Another way of driving traffic to my website

[MikeBoxwell]

I've been having fun with my website. I spent 25 years of my life as a professional programmer, so I've been writing some active web pages that allow me to rotate content and add new content on the fly.


In particular, this has allowed me to create three pages that have worked really well:

• A simple FAQ page where people can ask me a question and get an answer posted on the website (and e-mailed to them)
• A news page where I post general news about what is going on in the solar industry
• An articles page which acts as a directory page for various pages in my articles directory, which it then serves up in a random order so that it looks different every time somebody visits the page

Along with spending £2.50 a day with Google adwords, it really is starting to drive people to my site. And once they are on the site, people tend to hang around and read several pages, have a play with the solar calculator and buy the book: I'm in the process of improving my stats to find out for sure, but my gut feel is telling me that around 10% of my visitors end up buying my book.

But the best tip I've found for getting people onto the site is to write a funny web page that is associated with the rest of the site and then post it up on a few forums and on blogs around the web, and on an e-mail to colleagues and friends on a friday afternoon. If other people find it funny, they then pass it on to their friends and you end up with a whole viral thing going on.

I wrote such a page last Thursday and sent off a few e-mails and put some links on various web forums and blogs I frequent. My web traffic doubled almost immediately and has remained at this new double level ever since.

What is even more interesting is that these people read the article, and then go on and read two or three other pages and start playing with the solar tools as well.

The other thing that is very noticeable - my US sales ranking has shot up since last Thursday as well and is now higher than it ever has been. Co-incidence? Possibly...

[HuggyBear]

I've been having fun with my website. I spent 25 years of my life as a professional programmer, so I've been writing some active web pages that allow me to rotate content and add new content on the fly.


In particular, this has allowed me to create three pages that have worked really well:

• A simple FAQ page where people can ask me a question and get an answer posted on the website (and e-mailed to them)
• A news page where I post general news about what is going on in the solar industry
• An articles page which acts as a directory page for various pages in my articles directory, which it then serves up in a random order so that it looks different every time somebody visits the page

Along with spending £2.50 a day with Google adwords, it really is starting to drive people to my site. And once they are on the site, people tend to hang around and read several pages, have a play with the solar calculator and buy the book: I'm in the process of improving my stats to find out for sure, but my gut feel is telling me that around 10% of my visitors end up buying my book.

But the best tip I've found for getting people onto the site is to write a funny web page that is associated with the rest of the site and then post it up on a few forums and on blogs around the web, and on an e-mail to colleagues and friends on a friday afternoon. If other people find it funny, they then pass it on to their friends and you end up with a whole viral thing going on.

I wrote such a page last Thursday and sent off a few e-mails and put some links on various web forums and blogs I frequent. My web traffic doubled almost immediately and has remained at this new double level ever since.

What is even more interesting is that these people read the article, and then go on and read two or three other pages and start playing with the solar tools as well.

The other thing that is very noticeable - my US sales ranking has shot up since last Thursday as well and is now higher than it ever has been. Co-incidence? Possibly...

Direct advertising anyone?

[Mike]

you are shouting "spam"?

seems a bit harsh to me tbh

[Indizine]

Huggy - it helps if you don't quote the post cos then I have to edit both!

Self promotional bits have been edited out.

I'm moving this to the marketing forums as it's talking about how you promote your site.

[Mike]

I didnt quote anything!

[Indizine]

lol sorry that was for Huggy!

[MikeBoxwell]

My apologies if I upset anyone - it wasn't meant as direct advertising, it was meant to show something different that I had done that was delivering results.

If you look through my other posts, Huggy, you'll find that I try and put together constructive comments and help other members where I can. I run a web forum myself so I have no intention of spamming other forums. If you disagree, I suggest you go to your account settings and set your account to ignore posts by me. That way, I can't upset your balance of equalibrium in the future.

The links were put in so people could see for themselves what sort of pages I'm talking about. If it works for me, it could work for lots of other businesses as well. After all, I haven't come across any SEO article that tells me to write an amusing article in order to double the number of visits I get to my site, but it does seem to work.

Incidentally, it still seems to be working - visits have gone up another 50% in the past couple of days.

[AndersenSoft]

I'm sorry Mike Boxwell
But are you sure that fine web page would not create the image of unserious company?

[LOS Design UK]

If you look through my other posts, Huggy, you'll find that I try and put together constructive comments and help other members where I can. I run a web forum myself so I have no intention of spamming other forums. If you disagree, I suggest you go to your account settings and set your account to ignore posts by me. That way, I can't upset your balance of equalibrium in the future.

Done

[skeeter]

I think it is an entirely useful post.