The One True Way to get a lot of traffic on the web [is] pretty simple, and I’m going to give it to you here, for free:
Make something great. Tell people about it. Do it again.
That’s it. Make something you believe in. Make it beautiful, confident, and real. Sweat every detail. If it’s not getting traffic, maybe it wasn’t good enough. Try again.
Then tell people about it. Start with your friends. Send them a personal note – not an automated blast from a spam cannon. Post it to your Twitter feed, email list, personal blog. (Don’t have those things? Start them.) Tell people who give a shit – not strangers. Tell them why it matters to you. Find the places where your community congregates online and participate. Connect with them like a person, not a corporation. Engage. Be real.
Then do it again. And again. You’ll build a reputation for doing good work, meaning what you say, and building trust.”I don’t understand this obsession with marketing purity. First it was don’t send out press releases and now it’s don’t use SEO. It’s like marketing is somehow dirty because it’s only used to “make up for a bad product.”
Bullshit. Marketing is important. Even the best products need to be marketed. Google had marketing and PR departments. Say what you will about About.com, but it was a great business and it was simply SEO. SEO was the product.
Start-ups are hard enough without silly religious convictions.
While some people may be religious about it, as you say, I reblogged because I don’t believe you should pay an “expert” to help you with it. The basics of SEO are simple enough for anyone to learn, and they get you 80% there with minimal effort. Chasing the remaining 20% can take up time better spent improving your product.
