How to drive traffic to a web site

[jcr4runner]

How to drive traffic to a web site

The Forerunner web site has been around since 1996 and is a record of almost every article I have ever written or published. It contains articles I wrote from 1987 until the present. It also has a massive pro-life site designed by Meredith Raney that is more vast than anything I have yet seen. It is the public record describing how, by the grace of God, a handful of Christian activists closed all the abortion clinics in Brevard County:

http://forerunner.com/fyi/

While a lot of things have changed with me in the past few years, I haven't changed my theology and worldview so drastically that I will ever completely disavow what I wrote 10 to 20 years ago. At worst even the most irrelevant articles are an accurate historical record of my work.

When I redesigned the web site four months ago, I was considering jettisoning a few of the articles that were no longer relevant to anything I am concerned about at present. Then a friend pointed out that some of those articles, even if they have relatively low traffic, may be stumbled onto by people doing searches. Since I have over 2000 articles at forerunner.com people are not entering mainly from the front index page.

People find one of those 2000 pages and they navigate elsewhere on the site.

All external links to those 2000 pages drives the traffic to the site. Because I have so many links into the site (Ranking.com has recorded over 11,000 links) some individual pages are very popular.

For instance, go to Google.com and type in PHILLIS WHEATLEY. You will see forerunner.com is #3.

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... atley.html

The key word THEONOMY yields a #1 ranking for forerunner.com on Google

http://www.forerunner.com/theofaq.html

And there are many other search words that yield similar indexing/ranking.

There are many other key words and phrases that give forerunner.com a page rank in the top ten on the major search engines.

Why are these ranked so high?

1. The pages were the first on their topic ten years ago when the web was still in its infancy.
2. In that time, these individual pages have generated many outside links from other sites.
3. Search engines look at the number of links as the number one factor for indexing / ranking.
4. A high ranking in the search engines leads to more visits and higher ranking in the index.
5. All these factors work together to drive traffic, it's like a snowball effect.

And because of that situation, I can add a single page and it will quickly be indexed and ranked highly because of the preeminence of the entire site.

For instance, two months ago, I bought a non-copyrighted an article called:

"Analyzing Website Traffic"

http://www.forerunner.com/e-business/X0 ... te_Tr.html

"Analyzing Website Traffic" is already #9 in ranking on the Google index.

The amazing thing about this is that this is a non-copyrighted article that is sold to help web sites generate traffic and it appears on 416 other sites indexed by Google.

The reason is that forerunner.com has had ten years to build its traffic. Other people and robots have done all that work without me even knowing how was done!

(Does that sound like the premise of a science fiction novel?)

That is why the name of forerunner.com is more valuable to me than would be to anyone else who does not have these 2000 articles. There will probably never be a need for me to start another web site. This domain will always give me the best traffic for anything I put there.

In fact, my top priority for the summer of 2006 is to add 1000 pages to the web site. That in itself ought to double my traffic and e-commerce income -- or better -- simply because I know which are the most popular types of articles on my site.

I am often surprised that a long ago forgotten article will suddenly make it onto a national news service's list of links and suddenly that article will jump to the top of my referral list. We just had our national day of prayer, so people were searching for information on that and they found a 1988 article about the first national day of prayer that President Reagan instituted as a yearly event. Until last week, it was a forgotten article, but in the last seven days it has vaulted to the number 1 page on my site.

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... _Pray.html

Now the key phrase "National Day of Prayer" is currently #7 on Google.

You might be surprised to see the list of the most popular referrer pages in the first week of May 2006:

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... _Pray.html

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... orism.html

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... atley.html

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... Davis.html

http://www.forerunner.com/chalcedon/X00 ... Trent.html

http://www.forerunner.com/champion/X000 ... mwell.html

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... rayer.html

http://www.forerunner.com/videos.html

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... ograp.html

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... throp.html

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... _Knox.html

http://www.forerunner.com/forerunner/X0 ... Bundy.html

http://www.forerunner.com/

http://www.forerunner.com/mandate/X0069 ... f_Joh.html

http://www.forerunner.com/champion/manson.html

By now you should have figured out the several ways that just posting this article to this discussion board is going to increase my traffic. Take these principles and prosper!

[mrLenin]

Thanks, really good info. Good job! What ways do you use for promoting separate pages?

[jcr4runner]

There are a number of factors that work together in a complex algorhythm. The longevity and traffic generated by the site are the two most obvious ones.

But from the beginning Google has used external links as an indicator of popularity -- not just links from a lot of sites -- but the number of links from highly ranked sites will determine if your page is highly ranked.

Having a list of relevant key words in your code is important, although I personally believe that good content will achieve the same thing. I didn't use key words until last year and I haven't noticed a huge difference in ranking. But that runs counter to everything that most web experts tell me -- and I say "most" because some think key words are over rated.

The other thing I suggest is to use the name of the article in the URL -- rather than a number or abbreviation. You should also name your articles after something that you think people would search for. For instance, a friend of mine has an article called: "Did Jesus Claim to Be God?" Obviously people looking for information on the divine Messiah in the Gospels would more likely draw more visitors than an article entitled: "Proofs of the Divinity of the Messiah in Scripture."

A highly ranked site (in the top 100,000) with an article that has a frequent name will rise to the top within a matter of days, as well as sites that have been indexed for a long time.

To test this: try typing "Did Jesus Claim to Be God" in several search engines and see which article comes up on top the most often.

[jcr4runner]

Now try typing "How to drive traffic to a website" and see what comes to the top!

[nancy87]

Great ideas and information. One of the best articles I ever read.
You wrote it on 2007 but still valid the info (Now 2009).

[samtoh4]

Traffic is very important for an online business. the more the traffic is the more chances are there for sales.There are five excellent ways to drive traffic to your site.

Blogging - you can write interesting articles for readers. These articles can be used to link your readers to your site also known as back links. which will help you to improve your ranking. This will eventually help to gain more traffic.

Social Marketing – There are lots of social networking sites like MySpace. These sites are now used as popular way for marketing products and services.

Forums – Post question answers for help and learning. Forums are also used to promote your business although advertisements are not allowed here but you can display your email signature every time you post.

Article Distribution - Distributing informative articles to article directories can also help to get more traffic by directing visitors to your website

Viral Marketing - This is an effective and tested method. You can give away an e-book on your site and have a couple of links and a full-page ad in the back for your product or service. Grant permission to your readers to give away the book and see this promotion snowball.