Jan 18 2008

What we’ve learned about getting traffic

Last month Seth posted an ebook about traffic.

The ebook says that the secret to getting (deserving) traffic online is actually, and always, about the content.

No surprise, right? Insert eyeroll here? Not so fast.

First, it’s great news. It’s great news because for the foreseeable future, the secret of getting tons of organic web traffic has NOTHING TO DO with who you know or how much money you have or what ads you can run. It revolves around a simple truth: great pages get more traffic.

Second, it’s helpful to outline and remind ourselves what great content looks and feels like. You would be surprised by how many people still think “content” is just article-length posts or stories or reviews. Of course, it goes way beyond text — it could be photos and videos and collections of useful links or annotated bestseller lists that don’t exist anywhere else. But think about this: content also goes beyond single authorship. If you run debates on your page, invite your readers to vote in polls or talk in comments or submit their own favorite links or books or photos to a list, what you get out of that collaboration is… you got it… great, useful, constantly updated, and yes, unique content. We call it UUU. And you didn’t have to do all the hard work yourself.

New Squidoo eBook

ANYway… the ebook has gotten an awful lot of downloads in the last month, and maybe I’m looking for castles in the clouds here, but recently I’ve noticed that the new people showing up at Squidoo are starting to make better lenses, sooner, and faster than ever before.

Seems to me like this content thing is worth your while.

(Click here to start PDF download of the ebook. Wait 15 minutes after eating before getting in the water.)

Quick! What's Squidoo?

Squidoo is the popular publishing platform and community that makes it easy for you to create "lenses" online. Lenses are pages, kind of like flyers or signposts or overview articles, that gather everything you know about your topic of interest – and snap it all into focus. It's a supersimple, fun and powerful way to share your interests, build your online identity and credibility, and connect with new readers and friends. It's all free, and you could even earn a royalty for charity or yourself!

Get Started!

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