“How do I get more traffic to my site?”

This has to be one of the most commonly asked questions on forums like SitePoint and WebmasterWorld

Invariably, the answer is always the same:

Write great content and people will link to you.

What a bunch of poppycock.

There is a lot of great content out there. People who spend hours writing one single article, re-writing it multiple times so that it is flows nicely, conveys its points across, and doesn’t bore the user. But that is far from enough. You write this great content - how does it get found? It isn’t that Google sends out some magical gnome to check on your content. No, you have to put your head down and promote your site non-stop.

As I mentioned in my earlier post about web hosting directories, the amount of riff-raff at the top is astounding. There are legitimate directories out there, but none rank at the top. In fact, the ones ranking at the top are the most void of content. What they did they did beautifully - they promoted and promoted and promoted. It is almost like fighting in the trenches - very grinding, very boring, but very important.

Now I do want to step back and say that unique content is important. High quality content is important. But without promoting it, you fantastic unique content will go no where. Unique content with no promotion vs so-so content with promotion results in the so-so content beating down the unique content.

Lets take the example of this blog. It currently has 33 subscribers. I can say half of them came from ProBlogger.net (Darren Rowse). Jacob took the time to email him about blog resources in demand. While the content was useful (or so I like to believe), without having emailed him, Darren would have had no clue that such a post existed.

Yet there is a silver lining. Once your blog (or site) is popular enough, then unique content is fantastic. Just look at Life Hacker or TechCrunch. Those guys have taken the time to write great content and promote it. They are now in a position where tens of thousands of people read what they say every day. So when they do post useful unique content, it gets disseminated, fast. It appears on Digg. It appears on Del.icio.us. Links to their post spread like wildfire, and everyone sees it within a few days.

But those are the anomalies. They have worked hard to get where they are. For everyone else - you have to promote your content. Every time you post something useful, find 15-50 sites that would find your content interesting. My biggest site gets over 100,000 unique visitors a day. During its 6 year history, I have sent out at least 15,000 emails. No spam, nothing automated - every single one individually written. It was exhausting, but it paid off handsomely. The emails got the webmasters to my site, and the unique content compelled them to link to my site.