50 Ways to Increase Traffic to your Auto Website or Blog

Sta.rtUp.biz - The Entreprenuer Social Network

1. Write something great about your niche and email other bloggers to let them know – there’s a good chance they’ll link to you

2. Have a signature link in forums that points to your site

3. Post links to your pages to social bookmarking sites.

4. Leave comments on other people’s blogs and link back to your site (tip: look in the digg upcoming section for blog posts about to get a lot of traffic).

5. Have the opposite opinion on everyone else on a popular topic. Everyone will link to you saying your wrong

6. Answer questions on Yahoo Answers

7. Post in Yahoo and Google Groups with a link to your site in your signature

8. Make a 404 page that redirects to your homepage – no point losing visitors

9. Have an opt-in form – trade links with someone else who has an opt in form on your confirmation page

10. Review a product or company – if your review is positive email the company and ask to be featured in their press section. (this has worked really well for me)

11. Write articles and submit them to article directories

12. Write a Press Release and submit it to PRWeb (make sure it is newsworthy)

13. Use PayPerClick Traffic (e.g Adwords, MSN Adcenter, YSM)

14. Add an RSS subscribe button/link in a high profile spot on your site

15. Add a mailing list subscribe form in a high profile spot on your site

16. Add a bookmark this site link in a high profile spot on your site

17. Use a Tell A Friend Script on your site so people can email their friend about an article on your website.

18. Submit a blog to a blog directory

19. Submit you RSS feed to RSS feed directories

20. Mention your website in a post on Craigslist (don’t spam)

21. Optimize the titles of your pages for keywords people will search for

22. Buy links to your site

23. Buy reviews about your site on other people’s site

24. Buy banner space on other websites if you can get a good ROI

25. Send articles to ezine publishers with a link back to your website

26. Do a big viral push for a piece of link bait, post it in forums, social bookmarking sites like digg, email bloggers, and get a few people to vote for you on social bookmarking sites – this little push could start a viral chain reaction!

27. Have a link to your site on community sites like MySpace and FaceBook

28. Use a traffic trading system like BlogRush

29. Purchase misspellings of competitors domains and redirect your site (be careful of trademark infringement)

30. Create a freebie product to give away (ebook, software, whitepaper etc.)

31. Submit your site to the hundreds of free directories – use the viles-silencer list

32. Do a group feature where you get other website owners in your niche to participate – maybe asking them all an opinion on something.

33. Hold a competition for the Top 50 in your niche – 1 month later post the results and let everyone know who featured – watch them link back to say what there position was.

34. Pass out business cards when you go to industry events in your niche

35. If you have a product start an affiliate program and start approaching affiliates

36. Submit videos to video sharing sites like YouTube and Metacafe. Include a link in the description and within the actual video.

37. If you have a product send it to website owners to get reviewed.

38. Look at a big website within your niche and ask to write some guest posts for them

39. Create pages with links to your site on places like Squidoo and Hubpages

40. Place classified Ads on eBay with a link to your website

41. Use an autoresponder on your mailing list to keep people coming back to your site

42. Exchange links with a few related sites in your niche

43. Network! Email other site owners, phone them up, go to industry events and get yourself known. If they know your face they will likely talk about you on their site if you do something interesting.

44. Many forums have a place for you to advertise your site once – find them and do it.

45. Purchase advertising in other people’s mailing lists and newsletters

46. Create an Amazon profile and start submitting reviews

47. Create profiles on MySpace and start networking in groups that are interested in your site’s niche.

48. Conduct a survey and publish the results – make sure you let people know about it.

49. Get your hand on a load of PLR content for your niche. Add a commentary to the top, create a unique title, and post them all to your site – lots of new content and lots of new traffic.

50. Create a cartoon mascot for your site – then hold a competition for someone to create the best game for it – pay the winner a decent amount.

Tags: promotion, seo, traffic, website

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Replies to This ADM Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on May 16, 2008 at 7:57am: This is great stuff! I love seeing actionable items that can be used as a checklist of what to do to accomplish an objective... Thank you very much!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Lawson Owen on May 16, 2008 at 9:31am: Any suggestions on link which can be purchased and where to find them?

Thanx - Lawson; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Ralph Paglia on July 23, 2008 at 5:58pm: Whether from Unity Works Media, SiSTer Technologies or any of the other reputable video content solution providers, every independent research study, every metric report I have seen from both small and large dealers shows that there is a measurable increase in the average amount of time each visitor stays on the dealer's website. There is no doubt that video content within dealership websites drives increased amounts of time that customers stay on a dealer's website. Conventional wisdom says that increased amounts of time that customers stay on a dealer's website inevitable leads t0o additional leads, phone calls and showroom visitors... However, I am no longer convinced that this is an immutable law of digital marketing. I have a major client that I am personally close to, and whose brand is a household name, that I will not specifically identify. They added significant amounts of video content throughout their automotive information website back in April.

These were not the "Pan & Zoom" fake videos that use photos from CDM and Dealer Specialties to "simulate" a video, these were full-blown Virtual Test Drives from recognized authorities such as MotorTrend Magazine, along with "How To" videos coaching people on how to get a fair trade-in value, or how their credit score impacts their monthly payments, etc. All of it was the type of content you would expect from such a major player... Their results were nothing short of incredible in regards to their average amount of time each visitor stayed on their site... And, here's the REALLY interesting part, their organic (free) search engine traffic jumped dramatically. I have their numbers in my hand right now. There Average Visit Length went from 4:07 (April 2008) before deploying the video library throughout the site, to 16:59 (May 2008) after putting video players and content on every page of their automotive site.

However, as good as that may look, their leads from web forms submitted were up in May 2008 by less than 10% compared to April 2008... My point is this; although I see evidence everywhere that properly deployed genuinely informative and entertaining video is in high demand by consumers and it does drive increased levels of consumer engagement and more time spent on dealer websites, I am not yet convinced that it takes someone who is visit8ing your website who is not in the market for a vehicle purchase this week, and then puts them in the market! As good as video is, I do not believe that it makes buyers out of tire kickers.

Am I saying don't use video? Absolutely NOT! Video content is one of the greatest things to come along to Digital Marketing in the last 5 years and demand for video is primarily driven by the widespread adoption of broadband (hi-speed) Internet access. I predict that within the next 5 years consumers will be watching more video on their computers than on broadcast or cable TV channels. I am also convinced that the right use of video is one of the strongest branding and communication tools a dealer can possibly use on the web. If you don't believe me, then visit the following website that my company DID NOT SELL, and I had nothing to do with other than finding it when I clicked on the dealership's display advertising on a website: http://www.drivethebest.com/

Then, go to: http://www.drivethebest.com/owners.php and click on the employee and customer profiles on the left side to display each of their video interviews in the window on the right.

I love the classy quality of the video and message at http://www.drivethebest.com/dealership.php

http://www.drivethebest.com/showroom.php

And then there are the video interviews with all the sales management and sales associates that go far beyond anything I have ever seen in conveying a message that THIS is the kind of dealership you will want to do business with: http://www.drivethebest.com/salesstaff.php

For those of you brave enough to check out Michael Schumacher's dealership website, you are in for quite a treat. It among the "Best In Class" in the use of video content that I have ever seen... And, I have seen far too many dealership websites!

Ralph Paglia
Director - Digital Marketing | OEM & National Accounts
ADP Dealer Services
505.301.6369 Cell | Ralph_Paglia@ADP.com
www.AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.com; ▶ Reply to This

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