I have a free dating site, how do I earn money from it and increase traffic?
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Tagged with: advertisements • dating site • own website • traffic
Filed under: Increase Website Traffic
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There’s several criteria that determine how much traffic your website gets but by far the most important things are to have a good ranking in the search engines and some good links to your site.
Search engines use a complicated algorithm to determine which sites are placed where in the rankings (the results returned by a search engine) and these algorithms are a closely guarded secret.
There are various articles on the net to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but I ignore all of them and do things my way – this seems to work as every site I’ve created ranks within the top 6 on Google even when there’s up to 40 million other results found. A site I created just a few days ago is already ranked number 1 by Yahoo (the only major search engine to have indexed the site so far).
These are some of my tips…
– GIVE YOUR PAGE A GOOD TITLE –
One of the key things a search engine looks at is the title of the page. When you’re giving the page a title use the same words that people are likely to key in when using a search engine. For example, if you’re going to create a page about space travel then a title such as "Space Travel – Be a Shuttle Rocket Tourist and Journey to the Moon" would be far better than "All about flying to the moon and back" because the first phrase includes many keywords that people are likely to use in a search engine such as space, travel, shuttle, rocket, tourist, journey and moon.
– GIVE YOUR PAGE A RELEVANT NAME –
Search engines also look at page names. If your domain was mydomain.com then a page name such as mydomain.com/space-travel will do much better than mydomain.com/section1/part2/page3.
– USE THE DESCRIPTION TAG –
Some search engines support this tag – others don’t. Google is one of those that does. What it means is that the details of the site that users see when your site shows up in the search results are the details you want them to see and not random snippets from the page.
For example. Compare a Yahoo search for ‘Black Eyed Peas’ to a Google Search. Both of them find blackeyedpeas.com but Yahoo describe it as "… Multi-platinum 2-time Grammy-winners The Black Eyed Peas cross an historic threshold as their hit … The Black Eyed Peas, Sergio Mendes, John Legend, Justin Timberlake and others …" whereas Google uses the description tag and describes it as "Official site includes videos, message boards, tour dates, and photo gallery. Additional content is available to members."
– PUT A HEADING ON YOUR PAGE –
The heading should closely match the page title. You need to format the heading as a Heading Style and not simply use bold and underlined text.
– REPEAT THE KEYWORDS FREQUENTLY –
You need to include in the text of your page several instances of the different keywords people may key in when using a search engine. Using the space travel example your page should include words such as space, travel, fly, moon, space-tourist and so on with each of these words repeated several times.
At the same time don’t overdo it – if you keep repeating the same thing over and over and over again the search engines don’t like it.
– USE OF THE KEYWORD TAG –
This is something that’s falling out of favour with search engines and in my experience could be detrimental to page ranking. Keywords are added to the keyword tag but aren’t visible to people browsing the page. Origianlly this was a useful tag for ensuring your page contained variants of words, particularly those that are often mis-spelled (e.g. Britney, Britany, Brittany, Spears, Spiers etc). Personally I don’t use keywords any more.
– DON’T TRY TO ‘CHEAT THE SYSTEM’ –
Some web pages hide text by printing white text on a white background for example. Often such text has nothing at all to do with the site but is just a list of popular words and phrases. The hope is that someone for example, will type George Washington into their search engine, the results return all pages containing the name, the user clicks through to one such page and find’s it’s nothing to do with George Washington at all and the only reference to GW is in some hidden text somewhere.
Search Engines can spot tricks like these and will penalise sites that employ such tactics.
– ESTABLISH GOOD LINKS –
This is the most important factor of all. What you need to do is get lots of relevant and ‘respected’ pages linking back to yours. Each link scores bonus points in the rankings algorithm. The best links are those that come from trusted sites that are themselves established. For example, if the space travel site has links from Nasa, the European Space Agency, ABC News and the like it will give it a serious boost in the rankings. One link from Nasa would be worth more than a whole bunch of links from less relevant sites.
Given the importance of establishing good links it’s worth taking the time and effort to get links from as many relevant sites as possible. Visit relevant sites and e-mail the webmaster with details of your site.
– ADD YOUR SITE TO DIRECTORIES –
You can add your site to appropriate categories in online directories. There’s hundreds of them altogether but the 4 main ones are…
http://dir.yahoo.com/
http://www.wikidweb.com/
http://www.dmoz.org/
http://directory.google.com/
There’s an extensive list here… http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/free-web-directories.html
– IGNORE SEO COMPANIES –
You probably receive e-mails from companies offering to get you higher rankings in the search engines. Their number one concern isn’t your site but their balance sheet, treat them the same as you would with an e-mail for Viagra and hit delete. Google get e-mails from companies offering to help rank their own site, see what else Google have to say about these companies… http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html
– CONSIDER ADWORDS –
You pay for these, how much you pay is up to you. If someone enters a search phrase that matches your adwords then your ad is displayed on the results page. If more than one ad matches then they’re displayed in the order of who pays most for their adwords.
– SPREAD THE WORD –
Just tell people about your site and add posts in relevant forums, blogs etc.
– BE PATIENT –
In general the longer a site is around the better it does in the search engine rankings, largely because as time passes more and more sites will link to it. If your site relates to a popular subject you may find it ranks low down to start with then climbs steadily in the rankings, it could take years before you have a good ranking.
– HAVE A GOOD SITE –
When creating your site think how it’s going to appear to visitors. Bear in mind different people use different browsers and have different connection speeds. A large page might look fantastic to someone with a fast connection will be a real pain to someone with a slow connection. If you need to put advetising on your site then make it relevant and discreet – one thing guaranteed to get someone off your site is to have pop-ups and ‘in yer face’ advertising, can you think of any successful site that employs these tactics?
If your site is an informative one then make it so visitors can get the information they want quickly – don’t go for Flash intros and complicated menus. If the site is primarily to make an impression then focus more on animations and so on.
– REMEMBER WHY PEOPLE USE THE INTERNET –
Ignoring porn and all that stuff, the primary use of the internet is for information so make your pages informative. The space travel website could include information about the universe, each of the planets in the solar system, a history of space flight and so on. This will generate a lot more traffic which in turn is likely to lead to more links and ultimately a higher ranking.
– ADVERTISING –
Perhaps your best bet is to consider an Affiliate or Associate program which pays you a commission for each sale you generate.
In my experience some of the better ones are Amazon.com, Yahoo.com and Art.com. These are all established names that your site visitors will recognise and trust.
– THE END –
Hope this gives you something to go on and you get the traffic you want.
google has an ad service you can use
Check the website http://www.dollarmantra.com and find free list of affiliate programs and contextual ad program to earn with your websites.