The Three Laws Of Internet Traffic

I woke up this morning and realized that I have discovered three immutable laws to the foundation of Internet traffic generation. One day I will write a book or do a seminar or eat cole slaw...
Anyway.

Here they are in no particular order:

• You must have the site active for at least 6 months on the Internet. Most search engines will not give your site any real consideration until you have been on line at least six months. The longer you remain an active site, the better off you are. Sites that have been on line for several years and follow the other two rules have good traffic flow. Longevity creates credibility as it does in most other business environments.

• You must regularly update the content on the site.What's the use of having a site on the Internet for ten years and you never touch the content? It never changes. Would you watch a TV show if it was the same show day in and day out? No. The same principle applies to websites. The content should be relative to the site's focus and be updated regularly. Sites that tend to do well are those that are updated frequently. They give their audience a reason to return again and again. It's one of the most basic laws of business. Repeat customers are worth their weight in gold.

• You must have inbound links to your site. There is a reason they call it the world wide web. Your site is supposed to be connected to other sites. Isolationism doesn't work on the Internet. You can dramatically increase your performance by sharing links to other sites with relevant content. Relevant. That's a key word there. It's not going to help your forum on cross breeding bovine communes if all your links go to auto parts stores and gamer sites. Target your links and advertisements to the content of your sites. Form partnerships with other sites, trade links and banners. In short, join the web. Become a part of it.

Mind you these are not the only laws of Internet traffic and I am not pretending to be any sort of traffic guru. I have been researching and working hard to get my lovely little web comic off of the ground and without investing in any pay per clicks or other advertising method I have managed to foster substantial grown on my site. That's not to say that I would never pay for advertising.
I would.
But like a lot of people on the web, I can't really afford the extra expense at the moment. So I have to find other ways to generate traffic. That's where these little jewels come in.
The first law takes time. Six months in fact. But if you get something on the web and remember to change the splash page every once in a while during the testing and development of your site, then you are on the right track. The single biggest jump in traffic occurred when I linked my site to another comic and to several "Top 100" websites that cater to web comics. I doubled my unique visitors in one month. Of course we are only talking a jump from 700 to 1400 but I'll take it thank you very much. Especially when the trend seems to be continuing. I used to scoff at those sites but I now realize that they are an invaluable tool to helping increase traffic. In addition to exposing your site to new visitors, they create inbound web links to your site that ultimately help your site improve it's Google Page rank.

One last thing. You really need to pay attention to your traffic numbers. Most good web hosts offer statistics on your sites and have free tools to help your site grow. Use them. Learn to monitor your traffic stats regularly. You will be able to discover what your audience responds to and act accordingly.

Remember to be patient and keep at it. These things don't happen overnight.
Good Luck.