Local Portal Question

[nathanpennington]

Hello,

There is one thing that I never got about local portals, and that is how are you driving the traffic?

I mean, without traffic, they are worthless, right? Why would a business owner pay money to be on a site that isn't pushing any business his way?

So, how have you gotten traffic to a local portal site?

Thanks,
Nathan

[elitementor]

Nathan,

There are many different ways to get traffic. It's really no different than driving traffic to any online business.

Press Releases
Articles
Backlinks
Good SEO

Also advertising using offline methods.

[Andyhenry]

Do a search in the forum for traffic generation - we've discussed it tons of times.

Traffic generation is something that can be customised for each niche, but there are so many generic ways that apply to every niche that there really shouldn't be anyone in this forum that doesn't know how to get started and generate decent traffic to any site.

[DanielFonda]

I agree with elimentor. Otherwise if you have the budget to pay for advertising, go with google. They offer an excellent ppc option.

[JohnMcCabe]

If your local portal offers something the local market values, especially if it's something they can't easily get elsewhere, local people will return again and again. After the initial push to get the word out, the traffic that matters will do most of the generating by itself.

That's not to say you can stop using any effort to keep the momentum going.

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Now if things stay consistent here, someone will jump in and ask what they need to offer to get return traffic, and can people show examples for them to copy.

You can get some ideas from studying other local portals, but that one thing that catches the locals' affection for your site has to come from your own understanding of the local market and what else is out there.