Nairaland has been around for a long time.. So have so many other early Nigerian websites, but Nairaland has outlived them to become successful.
Here are 3 (THREE) reasons I think Nairaland lived and grew successful over the years.
1. FIRST MOVER ADVANTAGE
Nairaland started around 2001... A year or even 2 before I got my first web presence. Nairaland is one of the earliest web properties in Nigeria.
There are early Nigerian sites that haven't changed a bit since they first started and they have successfully made themselves forgotten.. look at Motherland Nigeria. I am not saying MotherlandNigeria.com is a failure. As a matter of fact, it was a pioneering and great site back in the day. But I don't think it has changed in it's 11 years of existence. I'm just saying....
I'm saying, Nairaland utilized it's early advantage and grew very large over time (since 2001). This huge over time growth means lots of posts on the forum, many threads, many topics, many users (readers and posters) and many pages of the forum indexed in many search engines overtime for a wide variety of search keywords/keyphrases and ranked high in search results due to long articles (threads), freshness of content and external links.
As a result of above, Nairaland gets a lot of traffic from search engines alone and new user are brought to the site, many end up registering to participate in the discussion..
It all goes back to the first mover advantage... now Half a million registered users.
2. VIRAL & WORD OR MOUTH.
People talk about Nairaland a lot, in real life, they talk about stories they have read on Nairaland and discussions or polls they have participated in to their friends and so on, thereby spreading news of Nairaland through word of mouth...
Viral, this happens when people forward or share links to Nairaland threads/pages on other sites, through email, on facebook or as tweets.. This causes a wave of commenting, sharing, resharing and retweeting. The story on Nairaland and the user participation make it go viraland grow bigger with fresh users discovering the site all the time.
3. USER ENGAGEMENT
The gists, the gossip and discussions make Nairaland engaging. A poll I once came across on Nairaland comparing the site and Facebook in user engagement, Nairaland beat Facebook hands down in Nairalanders perspective.
So there you have it... The 3 (THREE) secrets that made Nairaland once the most trafficked Nigerian website. You can still use the same secrets right now and build a 500000 user or even million user online empire in Nigeria.
Study these 3 points well and build them into your web service or application...
Showing posts with label online traffic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online traffic. Show all posts
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Search engine traffic, long-term users and startups.
How many startups rely on organic search engine traffic for the early push? The truth is, very few, if any.
Organic Search engine traffic does not come in quick, while new startups need to make many things happen as quickly as they can.
Majority of startups rely heavily on buzz from press releases, pitching industry bloggers and some social media promotion for the quick take-off traffic. These methods are good for getting quick traffic (they also cost money/time), but I don't believe they offer the best kind of traffic a startup should get.
Some people, especially startup founders may see the idea behind this post as a bit off the line. I am open and ready to hear your views on it right here on this blog. The new/normal belief or advice you get these days is about how/why you shouldn't worry about the search engines and that you can create a buzz or may be even success withous worrying about SEs.
PR can surely take a startup a long way, but that is as far as the startup gets. Beyond the buzz, a few percentage of the actual users the buzz attracted will still be using the startup's product.
With organic search traffic, users, the press and bloggers get to validate the idea and the product for you. The users didn't just discover you in an email or press release, they searched for what you are offering and found you, so as long as your service is good, they won't abandon you that easily. If any bloggers or press write about you without you actually pitching them or paying them (that is they found out about you through the SEs), means you have a great product and you are a great startup.
Traffic from organic search is free. Any buzz that this creates for you would be based on the actual value of your service, so with that in mind you can invest more in your idea (knowing it has value and potential for success).
PR is a great tool, however add organic SEO to your arsenal and may be try it first before spending money and time on PR.
Organic Search engine traffic does not come in quick, while new startups need to make many things happen as quickly as they can.
Majority of startups rely heavily on buzz from press releases, pitching industry bloggers and some social media promotion for the quick take-off traffic. These methods are good for getting quick traffic (they also cost money/time), but I don't believe they offer the best kind of traffic a startup should get.
Some people, especially startup founders may see the idea behind this post as a bit off the line. I am open and ready to hear your views on it right here on this blog. The new/normal belief or advice you get these days is about how/why you shouldn't worry about the search engines and that you can create a buzz or may be even success withous worrying about SEs.
PR can surely take a startup a long way, but that is as far as the startup gets. Beyond the buzz, a few percentage of the actual users the buzz attracted will still be using the startup's product.
With organic search traffic, users, the press and bloggers get to validate the idea and the product for you. The users didn't just discover you in an email or press release, they searched for what you are offering and found you, so as long as your service is good, they won't abandon you that easily. If any bloggers or press write about you without you actually pitching them or paying them (that is they found out about you through the SEs), means you have a great product and you are a great startup.
Traffic from organic search is free. Any buzz that this creates for you would be based on the actual value of your service, so with that in mind you can invest more in your idea (knowing it has value and potential for success).
PR is a great tool, however add organic SEO to your arsenal and may be try it first before spending money and time on PR.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Internet Marketing that has worked for me.
