Small Business

How to Drive Traffic to Your Site

By Rick Broida

Updated on: September 27, 2007 / 12:00 PM EDT / MoneyWatch

Ever wish you could draw more visitors to your site? Web Worker Daily offers seven tips for getting people to pay attention to your corner of the Web, including one that may seem a little sexist:

Target women. "Women represent a new gold standard in the marketplace. In study after study, women bring a very different sensitivity to technology. If it's new or cool, that's not good enough. It has to be very usable." This from Patrick Houston, VP of Content and Programming for Yahoo! Lifestyles.

A few other interesting suggestions from the article:

Provide information people can't find easily on Yahoo or Google. This from Janelle Wang, co-host of "The View from the Bay" on ABC7. "That will set us apart from other TV stations. We're trying to be more specific that way -- to build our reputation that way." Understand your community well and be prepared to tackle a given topic from their unique perspective.
"Invent a meme, then write a book on that meme." This from Wired's Nancy Miller. That's what happened for Nicole Stich, delicious days, and Penelope Trunk, Brazen Careerist.

Okay, so these are fairly broad ideas, but the takeaway points are clear: Do something different. Provide useful information. Work hard to establish a community. Hey, sounds a lot like BNET Business Hacks!