__/ [ Brian Huether ] on Saturday 25 March 2006 22:32 \__
> I have been mulling over various ways I might boost traffic to my site. But
> I am baffled. Basically, my site is a guitar lessons community. I get tons
> of positive feedback and know that my visitors love the site. But I just
> can't seem to take it to the next level. Here are several sites with
> similar content, but with far higher traffic:
>
> www.guitartricks.com
> www.guitarnoise.com
> www.wholenote.com
>
> When I use tools like link density/popularity checkers, I see that these
> sites score way higher. But when I delve into the details, I see that many
> of the links are internal (i.e. linked from themselves) and that many of
> the external links are from obscure sites. So I am not sure if investing
> the time to establish more link exchanges is worth it.
I consider this to be a necessary evil. A world without backlinks for
popularity would be better, but it's hard to gauge popularity (or effort, or
spamming rigour) without them.
> And when I consider the possibility of Google Ad Words, etc, I note that
> searches on common words like "guitar lesson" don't bring up these sites in
> the right pane of google (which is where I thought these paid services
> place links).
Perhaps nobody has yet 'bought' these words yet? I am only guessing.
> And then of course I am not sure what to think of the whole pay-per-click
> philosophy.
There is a lot of fraud in such notorious programs. The only loser is the
advertiser, not Google, or the tax collecting bodies, or the 'clicker'.
> I know my site might not look very polished, but there is no question the
> content is there. I just don't know how to strategize. Do I first wory
> about giving the site a facelift, or do I focus on another area?
Are you aiming to just increase the number of referrals from search engines?
Or would you like the visitors that *do* come your to stay/return? There is
an important distinction there. facelifts correspond to the latter, whereas
SEO caters for the former.
> Any expert advice is appreciated.Basically, if you had one area to focus
> on, what would it be?
Hope it helps,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | "Ping this IP, see if it responds the second time"
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