this recipe on Twitter with the company who manufactures the product. They appreciate the publicity and our use of their product so they re-tweet (or share on Facebook) our link. Since they have a much larger following than we do, our traffic soars. After the flood of traffic, we get a lot of new subscribers to our newsletter, a lot more “Likes” on Facebook and our baseline daily traffic remains elevated until the next flood.
Don’t just use Twitter and Facebook for promotional purposes, however. Social networks are not “spam receptacles”. Instead, use it to contribute value, connect with people, establish relationships and sprinkle in a little humble promotion here and there.

Create A Newsletter

While more of a monetization strategy than a traffic building one, maintaining an e-mail newsletter can provide a regular boost of traffic when you send out updates to your list. I’ll write more about list building in a future article.

Other Methods Of Increasing Traffic To Your Website

RSS Feeds: One thing you will notice that is conspicuously absent from Stop Dreading Mondays and my other websites is an RSS feed button. There is a reason for this. I don’t want people subscribing to my RSS feed. I want them to subscribe to my e-mail newsletter, follow me on Twitter or “Like” me on Facebook. Ultimately, I want traffic on my website more than I want traffic to my RSS feed.
While publicizing an RSS feed might help create a slow boost in traffic, I don’t consider it a major traffic building strategy.
Directories: Getting listed in directories doesn’t directly increase your website traffic. I mean, who uses directories to find websites when you have a Google search box? The strategy here is to get a link back from a website that ranks higher than yours among search engines. This, in turn, is said to increase your own search engine ranking.
A listing in Yahoo’s directory is considered a prime listing. However, you’ll pay for the privilege. Last I checked, it cost $300 just to be considered for listing. If you are launching a website to earn extra money, you probably don’t have an extra $300 lying around to pay for a directory listing. And I’m not so sure that it is really essential to get listed in Yahoo. I’m not listed there.
Dmoz.org is another top directory to be listed in. They are a human-edited directory, and because of this, it could take months before your website is reviewed and listed. If your website is brand new, it may get rejected for not having enough content. A link back from Dmoz.org is a valuable asset to boost your search engine ranking, but you’ll have to be patient and wait until your website is truly ready to be listed.
I waited about six months before I submitted my website to this directory. It took another eight months to actually get listed. Just be patient and don’t submit your website until you feel it truly deserves the attention.
Back Links: Everybody talks about creating back links. Back links are simply links to your website from other websites that have a higher search engine ranking than you do. The goal is to get enough high ranking back links to your website that it increases your search engine ranking and you appear higher up in search results.
There are plenty of legitimate back linking opportunities, and there are many unethical back linking opportunities that could get you banned from search engine results.
Many newbie webmasters go all out to create back links by writing articles in free article directories that include a byline and link back to their website. Others create “lenses” on Squidoo. Still others actively seek out blogs and websites that complement (but don’t compete) with their topic and do a simple link exchange.
While I was very focused on creating back links early on, I became less focused on it as my website grew. The main reason was that I focused on writing valuable content that people WANT to link to. Creating value is what built my traffic and increased my search engine ranking because people read what I write and they want to share it with others.
When you first launch your website, go ahead and try to get a few links back from sites that are larger and rank higher than yours. But don’t go crazy with it. Back linking is a known SEO strategy and Google is said to be able to detect when too many back links have been added in too short a time, signaling an attempt to artificially boost search engine rankings.
Don’t ever submit your website link to link back farms, or unedited lists of links. Never dump your link on pages with massive lists of website links. Never participate in link back schemes.
Don’t risk getting your website penalized or banned. Just focus on creating valuable, linkable content.
YouTube & Video Sites: Video has exploded on the web and having a presence on YouTube is an essential part of building traffic and your brand. Be sure to include your website link in the videos and provide valuable content that will make people want more by visiting your URL.
Amazon Kindle/Nook Self Publishing: If you have an e-book, consider self publishing it to the Amazon.com Kindle Store and The Barnes & Noble Nook Store. While it won’t have any effect on your search engine ranking (it’s not a back link), it provides you the opportunity to reach millions of shoppers who frequent these websites looking for content.
What I’ve found works best is to create an in-depth “starter guide” on your topic. Make it valuable enough to justify a 99 cent price (the minimum you can charge for a Kindle or Nook product). I’ve had tremendous results doing this. Not only does it generate revenue, it brings people to your website who might have never discovered it otherwise. I included a coupon code for my flagship information product and I’ve converted a lot of sales this way as well.
Blog Carnivals: I’m not sure how popular Blog Carnivals are these days. A blog carnival is basically where you and a group of other blogs submit links and one blog publishes it. I’ve participated in a few of these but my results have been pretty poor – at least for my niche.
Unless a high-traffic blog links back to you, you won’t get many click-throughs. Most blogs that would participate in a blog carnival are low-traffic blogs seeking to build traffic. Because of this, links from these blogs won’t do much for your search engine ranking. I abandoned the whole blog carnival concept after the third attempt.
Some niches might do better. I’ve heard some people have tremendous success when they started their blog. Go ahead and give it a try.
Establish Relationships With Other Bloggers: I touched on this in the social media section above. Use Twitter and Facebook to find a few allies from websites or blogs that complement your topic, or with companies you work with either as an affiliate or partner. Develop a mutually-beneficial relationship with them and share the occasional “link love”.
Article Directories: While an often-talked about traffic (and search engine rank building) strategy, I’m not big on stocking free article directories with articles. Honestly, I don’t think that too many people actually go to these sites to get information.
Increasingly, I see these sites disappearing from search engine results pages, too. The vast majority of “content” you’ll find on these article sites is just plain junk. It’s complete fluffy garbage. Article marketing is dying, and for good reason.
Instead of tossing out 4-6 paragraphs of fluffy junk on an article site, put that energy into creating a valuable piece of content that others will want to link to on your own website. Use social media to bring attention to the valuable piece of writing you just published on your own site. You’ll ultimately win the traffic prize in the end.
A better strategy for article marketing is to contribute articles to other blogs and e-mail newsletters.
Ad Campaigns: I can’t think of a worse way for an information-rich website to increase traffic than by paying money for it. I’ve never paid a penny for traffic on my websites. Never.
If you write valuable content that people truly want, they will find it easily through top search engines. They will share it in social networks, and they’ll find it there as well.
While an ad campaign might create a sudden swell in traffic levels, it wont last. What you want is organic traffic that you don’t have to pay for. Follow the tips described above, develop some patience, stop fretting over your traffic logs and go write more valuable content!