Building a website and drawing traffic to said website for the first time, is an exciting experience.
Unfortunately, it often leads many to explore different spam techniques.
I remember, ten years ago, when I started my first website. It was a free Yahoo! Geocities website account. Simple space to upload and manage your own site. At the time, I was working on Christian’s Animal Care Sheets. A place where I’d share my thoughts on how to take care of all the animals I had. Guinea pigs, bearded dragons, corn snakes, horses, chickens and more.
Two of the tactics, I remember in particular, went as follows.
- Reciprocal linking. Obviously this form of linking still exists, but it was at an archaic level in the past. You’d email a huge load of webmasters, and ask if they’d be willing to “reciprocate” links. You place their link on your site, and they do the same on their end. It helped to draw in a lot of traffic, but archaic nonetheless. Now, hopefully, links are shared in a more appreciative fashion.
- Topsite lists. They’ve petered out, but were all the rage years ago. You’d register for involvement with a bunch of topsite lists, and drive traffic in that fashion. They still exist, but not as prevalent.
These are just two of the many traffic generation tactics I can think of using, when I was young and first becoming involved on the internet. Although not quite spam, certainly pushing the boundaries.
What traffic tactics do you remember using? Would you consider them spammy, now? How do you drive traffic in a different way now?
Blogger, entrepreneur, digital marketing consultant and recording artist. I make money online and teach others how to do the same.
"You’re such a smart boy!" were his first accolades heard. So, it’s no wonder that this phrase became the title of his business, Smart Boy Designs.