Become a Community Member
If you are starting a website business, chances are that there is already an online community on the niche that you want to start yours in. Make sure that you become involved and join them. Don't get so high and mighty that you think that everything that you write online should get you money. Write on other people's blogs and websites too. Just make sure that you link back to your site. Usually this is done in the signature and is one of the most effective ways of generating traffic to your site as long as what you write is worth reading. If the posting was good, people will come to your site just to read other articles written by you which is what you want. Gone are the times of selfish business owners. Giving and sharing content are the new ways to do business. People respect the knowledge of others and follow that knowledge. This is how you will generate your content.
Quote, but link
If you are pushed for content, another way is to quote from an article written
elsewhere on the net. Usually nobody minds you quoting as long as you give them credit for it and link back to their site as well. Not only is this good etiquette, it will also improve your standing within the community which means that slowly, other more established people will start to link to your site. Remember, people respect knowledge.
Apart from the traffic that this linking generates, there is another more valuable reason for doing this. Most search engines do not index a website as soon as it is hosted. There are a number of people who create sites on free to use communities and then do not follow it up. Obviously no search engine wants any site like this in their results. One way that they identify if a site is in use and is genuine is by the number of links back to it. If these links are from sites in good standing with the search engines, the chances of your site getting indexer faster are greater.
However, you do need to remember to write original content 99% of the time and do not quote everyone else's content 100% of the time. The search engines love original content.
Use article directories
An older, but still very popular way of getting these links back is by posting articles on article directories and then linking it to your site in the bio section. There are many such article directories that allow you to upload content free although they have certain criteria about the kind of articles that you can upload. Ezine Articles is only one among them and there are a number of others that you can post to.
What this does is help you upload a lot of content in places other than your website and then back link to your website thus improving your website standing with the search engines. This is where you use the SEO optimization that you hear about frequently. There are two goals to doing this, one is the already mentioned improving of ranking with search engines, and the other is that sometimes these articles will actually come up higher in the ranking than your site. If this happens you will be driving traffic to your site from there too. Remember, original content is always the best way to achieve the best rankings from your articles and your website content.
Use Experts to Write For You
This is easier said than done, but using experts is one of the most effective ways of generating traffic to your site. Whatever niche you are in, unless you yourself are an expert, getting one to write articles for you is a good idea. Of course, not many experts will actually consent to write anything for you, which is where the previous point comes in. Most of these experts would be high standing members of the community and as long as you lay the groundwork properly and get connected, they are sure to notice you. Over time you can approach them about writing something for you, and even if they decline, you've not lost anything by asking. By becoming a respected member in the community you will just be making it that much harder for them to refuse you when you do ask.
This is not something that you can do a couple of weeks after you start, or even a couple of months after you do. It takes time to earn a name, and even if you are not considered an expert in the field, as long as you make sure that you are a respected member in the community your chances are greater. Once you have an established website which offers some good content and has a reputable name, guest writers will come naturally. People will want to write for you, because of your search engine standings and traffic rankings. You more you grow the more attention you will get from interested writers and invited writers.
For example, if you want to start a website that recommends/sells software, make sure that you join a community where such software is discussed. Join as many as you can, and make sure that you participate. Help out others who ask for help and if you do this long enough it is the best way to get noticed. If you offer your time and expertise for free not only will those you helped directly come to your site the next time they want something, other members in your community will also link to your articles. Over time, some of them may even start recommending that their visitors visit your site. Helping others very rarely does not pay; it just takes time for you to see the results.
Use Tracking Software
Any business revolves around metrics. You need details of how many people visit your site, how long they spend at your site, which pages are the most often viewed and many other details that will help you improve your site. There are a few different ways to do this.
The most popular way is to use Google analytics. Google analytics is a free code that Google gives you that you have to put into each page of your website. This code runs every time a person visits your website and keeps track of everything from whether this was their first visit to how long they spend in each page. This is not a foolproof method because this system does not take into account people, who disable Java script in their browsers, but the number of people who do this is very small and in any case Google only uses 500,000 randomly taken hits for their metrics.
Although Google analytics is the largest used such software there are others too that you can use, both free as well as paid. There are issues with running such software starting with increased loading time, but they are getting better and better with each passing month.
There are some websites that do not use Google analytics because the information thus collected can be accessed by others. By others, it does not mean retail customers, but for example Google itself retains this information for their uses. Large corporations are not comfortable with other companies gaining information about their websites and therefore do not go with Google, but for most of us analytics is good enough and an excellent resource for small to medium business owners.
Use of Keyword Tools
Using key words is one of the most important things that you will have to do. First, you will have to decide what the keywords are that most people may use when they want to look for what you are providing. Think about the words people would use to find your site, and the more people who contribute, the more exhaustive the list is going to be. After you have narrowed down the general keywords that you think that people will be looking for, you can use specific software like Google's keyword tool, Yahoo's Overture Keyword selector tool, Wordtracker, Keyword Dictionary, Market Samurai or any other tool that you are comfortable with.
Most of them are free to use and will give you a combination of keywords based on the keyword that you typed in. This will help you identify the best combination of keywords to use in your content because it will give you the search strings that are the most commonly used in relation to the word you typed in.
Be dynamic, not static
This does not mean that once you write and post your articles you are finished. Keywords are very dynamic, and often, along with trends the search strings that are often used too often will change. You do not have to necessarily change the entire content in your site during times like this. Just making sure that you incorporate the new keywords is sometimes good enough. Remember, reviving old content is a great way to keep your content highly ranked.
Don't overdo it
This may sound simple but in reality it is not. This is because you will have to walk a fine line between over-stuffing your articles with different keywords and with putting in too few. And even then most search engines are able to identify if the keywords come logically as part of the sentence or have been forced in somewhere where they are not suitable.
Nobody knows exactly how the search engines do this as it is their trade secret, but suffice it to say that just because your article is full of keywords it does not necessarily mean that the site is going to get a better ranking. Often an article with the keyword appearing just once will pop up higher than one where it has been repeated a number of times. Keep this in mind when writing your articles, don't overdo it with the same key words. Google likes to read content like a reader, not a manufactured key word hungry robot.Also never copy content, unless you are linking back to where you are copying from. All search engines are able to identify copied content and if it finds that your article is copied, you will even lose ranking because it will tend to push your site to the bottom of the pile. Original content, is always the best way to rank don't forget this.
