Here is my top 10 list of the craziest, most commonly used, worn out, and often hilarious things that online marketers and content publishers do or say just for the sake of getting traffic to their pages. Oops, are you doing one of these? Find out.
- Using Misleading Tags – Lots of online marketers and content publishers use search tags such as Paris Hilton, Barack Obama, Carmen Electra, Hot and Naughty, Google, Sexy, Britney. The funny thing about these submitters is that the tags they use are totally irrelevant to their content. Do you know what this is? It’s called Keyword Spamming.
- Pretending To Be A Total Martyr Who Helps Others For No Apparent Reason And Asking Nothing In Return – Some folks do a different type of masquerade. They say things like “it’s really not about the money, it’s about helping each other”. Well, just wait until he sends you a link or two, or try to get into his email list so he can send you bazillions of commercial emails.
- The “Kindly Critique My Page” Technique – This one is sneaky and looks so innocent. It feeds on man’s desire to be hypercritical of other people’s works, or the need to feel like a consultant. Here’s an example: Someone sends a message to your inbox and asks you a favor. “Can you please critique my webpage or link? I’m not sure if I did it right!”. Feeling like an expert, you check out the person’s page for any possible errors. Cool. You just gave the guy his #1,024 clickthrough of the day.
- Classic Old Fashioned Begging – This is by far the easiest and effortless traffic-getting activity for lots of people. They literally shout and tell the world: “Hey, I have no friends on StumbleUpon and Myspace..PLEASE ADD ME!”. Oh, please click this link, I have no views! (Well, it must’ve been working, because I see lots of folks doin’ it).
- Pasting The Picture Of Uhhh…A Porn Star On The Main Profile Page – Dude, you think you’ll earn more views by using that latest Playboy model as your primary photo? Well, it used to be effective, but not anymore. And think twice, if people wanna see Pamela Anderson I’m sure they’ll visit HER site, not yours.
- Printing A Website Link On A T-Shirt And Walking All Around Town – Ok, this isn’t entirely bad. There’s nothing wrong if you try to display a website link on your shirt, something like www.get-a-life-dot-com. But imagine how things would be totally different if you try to print a Triond article link on your shirt. Hmmm..anyone want to try?
- Using The “Doomsday Effect” – I’m sure you’ve seen this before. Out of the blue, some stranger appears in your inbox and WARNS you about future catastrophes. This really happened in one country I know. Some emails circulated that on a certain date, an earthquake will strike the city and that lots of people will die. Sure it sounds stupid, but it actually caused panic. Lots of students and employees didn’t go to school or work. The online result? That particular “prophecy” became on top of the Google search results for two weeks before the set date of the supposed earthquake. Imagine how many blogs benefitted from the gold rush, not mentioning the main website of the man who started that chain email.
- The “Uniform Comment” Strategy – The good thing about this traffic getting “strategy” is that it saves the users time, energy and the trouble of typing. Let me explain. Some online users post comments on a particular page, saying encouraging words and so on. Wait a minute, try to research other pages he/she has been viewing and commenting on. You’ll find out that the person is using the exact same words on every page he/she visits! That’s the miracle of the Mozilla Firefox cut, copy and paste feature.
- Throwing A Ton Of Garbage Against The Wall And Then Pray – This is a desperate measure. Sometimes it works, more often it doesnt. Some online promoters send messages to every person and stranger they see on Myspace and Facebook, asking them to please click this link! Good luck.
- Faking The Income And Projecting An Image Of Success – I hate to include this in this article, but this is the all time best selling traffic generating “strategy”. Here’s an example. Someone suddenly sends you a private message, apparently a BIG SHOT who earns 1 Billion dollars a year and gets 100,000 website views per minute. Then, with your eyes bulging, you say to yourself “mah goodness I gotta see his site!!”.
August 12th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
very useful information, thank you for sharing
August 12th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
I agree with most of what you say.
August 12th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Guilty…of some…oops….good post….
August 12th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I’m so naive, but you’re right and it’s laughable now that I think about it.
August 12th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
You are so right but we usually catch on pretty quickly. Great article.
August 12th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
You wrote almost complete list. well done!
August 12th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
funny but true,
August 13th, 2008 at 9:47 am
These are “behind the scenes” – truthful misconceptions as I would say…
I hope I could earn much too…
Keep reading and Best regards,
Rionel “2tet”
http://www.triond.com/users/2tet
August 14th, 2008 at 5:48 am
This made me laugh, Verniel. You really hit a home run with one!
August 14th, 2008 at 6:50 am
Ha Ha! Very true.
August 14th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Sad but true…some people are stupid they will fall for that.That’s right BUST THEM OUT!
August 27th, 2008 at 5:33 pm
I concur with your list. Have seen most of these happening, suffered the “Kindly Critique My Page” and spamming with links like a 100 times.
You left the “You scratch mine…and i’ll scratch yours” one. People will leave messages or comments saying i checked your website, or article, now how about returning the favor? There’s nothing wrong with that when its mutually agreed upon, but forced ones are equal to spamming!
February 13th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
All the points you have just described seem to be happening nowadays. It is now very hard to get some traffic to our website even with hard work.
It will be very helpful, if you can share the different practices to best improve the traffic to our websites.