Promoting a website?

[ghall]

I just started a new website, which is my first serious venture into the world of the internet. It's a weblog that reviews apps that are compatible with the iPod Touch. So anyway I'm new at this, but so far I've been doing pretty good with 29 new visitors yesterday, and a total of 14 subscribers. I'm on track to have at least 40 new visitors today. I'm just wondering what's the best way to promote to get even more visitors. I was thinking of making a post in the iPod Touch forums here but I think that constitutes as spam.

For anyone who wants to check it out it's TouchZapp.com

 

[angelwatt]

Yeah, posting the site in the forums without cause would be spam, but if the site relates to the topic at hand (like someone wanting a review of one of those apps) then you could post it. You can also have it lingering in your signature as well. A lot of my visitors find me through Mac Rumors.

There's different ways to go about it. When you leave comments on other web sites, some will let you post a web site as well, but I'd make sure it's at least a little bit relevant to the topic on that page or the site so it doesn't seem too random. Word of mouth works OK. The other thing to do is increase your search ranking, also known as SEO (search engine optimization). There's entire books written on this topic. Definitely worth looking at. Lastly, you can submit sitemaps to search engines. You can check out Google's sitemap page here. I believe you can submit the sitemap to Yahoo as well and maybe other search engines.

 

[south8212]

it looks like you have already got a good start by putting a link in your sig (this is very powerfula nd gets your site indexed quickly) The only thing else you can do is get as many backlinks and directory submissions as possible.

 

[Anaksagor]

Well you can start with writting interesting and helpful content. This is one of the most important things. If your site is useful for people they will visit it. The second you should write it in a way so that it contains enough keyphrases. This is done to be more visible within search engines. And also you can visit relevant blogs or forums to attract the target audience. Anyway it will useful for you to read more tips on SEO to promote your site. Good luck!!!

 

[Compile 'em all]

digg.

 

[theappleguy]

You could try facebook targeted advertising or Google Adwords.

 

[ghall]

it looks like you have already got a good start by putting a link in your sig (this is very powerfula nd gets your site indexed quickly) The only thing else you can do is get as many backlinks and directory submissions as possible.

What are backlinks and directory submissions?

digg.

I have been doing that and it has increased traffic quite a bit. I also submitted to StumbleUpon.

Well you can start with writting interesting and helpful content. This is one of the most important things. If your site is useful for people they will visit it. The second you should write it in a way so that it contains enough keyphrases. This is done to be more visible within search engines. And also you can visit relevant blogs or forums to attract the target audience. Anyway it will useful for you to read more tips on SEO to promote your site. Good luck!!!

Well sounds like I'm set there, I think. If anyone has any constructive criticism about the content, I'd be happy to hear it.

You could try facebook targeted advertising or Google Adwords.

I really don't have the money to do anything like that at this point, but I'll keep that in mind.


I've also been contacting people within the developer community, and I've got a few people who are very interested, which is pretty of cool. I got one developer who Ad Hoc'ed me one of their apps to review.

 

[angelwatt]

What are backlinks and directory submissions?

Back links are inbound links, links that have brought people to your site, such as from a search result page, from Digg, or from your signature here. I'm not 100% what was meant by directory submission, but believe it may mean submitting your site to the search engines to ensure they'll be indexed by them. This is accomplished with a sitemap submission as well, but are different approaches.

 

[south8212]

there are tons of sites out there considered to be directories where you list your site in a category etc. and get a permanent backlink

 

[ghall]

Back links are inbound links, links that have brought people to your site, such as from a search result page, from Digg, or from your signature here.

How does that help me? I'm not trying to be confrontational, I just don't understand.

 

[angelwatt]

How does that help me? I'm not trying to be confrontational, I just don't understand.

Short answer is it increases your search ranking. The more times a search engine robot comes across your page from other sites, the more popular it becomes and thus will lead to having your web site show up sooner on search results. This would then led to more and more people finding your web site.

This is why link farms are so popular to scammers, phishers, and the other malicious types, though Google has come up with ways of detecting those link farms.

 

[ghall]

Short answer is it increases your search ranking. The more times a search engine robot comes across your page from other sites, the more popular it becomes and thus will lead to having your web site show up sooner on search results. This would then led to more and more people finding your web site.

This is why link farms are so popular to scammers, phishers, and the other malicious types, though Google has come up with ways of detecting those link farms.

Ok it makes a bit more sense to me now.

 

[SrWebDeveloper]

there are tons of sites out there considered to be directories where you list your site in a category etc. and get a permanent backlink

Bryan, are you referring to PERMALINKS and TRACKBACK links? Those are the correct terminology for blog software and each has a very specific purpose (as well as security vulnerabilities for the latter). It also helps to include links to explain what it is you meant, if not by definition, then by example.

To the OP, if Bryan meant either of those, each is an excellent idea to increase traffic back to your site potentionally, but please pay careful attention to the spam potential of trackback linking in particular as documented in the Wikipedia article noted above. Knowledge is power, before you implement. Traditionally the permalink is what Bryan is talking about when blog aggregator sites (that collect and categorize blog RSS feeds) provide subscribers/readers a means to "backlink" to the originator/source of the blog.

-jim

 

[ghall]

Bryan, are you referring to PERMALINKS and TRACKBACK links? Those are the correct terminology for blog software and each has a very specific purpose (as well as security vulnerabilities for the latter). It also helps to include links to explain what it is you meant, if not by definition, then by example.

To the OP, if Bryan meant either of those, each is an excellent idea to increase traffic back to your site potentionally, but please pay careful attention to the spam potential of trackback linking in particular as documented in the Wikipedia article noted above. Knowledge is power, before you implement. Traditionally the permalink is what Bryan is talking about when blog aggregator sites (that collect and categorize blog RSS feeds) provide subscribers/readers a means to "backlink" to the originator/source of the blog.

-jim

Okay, now it's making a lot more sense to me. I have heard of Permalinks and Trackbacks, I've been blogging sort of passively for a while. Thanks everyone for all the advice.

 

[south8212]

Im actually talking about actual web directories, an example here

 

[SrWebDeveloper]

Since the OP runs a blog site the stuff we're talking about has to do specifically with blogs and RSS technology (permalinks, trackbacks). But thanks for clarifying what you meant by "get a permanent backlink" as getting listed at domain aggregation sites like that is also a great suggestion! Thanks for posting it!

-jim