If you had 10 Suggestions...

This Forum seems to be comprised of Pro's so I would like to pose the following question:

"If you had a new web site with or w/o an affiliate program, what would be the 10 critical things that one MUST do in order to get traffic? To make this simple, let's eliminate some of the obvious, such as metatags, keywords content, page optimization and layout, popups, popunders, auto traffic xchanges and the like. Besides all this? Please post your 1-10 suggestions, please. I think it would help us all and cut to the chase."

Thank you.

Add original content by the bushel, ream, boatlaod, case and cubit.
Repeat.

Content is King when wishing to generate free traffic. The more unique and valuable content you have, the more other sites will link to you, the more pages will be indexed in the search engines and the more people will bookmark your site. Obviously this takes time to develop.

Be sure as you create your content pages that you understand basic SEO concepts so that you're building search engine friendly pages as you go.

For immediate business use Keyword advertising aka Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. Consider hiring a specialist as most people THINK they are doing all they can with PPC until a really good expert PPC person manages to triple their traffic and lower their bid costs by 30-60%.

All sites should offer something to be downloaded or emailed in exchange for the visitor's first name and email address and permission to send them monthly or semi-monthly newsletters that consist of 70% valuable information and no more than 30% offers of additional products your visitors would be interested in.

Here's my list of the 10 most critical things:

1.Create great content on your site and do whatever flyingrose says to do.
2.Get links from on-topic sites to your site.
3.Get links from on-topic sites to your site.
4.Get links from on-topic sites to your site.
5.Get links from on-topic sites to your site.
6.Get links from on-topic sites to your site.
7.Get links from on-topic sites to your site.
8.Get links from on-topic sites to your site.
9.Get links from on-topic sites to your site.
10.Get links from on-topic sites to your site.

but how do you know which sites are relevant and link to you and how to find them?

The same way you find anything on the Internet - you search for it online.

The most efficient way is to first use search engines to find related sites. Once you have found them you will probably find even better sites faster through what that good site chose to link to than you will with the search engines.

There is a landing page program that does all of the above and it costs $97. Uses RSS for content and links to the top competitors sites, all without spamming or cloacking or redirects. Time saver. No se banning risk like the el cheapo ugly doorway page makers out there. Also incorporates google adsense into it so you get to make money off the clicks on the pages created. FYI.

Naw, that's a waste, imo.

www.strongestlinks.com check the directories section. Someone else suggested that link in another thread and I found it very helpful. (I highly recommend sbd.central.com from microsoft) Their service offers a one page company profile, and I've got some great SEO ideas with that page.

Make sure you're in all the relevant free ones that pass PR.

How do you know which which websites are relevant to link with? They could be competitors, or anyone in a field as yours.

After you're around for a while, people come to you, so you'll pick up links that way too.