Any Webmasters Out There?

[The Titan]

I have been a web programmer for quite a few years but I have always struggled in one place every time. Getting any of my websites to be popular by any means. I have read countless articles on SEO and have attempted to implement things into my websites with no luck. Every single one of them has pretty much said get your name out there, but I thought that is what SEO was for.

At any rate, I have put together a new website using a couple of open source CMS's and I was wondering if anyone had advice for bringing people to my blog or forums. I know this probably looks a little bit like spam but it is an honest cry for help. I just don't understand what I am missing in the entire scheme of things.

I have read a couple of different articles and they say to do things like have conversations with yourself on the forums and make anonymous comments on your posts and that just seems dishonest to me I guess.

Any tips for me? I know there are some people out there running high traffic websites right now that know some tricks of the trade.

[linuxforartists]

Here are some resources I've found useful:

I've got a blog, now what do I do? (http://www.slideshare.net/wpbeginner/ive-got-a-blog-now-what-do-i-do) - SlideShare presentation by the founder of WPbeginner, an awesome blog for using WordPress.

What are some effective ways of building links? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkLFlaWxgJA) - Video by Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team. He talks about how to create great content that people will want to share.

I'm launching some websites too. Good luck!

[The Titan]

Thanks man, I havn't seen those ones yet. Are you launching any blogs with a similar category as mine? We could trade links if you want.

[linuxforartists]

You're welcome. Hope you find those links useful!

Yeah, the marketing part can be depressing sometimes. Designing a website and building it takes so much time. The troubleshooting is even more frustrating. Even when I use pre-made site templates, I still spend hours customizing the CSS and other code to make things look the way I want.

After all that work, now you have to get people to come and visit. Seems like the work never ends. All the best with your projects.

[Paqman]

Forget SEO, it's mostly snake oil. The only stuff you need to know about getting indexed is on Google's own advice for webmasters (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769).

Bottom line: content is king. If you have good content, everything else will follow.

[handy]

Years back, when I was in the IT business I had a few business customers that I created brochure type web sites for which was something different for me to do.

They were easy as there was little in the way of ongoing maintenance, content changes were seldom, & they weren't looking to gain new customers via search engines such as Google.

They just had the URL on their business cards & other office stationary.

So I've never had to learn about becoming Google popular.

I'm generally more interested in being personally, Google (& the rest) as invisible as possible, which is a totally different topic I know. :)