Unique Promotion Ideas

Creating A Page That Gets 1,000 Hits An Hour, Starting Today

Author's Note: The technique does not work as well as it did when Infoseek was almost instant but I used it when the Starr Report came out and it still worked. Alta Vista is the best bet now for quick results.

OK, now that I have your attention, I will go into details on a technique I have used in the past to create a web page that will pull in over 1,000 hits an hour. Actually I have seen this technique pull 5,000 hits an hour when conditions were right. The best thing about this technique is that it does not matter what your home page or business is about. The bad news is it does require that you do some dedicated research and pick the right time to use the technique.

The basics of this method involve the ability to locate information, and disseminate it more quickly than has been available to anyone but top news organizations such as UPI in the past. Yes, this is about news or information. Because the Internet makes news available faster than ever before in history it creates some unique opportunities. The fact that the Internet also tends to have information on a given subject spread out in an unorganized fashion is the other key to this technique.

What this technique boils down to is creating a special page dealing with a breaking news story that has an extremely high degree of interest to a wide variety of people especially when the story is fresh. I did not know what I would use as an example when I decided to write this article, I was going to use one of the past successes I have had with the technique. Then it happened, as I started typing the article at 12:30am on Friday Pacific time a Network news bulletin broke into the television program that I had running in the background. The news was that entertainment great Frank Sinatra had just passed away from a heart attach. Now this is not good news, and this entertainer was loved by many, but it will serve to demonstrate just how this technique works.

When a story such as this that generates a need to know more details on a story it is an opportunity to perform a public service and to generate thousands of hits an hour to a web page. Here is how it works. First you hit all the places on the Internet that have breaking news. Places like CNN site, Reuters, News headlines at all the Search Engines etc. There are dozens of places to gather bits and pieces of breaking news. If you use one of the push technology services, you could re configure it to deliver information on the story also.

Now while the story is fresh, you create a tribute page about Frank Sinatra. You give it a title that will index well at the Search Engines, you should realize the importance of a good title if you have been reading VirtualPROMOTE Gazette or have used the Search Engine Forums. Something like "Frank Sinatra suffers fatal heart attach and dies in Los Angeles California". Next create a page with a headline text at the top dealing with the subject and containing pertinent keywords once again. Now a tasteful picture of Old Blue Eyes would be good. The remainder of the page should consists of links to every news article you found. You do not want to plagiarize any article Just put a link and perhaps quote the Headline of the ad, once again using keywords in the actual link text.

Time is of the essence for this technique to really bring in the hits. I know you want to know how this is going to bring hits to your home page. Well, the page will be in your domain on your server or ISP, it is your web page. At the bottom of the page, put your Link Exchange and or Smart Clicks banners or whatever banner exchanges you belong to. Don't get carried away, two is not excessive. You can also put a small hot link that says this page is brought to you as a service of "your company" by an admirer of Frank Sinatra.

The next part of the task has works best if you have some experience with getting a good position on the Search Engines, in particular Infoseek. Do not panic if you have not had a lot of luck in this area, if you followed the instructions above and put meta tags for keywords and description and include the important keywords without repeating any of them, you will be surprised. Because it is a breaking story, anyone doing a search such as 'Frank Sinatra dies', for instance is likely to find your page if you acted quickly. This is because this is the equivalent of a topic or subject that has never been entered so it will be very easy to get a page one listing if you are quick.

As I check for the story on the net now while it is less than an hour old, the links are already there spread out in disorderly fashion waiting to be consolidated. There are no results in a search for 'Frank Sinatra dies' at Infoseek, but it has one link on their home page linking to a Reuters article. This is exactly the situation and timing that is perfect for the technique if I were to go with this story.

This technique would probably bring in 50,000 hits by noon tomorrow if I did it right now. But you will find that competition will come in fast for this story. If you are serious, move to phase two.

As soon as you have submitted to Infoseek, move on and submit to Hot Bot and Alta Vista. You will be able to track hits to the page by checking on your banner stats or by using whatever stats tracking you have in place. If you wish to carry the project past the initial big bust of interest when it is the easiest to get the really big hits, you can submit it to the other slow to list engines but the three I mentioned will have your page indexed within a couple days, Infoseek in hours. Do not overlook Yahoo, if you have done a good job, perhaps after you have done your first update (check news links twice a day, they change or disappear) you may have a good candidate for a time sensitive submission on Yahoo. This type of listing will often get posted within 48 hours if it is well done and contains breaking news.

The key to pushing this technique to maximum results is to work on the page at least twice a day with new updates and links, related stories, even links to other existing pages on the subject. You can expand the page to more than one, take it into the direction of a biography or whatever, the possibilities are as open as your imagination.

This technique may seem grizzly when dealing with death as in the example, but if handled properly, you are doing a service of consolidation of information on a subject with a high level of interest for a period of time. The technique can be used to cover any subject that involves breaking news or extreme interest that was not there yesterday. If done properly, you not only provide a valuable service, you create awareness for your business as your banner views go up by the same amount as your hit count if you use two banners on different services at the bottom of the page.

Hayden Mitchell