Forum Moderators: phranque
Enough of this aimless rambling. The meat of my question is: Does it really take a year for a new website to achieve sufficient penetration in the search engines etc. before you stand a better-than-poor chance of people stumbling over your site, without having to go out and virtually drag them in from the street to look at it?
My site is in a very competitive field with hundreds of bigger and flashier sites all elbowing for space on Google's front pages. To find my site on Google at the moment you have to type in its exact name. I think I was naively expecting the Internet to auto-award some kind of Best Site Ever prize or something. I suppose it's like when you're wearing new shoes and when you go out you expect everybody to notice them and be amazed, but of course nobody does.
I have read (and read and read) tens of thousands of words here and elsewhere about SEO and keywords and the like, and have tinkered with these things to a certain extent, but I don't want to end up spending so much time obsessing about SEO and keywords that I neglect the content of the site itself, which revolves around articles that it takes me a lot of time to write. I work full-time, and to follow the golden rule of 'add a page a day' AND busy myself with SEO-related stuff isn't really on.
Will quality content win out in the end, with the barest minimum attention paid to SEO etc.? And will it really take a year?!
To answer your question, it doesn't have to take a year for search engines to trust your site and start sending significant amounts of visitors.
However the way to shorten the wait is by thinking about more marketing routes than just SEO, you should be producing content that is compelling enough that people will willingly link to it (I know that's not always easy).
Many sites get more vistors from links, word of mouth, press coverage, return visits etc than from the search engines. These sites are the ones owned by webmasters that can sleep easily at night too, not having to worry about their rankings for their livelihood.
How do you get people to visit your site to consider linking to it anyway? Not always easy, but becoming an authority on your subject in forums can help. Do you REALLY know your stuff? If you do and there is an active forum about what you do, join up and start helping people. It won't take long for people to start checink out your profile if you consistently post great responses; some forums also aloow you to link to appropriate content on your site if it answers a question very well. A comprehensive FAQ on your site could be a very good resource that you can legitimately link to (as you pointed out correctly, not on here).
Are there industry events? Go to them, talk to people and give them a reason to visit your site afterwards.
One final point to consider is there may be just a couple of people that could make a huge difference to your fortunes. Who are these people? Who do people already repect in your/related niches? Is there any way of aking them aware of your site (as long as it is genuinely useful)? A few mentions in the right places will do wonders...
Check out who is linking to the competition using the link: command then consider asking them for a link to your site. If your site content is as good or better than the existing sites then the chances are that they will link to you.
Your marketing approach depends very much on the sector that you are in. In some areas, such as music (my sector), there is a strong symbiotic relationship between sites (bands, venues, record companies etc) all linkto each other. In other areas it seems to be "every man for himself".
The analogy I often use is with cards displayed in bricks and mortar stores. A supermarket will have ads for taxi companies to take customers' shopping home, a pet shop may display the addresses of local vets. Think in those terms and look for cyber equivalents for reciprocal links.
Don't forget to include the url in all printed and email documentation for your business and on business cards. In some sectors I have seen webmasters say that traffic peaks the week after giving out business cards at a conference.
My site is in a very competitive field with hundreds of bigger and flashier sites all elbowing for space on Google's front pages.
Bigger and flashier doesn't always win. If you provide high quality unique content, folks will find it. It will start slow.
It may help to join forums and other such that are related to your field. When a discussion about a specific area that your site covers well comes up (i.e., don't start the conversation yourself!) add thoughtful commentary and a link to a page on your site that is relevant.
