Need advice...AND HITS!

[iveka]

Ok. I've read almost all of these posts and I am still a little foggy on what step I want to take with my site.

I have a site called ReptileTrader.com (www.reptiletrader.com). It is an information portal with all kinds of goodies like forums and classifieds, caresheets, photos, etc. I sell banner advertisements on there and have been fairly successful, yet the hits are not at the level I, or my clents, want.

I've looked into these pay-per-click and affiliate type sites, but can't find any that I believe that will help get interested people to the site. I have a small budget, but need a lot of hits!

Any suggestions on any strategies would be greatly appreciated. What has worked for you...not worked.....?

Thanks!

Jeremy

[Silverado4x4]

Link exchanges
Partnerships
Search engines

That should get you started...

[aspen]

First of all your income level is currently very good for your traffic, you know this. So you're right, you need to increase traffic.

One thing I would do is remove all mentions of website design/hosting etc that you have. Does this really bring in alot of business? Its almost like there is more design related information on your front page than reptile information. It just looks unprofessional. Focus on the reptiles, leave the design stuff for a different site.

Now before we can give you any more advise we need to know more about your stats. What search engines are you listed in and where? Where does most of your traffic come from? What are your desired keywords for people finding your site?


I'm moving this to the promotion forum since you're asking more about promotion than ads.

[iveka]

Thanks.

The site gets 20,000 page views/month. I use www.submitter.net that submits the site to 2,500 search engines on a monthly basis. The main keywords I use are: "reptiles for sale", "reptile classifieds", "caresheets", reptile forums", etc. I list a few popular species in the pet trade as well.

The site gets mentioned in a large email newsletter that one of my advertisers sends out to 22,000 subscribers. The site is mentioned only twice each year. I also advertise on a site called www.faunaclassifieds.com that has been around longer and is more established that ReptileTrader.com. It generates about a .5% click through rate.

I advertised in Reptile magazine, but that drained my budget FAST! It did get some response, but not enough income to continue.

You're right about the web design stuff on the home page. I'll definately remove that this weekend.

Thanks for your help!

Jeremy

[aspen]

First of all stop that submission service.

There are less than 10 places you need to submit to, and you don't need to resubmit ever unless you fail to get listed after 6-8 weeks.

The places where you need to submit are listed in the important thread at the top of the search engine forum.

The most important thing with search engines is link popularity. Now search engines treat every page as it's own entity, so internal links within your site do count. The most important aspect of link popularity is the text within your link itself. so you want any links to your site and within your site to look like this:

<a href = "url" title = "keyword">keyword</a>

Obviously if you use images in your links or something else you don't get the keywords in the link text and it won't help as much. That is why having a text menu is very important, even if it's just a secondary menu at the bottom of the page.

For instance if you look at any of my SitePoint articles and view my signature you will notice that on all my links I just list the title of the site, except for KissItMakeItBetter. The reason is "KissItMakeItBetter" has no keywords in the title, so I add a short description that includes my keywords so that the link gives me more of a bonus.

Also check out this article:

http://www.promotionbase.com/article/762

Its pretty good.

[w3exit]

Originally posted by Silverado4x4
Link exchanges
Partnerships
Search engines

That should get you started...

Hey! Don't forget exit exchanges and banner exchanges