There’s More To Marketing Than SEO…
It’s the first thing most online publishers do. Right after they’ve built their site, picked the images and added the content.
They start optimizing for the search engines and working a million hours a day to get the top spot at Google.
Search engine optimization is always going to be an important part of marketing your website. After all, the only thing better than targeted traffic is free targeted traffic. But it’s not the only way to bring people to your site.
One of the easiest — and one of the most underrated — is to add a Send A Friend link to the top of the page. Incredibly simple, incredibly effective. If just one person in twenty thinks his friend would enjoy the sort of content you’re producing, you’ll increase your traffic by five percent. I can’t believe the amount of good content I see online that doesn’t have a Send A Friend Link. It’s such a waste.
And you can make the most of this technique by deliberating putting up content that you know will get passed around. Look at news sites, and you’ll see that the most emailed stories aren’t the ones that editors put at the top of the page. They’re quirky stories, practical advice and articles that touch on everyday life.
Every so often, you could toss a story like that onto your site and use it to bring in referral traffic. You could even go to Digg.com, find a popular story in your field and report what’s happening.
To really power up this technique, make sure that you also receive comments on a page with a Send A Friend link.
A lot’s been said about user-generated content, but not enough has been said about how proud people feel when they see something they’ve written online — and how much they want to show off what they’ve said.
Give your users the opportunity to add to what you’ve written and let them send a link to that page to friends, and your site will be generating its own targeted traffic.