Ok, so you have a Drupal-based site up and running. Now, how do you drive traffic to your site? Have you been successful? What worked, and what didn't? Let's talk about the legitimate ways to generate (and then analyze) site traffic and make a Drupal-based site successful.
Here are some things we can discuss:
- Do we need new modules to help us accomplish our goals?
- What modules (if any) (like ping, multiping, service_links) do you use?
- What web directories (if any) do you submit your site to?
- How do you track results? Do you use:
- Native Drupal logs
- add-in modules? If so, which ones?
- or an external log analyzer? If so, which do you use?
Testing Multiple Variations of Content within Drupal
Apologies for posting this same conversation to two groups, I couldn't determine the best place for this conversation to take place as it is relevant to both groups.
I wanted to start a discussion on best practices for optimizing content stored within Drupal for click-throughs and conversions. I am familiar with external tools like Optimizely and Google Analytics Content Experiments, and use them regularly for A/B and multivariate testing. They have not proven great, though, when wanting to automate testing of content within the CMS.
Here is a general use case:
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New screencasts for Keyword Research and Alchemy modules
I have been putting a lot of work into finishing the Keyword Research module over the last few weekends and have moved both it and Alchemy to release candidate status.
I also posted screencasts for both;
Keyword Research video demo
Alchemy video demo
Need a +1 or twelve for a simple issue: Add an "Associations" field to our d.o profiles
Apologies in advance for this crossposting to 11 groups. I recently started an issue to help us get to know each other better: Add field for "Memberships in Associations, Societies, and Other Professional Organizations" to User Profile. The initial response was, "Don't see why not, but let's hear more support before we do." So this is an appeal to read the issue and consider giving it your support.
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Wishlist of extra stuff on the module pages to save time on researching the right ones
I would like to see a hiearchical view of modules, that require dependencies, both in images of the actual module on its page, and also in the URI/URL. It cements the idea I have of it, if you know what I mean.
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Leaderboard.nl implements Drupal at 5 Agricultural web 2.0 communities at The Netherlands
www.Leaderboard.nl have implemented Drupal successfully at 5 web 2.0 communities for the Agricultural business sector at The Netherlands. For this we cooperate with our business partners Ontwerpwerk from The Hague and aeMotion from Culemborg the Netherlands. Examples of these communities are:
http://www.melkveeacademie.nl
http://www.varkensnet.nl
http://boomkwekerij.groenweb.nl/
http://boomverzorging.groenweb.nl/
http://bloembollen.groenweb.nl/
Tips for Building Traffic: Our Story So Far
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p>I work on Cruise Savvy , a Drupal 5 site that helps people plan a cruise (esp. important for the first cruise ), and browse and share their own cruise ship pictures and cruise stories.
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DrupalCon Business Presentations Needed!
Hi all!
We are looking for speakers for the upcoming DrupalCon in Boston. Since you are subscribed to the Building Site Traffic group, you might be especially interested in the "Business and Marketing" track (see http://boston2008.drupalcon.org/business-and-marketing-track-descriptions ).
This track covers the following topics:
- The Drupal ecosystem
- Businesses learning to use Drupal
- Case studies
- Showcases: NPO, Education, News, Media, Government, Healthcare
Should someone write a "Submit as" module?
Yesterday I downloaded and played with the Drigg module. Among its features is an option to let a privileged role submit content as a different user. The list of spoof users is also an administration option. The motivation for this is clear... it lets a handful of people easily make a site look like a bustling community. This is great for jumpstarting your Drigg site (which is designed to be a Digg clone), but how ethical is it?
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Freebies/Giveaways
I've found one thing that works very well, if you are a programmer: create small/simple utilities and give them away on your site.
I've found no better way (short of buying ads) of generating massive site traffic. I've put several free Windows utilities on my site, one of them caught on in January of 2006 - mentioned on digg.com, lifehacker.com, and dailycupoftech.com, to name but a few. This single item is now responsible for much of the traffic to my main corporate site right now (I'm taking steps to increase traffic to the other content, organically, so it'll take time.)
Read moreSocial Networks: MyBlogLog
I've found MyBlogLog to be a useful tool for promoting a site and gaining new sources of site visitors.
I've created a MyBlogLog module to simplify the task of adding MyBlogLog support to a Drupal-based site. You can check it out here:
http://drupal.org/project/mybloglog
If you have any experience with MyBlogLog and building site traffic, let's talk about it here!
Read morePinging other sites - what has worked for you?
I've had some success in building traffic by using the Ping module (and more recently, the multiping module (more info here).
I have the multiping module configured to ping ping-o-matic and technorati. I've seen some new traffic coming in from those sites, but it's not growing very quickly. So, I'm trying to figure out how to get people's attention on those kinds of sites.
Read moreChanging a page's URL alias breaks existing links. "would be nice" if a module could track and provide 301 redirects
Currently, when you use a URL path alias to an existing node, and later decide to change the URL alias, the old path 'breaks' - so, if you have an older page that has inbound links from, say, Google search or some web directory, people will get a 404 error - not good for SEO or building traffic, in my experience.
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