Lots of times, people will overlook what could be considered the most important key to building up a site's traffic — content. I know that in the past, I've been curious about simple tweaks and tricks that will get more visitors to my site without me having to worry about what they'll find when they get here. But really, when it comes to traffic, content is king.

You hear that idea so many places that it might get old. "Yeah yeah, content is king, whatever, give me the secrets! The tricks the pros use!" In all honesty, I have to say I think "content" really does belong on the list for tricks pros use. Maybe even at #1.

How will great content bring more people to your site? Let's say your site is a notch above unknown. You've got a steady trickle of visitors. Not a whole heck of a lot, but a consistent number, and it's above 0. Imagine if you suddenly put up some amazing content. What would happen? The few people that see your site would say, "Wow! This is great stuff! I've got to remember this site…" Maybe they bookmark you. Maybe they mention your content to a friend or coworker. Maybe they even blog about you, and post a link so more people (and the search engines) can find your site. All these great things will happen because of great content. It's the Great Content Effect.

Now let's say that after a while, your site hasn't changed. There's that one piece of great content, which probably ends up getting its own trickle of traffic from search engines. And that's on top of the original traffic stream, so you're site is now getting more visitors than before. But your original visitors have found nothing new, and see no reason to keep coming back.

So you put up another piece of really great content. The Great Content Effect returns. A visitor says, "Hey, all right, this is perfect! I can't wait to see what they come up with next!" Others tell their friends about your site, and your traffic grows a little more.

Each time you put out great content, you increase the overall value of your site. The more valuable resources there are, the more people will come. Great content = great value = great traffic.

The beauty of using content to build traffic is that it's largely passive on your part! You regularly take the time to write or create something great, something useful and attractive, and then post it on your site. Bam! Done. Now your visitors will do all the heavy lifting, telling others about your site, bookmarking you, and keeping you in mind in the future. You can focus on what matters most, providing excellent content, and the traffic will essentially build itself.

What if rather than great content, you put up something lousy instead? Maybe a Made For AdSense template with old information. A visitor shows up, and if they are decently net savvy, they can tell your site holds less value than they expected. Suddenly your site has made a bad impression, and the visitor remembers not to come back. That can happen again and again. Pretty soon, most of your remaining visitors are all unfamiliar strangers who immediately turn away when they see you don't have too much to offer. There's no repeat traffic, which is a major component to a site's success. And if anyone happens to mention your site, the description won't likely be very positive. The lesson here is that a website is only as good as its content.

The benefits of consistently producing great content are:

The Great Content Effect is magnified depending on how much traffic you've already got. The more traffic you start with, the better the results will be. This is because larger groups of visitors seeing your great content for the first time can spread the word more quickly and powerfully than smaller groups. So you can see how this could snowball:

Traffic Level (X) + Great Content = Traffic Level (X+)
Traffic Level (X+) + Great Content = Traffic Level (X++)
Traffic Level (X++) + Great Content = Traffic Level (X+++)
Traffic Level (X+++) + Great Content = Traffic Level (X++++)
Traffic Level (X++++) + Great Content = Traffic Level (X+++++)
…Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera!

One of the keys to succeeding in business is to provide great value for others. The more valuable you make your site with great content, the more traffic it will receive. And when it comes to making money online, getting traffic is half the battle.

Alexa is a company that tries to accurately measure web traffic to as many sites as possible. Their method is to watch user activity on browsers with the Alexa toolbar installed. So if someone visits your site without using the toolbar, Alexa doesn't know about it. But if someone else shows up, and they are using Alexa, your site will benefit. Here's how:

All websites start out with a crazy rank in the millions. A while ago it was around 5, now its closer to 10, and probably even higher. So if your site is brand new, it might rank at 11,000,000. That's the bottom tier, but it's better than "No Rank," which will happen if Alexa isn't aware of your site yet. What we want to do is improve our Alexa rank, because sites that rank higher are considered better, and more valuable in the eyes of potential advertisers.

There has been a great deal of debate about Alexa. Most people used to not care about the ranking system. It didn't really matter. Once advertisers started using it to judge sites, things changed, and many people began to complain because they believe your Alexa rank can be gamed. It is thought by some that there are definite ways to improve your rank. And that is true. One way is to download the toolbar. Another is to run a site geared toward webmasters.

On an episode of, "Family Guy," TV executives at a board meeting were discussing a recent problem on their network. Many people had phoned in to voice their protest. One executive summed things up: "We have received 20 phone calls from offended viewers. As you all know, each phone call represents a billion people, which means 20 billion people were offended!"

The issue with Alexa is it works in a similar way. Since Alexa only knows how many toolbar users visit your site, they use that number to guess how many total visitors your site has. That's right, guess. Can you see where this could be a problem?