Tips on promotion techniques that have brought traffic to my site for free.
>>> Google.
Google will always be on top. Atleast since I don't have a Yahoo! directory listing. Back in 2004 when I cleverly got my website listed in the Yahoo! directory for free, Yahoo! used to be my biggest traffic source.
Now even if I do secure the listing, I don't expect my Yahoo! traffic to exceed the one I already get from Google. My site is doing really good on the Google SERPS with top 10 listing and even #5 listing for my best keyphrase and #1 for many other keyphrases. (Atleast 3 more).
Well incase you want to know what my secret is, content. Content is the key, build more pages, link to them from blogposts, Digg them and more traffic will come from Google.
>>> Yahoo!
I am doing decently well on the Yahoo! search, (though I don't know how well I will still be doing since they turned to Bing). The thing is, this time around my site doesn't have a Yahoo! directory listing so I don't expect Yahoo search to favour my site in it's result so much.
>>> Nairaland
Participating on the Nairaland forum has helped me a lot scoop up some home website traffic. I get significant traffic to my site from 2 of the threads I participated in on the forum.
Here are some tips for participating on Nairaland.
- Respond to threads that have lots of activities, with responses into the hundreds.
- Some Google PR of 1 or 2 would do.
- And please say something reasonable. (it's ok to include a link on your response or add a sig file).
>>> Twitter
As long as you follow the right people and get followed on twitter, you will get some traffic to your site and lot's of mention about you. participate in discussions, send @replies, follow the right people and update your status regularly. Just logging on and listening to what others are saying will give you the idea on what to say.
>>> Digg
Digg it, don't spam it.
>>> Stumbleupon
Make friends with people on related industry, stumble their favorites and make sure they like you so they stumble yours too.
>>> Hubpages
This is really a great service. all you have to do is write and publish articles, ping them and add them to other social bookmarking sites and watch the traffic grow and Google Pagerank rise. You can publish a good article and it can reach a Google Pagerank of 2 in a few weeks. You can also network with people in related industry so they know when you publish a new hub. You can publish weekly, though publishing monthly isn't bad at all.
>>> Blogging
I started blogging early, probably around thesame time that blogging experts like Yaro Starak started. It was really great then back in 2004-2005 doing wonders with blogs and pings.
Well blogging is not like it used to be. I have had blogs with close to a thousand daily visitors. But now apart from this blog, I only use blogs for some link building.
>>> Reciprocal links
links I requeted from other webmasters.
New techniques I will be using
Press release
article marketing ( I have done this to some extent, but not big time).
squidoo lenses
paid ads
>>> Google.
Google will always be on top. Atleast since I don't have a Yahoo! directory listing. Back in 2004 when I cleverly got my website listed in the Yahoo! directory for free, Yahoo! used to be my biggest traffic source.
Now even if I do secure the listing, I don't expect my Yahoo! traffic to exceed the one I already get from Google. My site is doing really good on the Google SERPS with top 10 listing and even #5 listing for my best keyphrase and #1 for many other keyphrases. (Atleast 3 more).
Well incase you want to know what my secret is, content. Content is the key, build more pages, link to them from blogposts, Digg them and more traffic will come from Google.
>>> Yahoo!
I am doing decently well on the Yahoo! search, (though I don't know how well I will still be doing since they turned to Bing). The thing is, this time around my site doesn't have a Yahoo! directory listing so I don't expect Yahoo search to favour my site in it's result so much.
>>> Nairaland
Participating on the Nairaland forum has helped me a lot scoop up some home website traffic. I get significant traffic to my site from 2 of the threads I participated in on the forum.
Here are some tips for participating on Nairaland.
- Respond to threads that have lots of activities, with responses into the hundreds.
- Some Google PR of 1 or 2 would do.
- And please say something reasonable. (it's ok to include a link on your response or add a sig file).
As long as you follow the right people and get followed on twitter, you will get some traffic to your site and lot's of mention about you. participate in discussions, send @replies, follow the right people and update your status regularly. Just logging on and listening to what others are saying will give you the idea on what to say.
>>> Digg
Digg it, don't spam it.
>>> Stumbleupon
Make friends with people on related industry, stumble their favorites and make sure they like you so they stumble yours too.
>>> Hubpages
This is really a great service. all you have to do is write and publish articles, ping them and add them to other social bookmarking sites and watch the traffic grow and Google Pagerank rise. You can publish a good article and it can reach a Google Pagerank of 2 in a few weeks. You can also network with people in related industry so they know when you publish a new hub. You can publish weekly, though publishing monthly isn't bad at all.
>>> Blogging
I started blogging early, probably around thesame time that blogging experts like Yaro Starak started. It was really great then back in 2004-2005 doing wonders with blogs and pings.
Well blogging is not like it used to be. I have had blogs with close to a thousand daily visitors. But now apart from this blog, I only use blogs for some link building.
>>> Reciprocal links
links I requeted from other webmasters.
New techniques I will be using
Press release
article marketing ( I have done this to some extent, but not big time).
squidoo lenses
paid ads
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