This blog is a good example of how not to get traffic to a web site.

It just occured to me that this little blog site is probably the best way to illustrate a site that receives virtually no traffic, and look at the reasons why. I don't put any work into this site other than writing posts and the occasional clean-up, but lets look at what I would do if I had the time.

At the moment, the topic of this site is scattered. I've got a bit about Commodores (cars) a bit about world affairs, Schapelle Corby, and quite a lot of material that is totally unrelated to the subject of the bulk of the text in this blog (web development and design). Although in the context that this site is about me and my life, it is all revevant, but to the search engines, it is off-topic. If I wanted to drive serious web developer traffic to this site, I would start by getting rid of everything totally unrelated to web development. A look at the Adsense ads at the top of the page is a good gauge as to what Google currently thinks this page is about. At the moment it's totally about used cars and Holden Commodores.

Backlinks to this site are sparse. Collecting backlinks to a site takes a bit of work. It's just a case of contacting succesful sites of a similar content and asking them if they would like to swap links. Once you get a few hundred, things start looking up. There's a catch, you don't want to gain links too fast, and you don't want to link to any banned sites. Most search engines have an algorithm in place that tries to detect webmasters that try to push their sites to the top artificially. You don't want to get caught in that, at all costs, so take it slow and think who you link to.

This is quite a small site, and there are many other sites with much more text on the same subject. Assuming I am chasing webmaster traffic with this site, one look at what I would be up against shows why there is no traffic here. There are sites with tens of thousands of pages targeting webmasters. I'd need a lot more material here to compete.

Because the aim of this site is not to bring in traffic, I'm not too fussed. I am going to keep adding to this site over the years and it should gradually build traffic. It's about gaining critical mass, once a site reaches a certain size, it is much easier to continue growing. Trying to get a money making site off the ground (for example an online store) can be like flogging a dead horse for the best part of 9 months, then if everything is right, it will start to turn around, but even that is a slow process. The days of making money overnight on the web are all but gone. Web design is now a long term craft requiring strategic thinking, planning, patience and staying power. The flipside to this for web surfers is that there are more quality sites, and the bad, spammy ones (although there are still a few) have and continue to fall into oblivion. For webmasters, it means you have to be good, really good, if you want anyone to arrive at your site at all. Personally I like a challenge so bring it on.