Customer Reviews

Increase Your Web Traffic in a Weekend

5 star:		(35)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This book, written in 1998 and revised in 2000, by Internet time standards can be considered outdated at the time of this writing (August 2002). The author unfortunately touched on a number of Web sites and tactics that nowadays are either dead (Web sites) or considered bad internet marketing practices (redirecting, use of link farms) that could actually get you delisted. The section on traffic analysis at least talks about a professional tool (WebTrends) but then goes down a long and unnecessarily technical talk about web logs that is sure to bore the heck out of non-technical readers. If you don't mind getting spammed big time, by registering for some of the services the author recommends that are still around, and don't mind dropping in the ranks of Google at all, then get this book and follow its advice. Otherswise, download (and pay) for a license of WebPosition Gold and read the book that Amazon sells about it.

If you have never promoted your site and don't know the first steps, this is a good stating book. However, I found that I was already doing the things the author recommended and I wasn't getting the big number of hits I wanted. While the book shows straight forward ways to promote your web site, there aren't any tricks or secrets to give you an edge over the other 1 million web sites out there. If you are already listed in search engines and have well defined META tags in your web pages and want to find that extra idea to push you over the top, you probably won't find it here. However if you are new to site promotion, this is a good start.

This book is so out of date it shouldn't be available for purchase.

Anyone who depends on getting "eyeballs" for a living needs to read this book, if for no other reason than to see how other folks view the process. Yes, at time the author CAN sound like he is telling you "how to make a million at home in your spare time stuffing envelopes" but there is very decent content here, too. I had not GREPed in a long time -- it's not your usual "get rich quick" book that gets quite that specific. It's clear to me that the author has been there and done that. At first I wondered why he started off by plunging deep into access logs. It seemed kind of offputting -- possibly it was too technical for some of the reviewers who did not like the book. The fact that ultimately, if you cannot measure your web traffic your attempts at increasing it are just shots in the dark, becomes clear -- and really drives the direction of the rest of the book, redeemed that part for me. Really, my only criticism was that the book could have been 100 pages shorter if he had not gone into quite such repetitive detail about how to submit a site to particular directories or search engines. It seems to me that if you read the first part of the book and understood it, you really need little beyond the URLs of the directories and engines to submit effectively. I'm also glad to see the author has a new edition coming out only 2 years after the revised edition. In this field, that kind of frequency is needed.

   Success for any online business or any other form of online information sharing is dependent upon certain factors such as having a well designed Website, having a set purpose for the Website, having the motivation to succeed, and of course, how well the Website is being marketed. William Stanek has written Increase Your Web Traffic In a Weekend to assist Webmasters and other online people to effectively promote themselves!     The author does a superb job outlining sound strategies to promote any Website. This book is full of creative and necessary steps to take. For instance, Websites could be listed with a number of Internet search engines, business search engines, online Yellow Pages directories, and other specialized directories. Newsgroups and E-Mail are other forms of online exposure that can draw attention to a Website.      According to the author there are ways of determining who is visiting your Website, for what reasons, how often, from what locale, through what service, and which pages are being accessed more often. The use of guest books is one option. A good amount of time is taken to analyze the access logs most Website owners and Webmasters have available to them. Based upon information gleaned from guest books and access logs a Website can become a more productive marketing tool. You never know who may decide to drop by and for what reason. Find out today!      The author offers other helpful information on how best a Website can be promoted. Ideas such as using banner advertisements, offering give away incentives, holding contests, games, and sweepstakes are covered. Consider offering important information people can take with them and services they can put to use. Links to online sources of software, clipart, sounds, and Website design tips may also prove helpful.      Before paying someone else to promote your Website, consider investing in this book and setting aside a weekend. This book offers a disciplined approach that if followed will generate a noticeable increase in Web traffic to your site. The knowledge and experience gained by following the instruction in this book will be worth the time and money involved. Highly recommended!

I did not have very high expectations for this book. After all, you are talking about ideas and concepts that change frequently and drastically. If you have never worked to promote your web site, then this is not a bad choice for an introduction. I like the way the author breaks down log files, talks about organizing your stats, etc.

However, web site promotion is a very dynamic and fast moving area of the Internet. This book will let you know how much you don't know. But if you want to actually learn more about promoting your site, go to the web and read the online sources. There are many free discussion boards, newsletters, etc. that will cut right to the heart of promoting your site. The concepts and beginning points outlined in this book are a good place to start, but it's like publishing a Yellow Pages for web sites, as soon as you do it...it's out of date and innacurate.

See ya

I'm a web admin and work with web promotion everyday. I thinnk this is the best promo book and I've read several others. Its got practical application that other books just don't have. Mr. Stanke starts you out right and teaches you what makes a site better, how to understand who is visiting and why. Tons and tons of great resources and ideas. The promo ideas are the best.

I don't like the outright attacks that I read in another review on the book and suspect someone other author. On page 173 - 176 the book discussed what the author called "unconventional promotion that may be considered spam." Mr. Stanek carefully outlined the fact that there could be a penalty for using techniques such as same color text and hidden text. And that penalty could be delisting from a search engine. The addition material on what to do and what not to do is important and needed.

Stanek gives an easy to follow guide to (maybe) cranking up your web traffic. He shows which search engines you can submit your web pages to. Plus, several directory or portal sites that might have free or paid inclusion.

But he also suggests having games or quizzes with prizes on your website to further garner an audience. Quite aside from the cost, I'm not sure this is so useful for some sites.

There is some elementary analysis of your web access log. So you can get a measure of how successful your efforts are. But this chapter is very inadequate. There are free analysis tools available; instead of thumbing manually through the log.

If you are tempted by this book, then there is a far better and more sophisticated treatment given in "Search Engine Marketing" by Moran (IBM 2005). It contains more helpful and better written details on how to write your web pages. Makes Stanek's book appear very facile and inadequate.

The book layout is designed for 5 working sessions over a weekend: Friday night, Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon. One third of the book (120+ pages) is devoted to an orientation to the Internet and web traffic, which we think is wasteful for a book which is supposed to focus on Web promotion. The other two sections cover search engines, directories, cool sites, newsgroups, and mailing lists rather well. Most tips in the book are common sense, while a few of them are really good. A number of the tips are no longer practical; for example, the author suggested using a text color just like the background color to hide key words on a Web page (this is now treated as spamming by some search engines). There are also more errors and missing sections reported in this book than anything we have ever read. But what really disappointed us was the lack of new promotion techniques. The book would work well in 1997 (when it was first written), but now, it's not good enough for experienced Internet users. A search of "web promotion" on Yahoo! would bring out more and better techniques on how to improve Web traffic. The revised version did not address any of these, and so we conclude that this book is losing its value.

Many of the "free" promotional sites listed in the book now only provide fee-based listings. However, any Internet book that is three years old will undoubtedly include some outdated material. I would like to see an updated version. Even with this limitation, I successfully updated a couple of the business sites I maintain, including www.medresearchnow.com.

Brad