In the 4 days since I last wrote things have slowed down a little. After a week of working on at full speed it was only natural that I would take some time off and slow down a bit.
The good thing is that slowly but surely daily traffic is increasing. It still seems to come in fairly randomly, but more and more different search engine bots are starting to visit me. I can now be found (directly) on both Google and Yahoo, and it should only be a matter of time before I show up on MSN too. This is good because it increases opportunities for my site to get noticed - even though it will still rank well down on the search results, it does make me feel that things are progressing.
My time over the last few days has mainly been focused on tidying things up, so that what I have set up already is the best that it can be. It has also included a lot more time researching - a lot of that has validated what I have done so far.
When you do research you will come across a lot of discussion around what is best - organic traffic (i.e. people naturally finding your site) vs the use of Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising - e.g. the ads that show up when you search something on Google. Pay Per Click obviously has the potential to become quite expensive if done incorrectly, while organic growth can take some time.
My goal is to make the best of both. I’m doing a small PPC campagin - about £3 a day, just to dip my feet in the water and get some experience. For that I’m making use of the Goggle Adwords system, and today I joined the MSN system as well. The only catch about the MSN is is they don’t let you do a pre pay system - meaning you have to keep your eye on things so that you don’t start getting needlessly billed. I must say, I was surpised at that. As always, Google has gone that one step further in making things customer friendly.
And I’m also trying to embark on organic growth. My concept is based on one site with numerous products - so for, brand/domain recognition is important. I believe part of this is coming from my PPC advertising because ultimately other search engines do start to pick up on those ads. Also, I am continuing to promote my site through the free advertising blogs. Finally I have taken my first steps into what is commonly referred to as “bum marketing” - which is basically writing articles for eZines that get ultimately get publised online. You don’t get paid for these works as such, but you do get to put a link to your website down the bottom. Ultimately, I’m told, this can drive more traffic to your site, especially if you ensure that your article is keyword rich.
And that’s about it so far … I do have some highly recommended reading though. I came across a forum post that links to a lot of useful articles. Although it is PPC focussed, a lot of the tips and tricks are handy for whichever path you decide to go down - whether it be PPC or organic. Read the article here :
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=866446