Webrings
Depending on what sort of webmaster you ask, traffic is either the highest or one of the highest priorities for a good website. After all, all the content in the world is worthless if you don’t have any visitors to see it. There are, of course, a number of ways to increase your hits. Some are good (e.g. Search Engine Optimization), some are bad (e.g. Blog Spamming), and most aren’t free. In my search, however, I have found one method that is both effective and free: Webrings.
Webrings are associations of mutually-linked websites that usually follow a common theme. They appear as little navigation boxes like those found at the bottom of most pages on Project Paradox. They’re useful for visitors because they can find many related sites quickly and easily, and they’re attractive to webmasters because they generate traffic. Best of all, they can be tucked away at the bottom of a page so as not to clutter up your content.
The trick to boosting your traffic with webrings is to join as many as possible using many different pages with distinct content. Project Paradox, for example, belongs to approximately 300 webrings, although not all 300 lead to the same page. To really drive traffic to your website, follow these steps.
- Create an account on Webring.org. Be sure to create a nice, informative blurb for your pages’ descriptions.
- Go through the webring index and submit applications to join as many related sites as possible. Be sure to place the SSNB code on your pages before applying, since most ringmasters won’t even consider your site without it.
- Whenever you create a new page for your site with distinct content, repeat the process. Traffic will feed through that page into the rest of your site.
- If you ever notice a webring going up for adoption, immediately accept the offer. Even large webrings require very little work, and you can arbitrarily place your site in the Featured Sites list for each ring, generating even more traffic.
You may notice the word “content” being thrown around a lot here, and for good reason. No website can retain visitors without content, no matter how many hits it gets. What’s more, many ringmasters will immediately deny a site lacking in content, and affiliate programs like AdSense will have nothing to do with it. Content is king, folks. So, before you start applying to every webring in site, tear down those “Under Construction” signs and fill in those empty pages. Otherwise, you’ll be in for a lot of disappointment.