Having a website puts you in control of something that can become bigger than you had imagined, or languish in irrelevance depending on how well you do the job of attracting readers. It’s all about traffic – a word we have been using for years to describe vehicles on public roads, and therefore makes a lot of sense when describing internet users. What we want to do is direct traffic to our website, by giving people a reason and a chance to visit our website.
It is obvious that the more promotion you do for a website, the better chance you have of pulling in a lot of traffic. Of course, this does not mean that more promotion equals more traffic. It would be truer to say that better promotion leads to more traffic. Get a reputation as a spammer and you could end up with some pretty poor stats. Doing something seldom but doing it well is better than doing it frequently and badly.
This means it is important to consider the tone of your promotion. If you are aggressive in advising people to visit your website, they are more likely to think “actually, no – I don’t think I will” than if you give them a reason to visit it and leave the decision up to them. You can also put a serious crimp in your traffic statistics by placing links on irrelevant sites. Get your link seen by people who have a reason to be interested and you’ll attract more traffic.
