Getting traffic to an information website

[Covmutley]

I am soon to be launching a car related information website. The site will be monetised through affiliate links to loans, car insurance etc.

As it is an information/advice resource site i am expecting that the average money generated per visitor will be low so can anyone recommend how best to drive traffic as I cant see that PPC will work?

Ideas considered so far are; press releases, online directory, social media, perhaps targeted facebook advertising.

Can anyone offer some advice on the general strategy? Thanks

[Andy Walpole]

It's kinda like a very general question - "How do I make my website successful?" - but also specific: "How do I make my car related website successful?"

You could write a book answering the first question but perhaps it's best to read The Internet Marketing Handbook (http://www.seomoz.org/dp/the-internet-marketing-handbook).

For the latter question perhaps somebody here has direct experience in this niche and can provide advice.

My advice would be to create a total list of all websites, blogs and directories in your category and then think of how you could use these sites to gain backlinks or for publicity. Perhaps you'll find directories where you can pay for a listing in their index, or maybe there is a blog that you can post for.

What I will state is that you can never, ever write too many high quality articles. If you don't use them yourself, then there are always other sites that will publish them. Even the biggest sites are unlikely to refuse free quality content.

[Zenicman]

Its a very open question, have you got a marketing plan? Do you have any ideas on online marketing?

[Codefixer]

I have a bit of experience building an information site.

One of the sites that I have in my signatures, at it's height was getting around 4,000 unique visitors per day.

How did I do this on a budget of 0?

Simple, Content.

I created content that I thought people would be interested in. I built the site geared towards people who wanted to learn ASP, and tried to write it in a non assuming way. Most of the other ASP sites assumed that the user had some sort of technical background, so I aimed for the beginner to intermediate.

Secondly I tried to get the on site SEO correct.

A decent crawlable site structure.
Proper page titles, seo friendly urls, meta descriptions, keyword rich anchor text, H1 titles etc.

Thirdly, a bit of link building.

Reciprocal links were very much a thing back in 2001, so I swapped links with some of the big ASP sites.
I also submitted each article to some niche related directories such as aspin and hotscripts.
Frequent forum posts related to the subject.

That's a short synopsis, but hopefully that'll give you some pointers. It's certainly hard work trying to build a site up this way.

If I had of had a budget when I started I wouldn't have tried to do anything myself, for instance I may have hired content writers.

[fisicx]

Totally agree with Michael. For an information site you need content and lots of it. Forget all about making any money, lose the affiliate links as that will just put people off and get writing. Keep your articles above 600 words and use headers and images to break up the copy. Write something new and fresh and google will soon pick you up.

Be partient. You can get a flurry of visitors though some PR but they won't often be targeted. You need to write for the love of cars not for the love of visitors. When you get found by the various motoring forums and blogs you will get the links and then the targeted visitors.

[jappie10]

I agree with Fisicx: content is the key.
The other half is receiving valuable links from other sites, like Andy Walpole wrote.

If your site is up, please give us your link. If we think it's a nice site, we can list you in our weekly top 10 web tips.

I think this is the type of links you should looking for. Combine this with some social media channels like Twitter.