Being a fellow webmistress for an anime website for over 2 years, I know the experience of trying to get visitors to visit your website. I love to design websites and graphics during my free time and part of that motivation comes from the thought of the increasing number of visitors that came to my website (well, apart from my desire to doodle and play with photoshop).

You are probably someone who truly loves your website and you have the desire to work at building it. The only problems you have is probably the visitors. It seems hard to get visitors to visit your website and increase the statistics in your counter.

When I first build my Sailor Moon website, I would post ads and shameless plugs to message boards and I actively participate in discussion groups just to popularize my website. After sometime, I get tired of doing it because only those visitors you know would visit your website, and they only do it once in their lifetime, perhaps. Soon, your posts in those boards scrolled over and your website is forgotten.

I realize that my scope of "advertising my website" is too small. I am limiting myself to a small field of visitors. There are a crowd of visitors out there who probably had no idea (and even now, still has no idea) that MoonFantasy even existed. Do not be too surprised. It is quite impossible to get everyone in the whole world to visit your website, considering the vast amount of websites that are being published every second.

Nevertheless, I realized that I had to do something different. I have to change my "strategy". I checked out some tips written by internet marketers and decided to try them out. After all, I have nothing to lose.

First of all, I submit my website to search engine. I noticed a slight increase in my web traffic when I get listed in a search engine or directory. Following the trend of other anime sites, I got addicted to the idea of "sister sites" and "affiliates". If I found a website with similar interests as mine, I would send the webmaster or webmistress an email regarding link exchange. In compensation for putting my link button on their page, I would put up a link button back to their site on my website. This method seems to be working pretty well. Both of us benefits mutually from one another.

Another way to increase traffic is to keep your old visitors coming back. That lies in the element and the content of your websites. Try to make your website content unique and "addictive". If your website stands out amongst the rest of the gozillion webpages out there, visitors will certainly come back for more. Also, try to update your page often. Add more content too. Visitors usually come to the website to look at your content (well, having a great layout is helpful too).

Please do not misunderstood my earlier statement. Having a good layout is important too. If your layout is "un-navigatable" and took forever to load, most visitors will be turned off by this aspect. If you want to know how your visitors feel about your website, try to put yourself in the shoes of a visitor (visitor can be quite demanding and full of criticism sometimes). Try to criticize your own website in the shoe of a visitors.

if you find trouble trying to improve your website, there are a handful amount of web page reviewers out there who would gladly go to your page and give you suggestive feedbacks and comments. However, be careful when choosing a reviewer to review your website.

First of all, you have to keep an open mind on their criticism. Second of all, do not apply for a review just for the sake of having people visit your website and review it. If you do, you are wasting both of your time and that reviewer's time becaue you will not get any helpful suggestions. Check out a reviewer's past reviews before applying for a review. Not all reviewers would be kind enough to take the time to check every single page in your website and give you feedbacks on it. Some of them just glance at your website and put their comments by looking at your index page.

Having said all that, I hope that my little article help you to improve your "advertising" strategy. If you have new ideas about how to increase web traffic, feel free to email me at moon@moonfantasy.com.

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