Quote:
Originally Posted by incredibleworkethic
Say you had any site that you wanted to grow, what obvious steps would you do to grow besides adding to your site daily, producing great content, and caring about the end user?
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That is indeed a good foundation. In your OP you are focusing on Google, but there are other ways to drive traffic to your site - you'll also want to reach out externally with your brand.
-Social networking (Tumblr, Youtube, Dailymotion, Reddit, FB, Pinterest type stes, etc). Of course read the TOS and be aware your efforts can be taken down with no notice, but it can be a valuable part of your strategy.
-Contact other site owners, bloggers - depending on your project you could offer content, interviews, material for blog entries or articles, etc - trade them interesting material for exposure.
-Related forums. Be discreet - the idea is not to alienate users (and probably get banned quickly) with overt spam, but to just generate some exposure & interest over time.
-Be creative. The above are pretty standard but with a little thought there are other ways to increase exposure for a small site - you may not have a 100% success rate with your ideas, but the idea is to determine what works and then refine it.
You want to figure some ways to quantify the effectiveness of some of your efforts, but also keep in mind that improvements in brand awareness aren't always immediately noticeable - it's not completely about your hits/sales/ratio for that day or week, and IMO many small-to-mid-sized site owners lose sight of this.
IMO for most sites buying cheap traffic is a waste of time & money.
Feel free to PM me if you want any specific impressions/advice on your projects. Good luck!