Early Traffic Generation Techniques

By examining other seinfeld fan sites, I learned a few traffic generation techniques.

Webrings

One of the first traffic generation techniques that I used was a Webring. A webring is a group of sites on a similar topic. Each member of the group adds the webring code to their home page. The webring code would display links to the "next site" in the ring, and often a link to listing of all sites in the ring. The idea is to enable visitors to jump from one site to others on the same topic. Naturally, I joined the Seinfeld Webring.

Web Directories

Another traffic generation method I used was submitting the site to web directories, in the 'Seinfeld' categories. This included the popular Yahoo! and DMOZ directories, as well as many smaller ones.

Link Exchanges

I emailed other Seinfeld site owners, asking them to link to my site. In exchange, I would link to their site from my Seinfeld Links page.

Paid Search

I played around a little bit with a search site called Goto.com (later to be renamed Overture, recently renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing), paying a few cents per click to show up in the Search results when people searched for 'seinfeld' on goto.com.

Search Engine Submission

I submitted my site to all of the major search engines, with hopes of ranking well in searches for 'seinfeld' and related searches.

The above traffic generation techniques helped a little. I began to see some regular traffic to the site, but not that much. My goal was to show up where other Seinfeld site were showing up, and that happened to a limited extent. The directory listings took a long time to be approved, and some site did not want to exchange links. And not being a money-making web site, I could only go so far with the paid search.

And I was getting very little traffic from the search engines.