How can small sites become popular?

[Adrianhenry]

What are the best ways to make small sites become popular on the internet?

Do I need to invest into internet marketing or SEO services for fast traffic and grow my site?

Any advice?

 

[elcidofaguy]

If you are looking to create popularity and build a following then I personally would focus my efforts on social media platforms... That said if your aim is to make money online then I would focus my efforts on ads and link building... In both cases I would also adopt list building...

It is also worth noting that you should diversify your traffic sources and not only rely on one source/method... Also don't get confused about popularity versus making sales i.e. if you are an affiliate site then the aim is to refer traffic on and not keep them on your website..

 

[Nytshade]

What are the best ways to make small sites become popular on the internet?

Do I need to invest into internet marketing or SEO services for fast traffic and grow my site?

Any advice?

The best way I know how to make a small site/blog popular is through social media, guest posting and email marketing.

But when it comes to guest posting then I would advise you to target brands instead of independent blogs that allow a lot of people to guest blog. A lot of big brands want content for their products and they'll accept it if it's good and if it will benefit their audience. If there's a brand that you use in your niche, then create a few tutorials using their tools/equipment or even if it's a service then find a way to create a tutorial or testimonial blog post.

Add a lot of value and don't make it seem like you're doing it for your own benefit, all you ask for is a link to your website as well as social properties and maybe even ask for a mention in their social properties. For instance if I'm a guitarist and have a blog that teaches people how to play guitar, then instead of going to an independent blogger to guest post, then I would go to a brand like Yamaha or Seagull Guitars.

These are authority website so they get a lot of traffic as compared to a lot (if not all) independent bloggers. Some brands will say no to your offer (but they'll be crazy to do that), so if they say no then use the same tutorial idea/theme for a different brand. That's how I recommend guest blogging and how you can get people to follow you, take you seriously and build a popular site.

Make sure you choose a good niche though, this strategy won't have the same effect in all niches. You can also include contests in your marketing strategy and have the brands you're associated with sponsor the contests.

Hope that helps.

 

[Mark007]

Popularity can be increased by social media promotion. Taking active part in social networking websites will help to promote your business and build popularity by driving good traffic to your website.

 

[PTTed]

What are the best ways to make small sites become popular on the internet? Do I need to invest into internet marketing or SEO services for fast traffic and grow my site? Any advice?

I think the best way to make a small site become popular is to start out by making the site about something that is in high demand already. In other words instead of launching a small blog and then asking yourself "How can I make my blog more popular?" I am suggesting that before you even launch your blog you ask yourself "What topic can I create a blog about that would be really popular?" or "What type of blog could I create that has a chance at becoming really popular?" or "What sorts of things do popular blogs have in common?"

The reason I suggest you do that is because the vast majority of websites will never become popular no matter what the website owner does at this point.

I think that (for the most part) popular websites are predisposed to becoming popular when the website is first launched. And that depends on what audience the website serves and how well you serve that audience and how motivated the audience is to return to the site or tell other people about it.

Take this forum for example: The people who visit this forum are going to fall into one of a few different categories:

1) People who want to promote themselves, a website, a product or service using this website
2) People who want to learn about the topics being discussed here
3) People who want to hang out and socialize with other people that are interested in these topics

Most people probably come here for a mixture of those reasons.

Let's suppose that the website owner doesn't care so much about the self promoters and instead wants to focus on making the forum more popular among the other two groups. Then you would want to do the following things to make the forum more popular:

* Have as high of quality content as possible. Make sure good questions are asked and really good answers are offered for those questions.
* Create as much activity as possible because activity breeds more activity.
* Assemble a large enough team of core people to run the forum who are very experienced, very knowledgeable and very helpful so that they can provide really high quality answers to the questions that forum visitors are asking about.
* Get those core team members to remain as active as possible and respond to questions as quickly as possible. The faster a person's question gets answered, the more activity it inspires in the people who are asking the questions. It also makes them want to come back to the forum more often. It makes them "like" spending time here as long as the forum seems active and responsive.
* Encourage people to be as friendly as possible to maximize the likability of the site.
* Maintain steady activity by starting conversations when the forum members aren't starting enough conversations naturally on their own.
* Promote the forum to outsiders so those outsiders will visit to see what it is about.
* Make members feel liked and appreciated.
* Maintain forum quality by removing useless posts that don't meaningfully add to the conversation.

If you are good enough at doing those things (among other things) then at some point the forum could reach a critical mass and start growing organically on its own. That is one example of how a site could become popular.

So something like SEO could be part of the tactics you are going to use to introduce new people to the site, but for the site to become popular, the quality of the product has got to be high enough. And in the case of a forum like this, the quality of the product is going to be a combination of 1) the quality of the discussions and 2) the quality of the experience of being a member here.

Without those two qualities, the site would never become popular among those groups of people. Popularity has everything to do with how much people "really like" visiting the website. Find ways to make people really like visiting the site and you will figure out how to make the site popular.

 

[popwin]

Depends a lot on what's you niche .If you have a niche that it's not so popular- you need :
- good SEO
- a good team of people working with you
- content of great quality
- a lot of money invested in marketing
- Promotions on social media

If you have a special niche and targeted by a country - let's say like a cooking blog for french only - you need to buy traffic to increase your daily visits and get more active people.

 

[fairplay007]

What are the best ways to make small sites become popular on the internet?

Do I need to invest into internet marketing or SEO services for fast traffic and grow my site?

Any advice?

Yes you need to invest in Keyword Research: Market and keyword and key phrase analysis is a technique of displaying a selection of keywords and words which will be use in the procedure. This stage is important and then needs a lot of period of time to find out an excellent list of keywords and words that provides a appropriate mixture of two big important components: Top amount of searches and less competitors within the search engines like Google. but you can get this service done for a very inexpensive price here.