The Dos And Don’ts For Driving Traffic To A New Website

• Do Add Your Feed To My Yahoo! And Google: Add your feed to this personal homepages as it will speedup the time it takes for Google and Yahoo to start indexing your site

• Do Leave Trackbacks: I’m amazed how many times I check my stats and find sites linking to me, without leaving a trackback. If there’s a trackback link published on a site, then take it. NEVER miss an opportunity to leave a trackback. Many sites don’t allow trackbacks any more like Problogger because last year the tools weren’t there to control trackback spam. However, hopefully some of the bigger blogs will return back to the fold soon.

• Do Link To Bigger Sites: Even if they don’t offer trackback links, then still try and weave in links to other sites into your posts, like the shameless Problogger link I slipped into the last tip. Serious bloggers do check their stats (getting a good stats package should be in the DO list) everyday and they will see your link, which could lead to them checking out who you are

• Don’t Use Long Titles: Most of your traffic is going to come from search engines, so make sure your titles are short, punchy and are clear as search engines will truncate it. Also, think about fixing your template so that the post title goes first rather than the site name.E.g. This post will appear in search engines as ‘The Dos And Dont’s For Driving Traffic To A New Website: Connected Inter…” because I use the Optimal Title plugin for WordPress. This is much better than the default “Connected Internet – News & Discussion: The Dos…” which is the default WordPress layout, and would mean my post wouldn’t stand out

• Do Add Tags To All Posts: Although the value of tagging falls in importance my view as your site grows, they can be valuable to smaller sites as they can help you get traffic from tagging sites like Technorati, which is helpful when you have next to no traffic. Tags also help search engines categorise your site. Find a good tagging app that allows you to add tags that ALL tagging services can find e.g. the Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin for WordPress

And finally,

• Do Keep Posting: I know it may seem like you are wasting your time when only your mum and dad are reading your site. But, stick at it as you never know, your break may have been coming the very next day after you kill your blog!

I hope you found this alternative take on the standard tips that are given for driving traffic. Please feel free to disagree with me by leaving a comment, or to share any other tips you may have. You can also discuss this and related topics in the forum.