If you ran a site that specifically catered to webmasters, many of your visitors, maybe even the widespread majority, would probably already be running the toolbar. So Alexa says, "Your site got 20 toolbar visits, so let's do a little math, and… OK, you must have received 20 billion total visits! Congratulations, and welcome to the top tier! Enjoy your flashy high rank."

What if you don't run a site for webmasters? Doesn't this tip the playing field against you? Absolutely. The system is flawed. But Alexa has acknowledged that the ranks aren't that accurate until you reach the top: "Generally, Traffic Rankings of 100,000+ should be regarded as not reliable because the amount of data we receive is not statistically significant. Conversely, the more traffic a site receives (the closer it gets to the number 1 position), the more reliable its Traffic Ranking becomes."

So how can you improve your Alexa rank in an honest way? By installing the Alexa toolbar on the browser you most use to visit your own web site(s). The toolbar could be considered a scorekeeper for the net. On your browser, it pays careful attention to the sites you visit, and essentially gives each site a vote on your behalf. So if you spend a lot of time tweaking your own sites, it will make sure to give them votes, too. But Alexa makes it clear that to keep things fair, a site will only get one vote per IP address per day.

People have learned that this tends to add up over time. If you consistently visit your site(s) with the Alexa toolbar, you'll likely see results.

However, some have also noted that the higher your Alexa rank is already, the less noticeable a change like this will be. If your rank is still in the millions, then you should probably see some improvement. However, if you're already in the hundreds of thousands, you might not get as big a benefit (if any). But my guess is that if you're doing that well, you've probably already got the toolbar installed!

People have tried to come up with other tricks to improve their Alexa ranks, but some are considered underhanded and risky. There have been stories about companies being banned from Alexa for trying to game the system. I view installing the toolbar so it can see your web site to be upright and honorable because it's a simple, non-deceptive one-step procedure, and because Alexa encourages people to download the toolbar.

Today I read a post John Chow wrote last month called, "There Is No Secret Formula." In it he writes how sometimes he get complaints from readers wanting him to stick to the subject of how to make money online. They feel that any diversion is pointless, and just want to know the secret to online success.

His response, as you can probably tell from the his post's title, is that there is no secret. There are programs, products, web sites, and tips and tricks galore all designed to fool people into thinking that if they just read, if they just watch, if they just buy, they'll learn the secret. But just like with achieving a breathtaking physique, making money online has no secrets. There's just common knowledge that most people seem to dislike.

However, I think there is another factor at work here. I think there really are secrets to getting fit, just like there are for making money online. What makes them so secret is that they're hiding in plain site. The knowledge is so apparently commonplace and straightforward that it is easily dismissed. People think, "It can't be that simple, can it?" and refuse to consider the true secrets to success. But now that we're no longer blind to the power of plain truths, we can benefit from them! So what did John Chow reveal?

Hiding in Plain Site Secret To Getting Fit:

"Eat less, workout more."

Hiding in Plain Site Secret To Making Money Online:

"Get traffic, optimize ads."

AHA!!! The Quickening empowers me! I know everything!! I am everything!!!

But wait… What are the secrets to getting traffic? What are the secrets to optimizing ads?

Well at least we've narrowed our focus. Traffic and ads, traffic and ads.

I know, everybody who's anybody has already heard of BlogRush. Well, I finally got around to getting this site in on the action, so I figured I might as well give a quick rundown of the service.

If you've got a decent blog, it might be a good idea to sign up for BlogRush. They provide a free, simple widget that earns you traffic. It doesn't interfere with AdSense, and every time someone loads a page from your blog, you earn 1 BlogRush credit. Why? Because that page load included a load of the widget, which itself showed 5 links to other related blogs.

Each time the widget is loaded, you earn another credit. And all those credits you continue to accumulate will be used to get your latest blog posts shown as links on other people's BlogRush widgets. One credit earned equals one showing of a link to your post.

The really interesting part comes when you can manage to refer a good-sized group of people. BlogRush keeps track of everybody you refer, and everybody they refer, on and on for 10 generations. Every time anyone in your referral network earns a credit, you will earn one too, or a fraction of one if they are a certain number of generations away. John Chow at one point had accumulated 10 million credits! Of course, results like that demand incredible traffic.

What I like about the widget is it's easy to add, it's low maintenance, and it's designed to be clicked by anyone, including the blog owner. Free, functional, fantastic.

For those of you who've been planning to sign up (or who just decided to), I'd be grateful if you'd do so through my referral link.

The key to a successful web site, many would say, is traffic. One important and often overlooked way to attracting visitors is to showcase remarkable ideas.

Today I read about Seth Godin's 2003 book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. At the purple cow area of his site, he allows people to read a couple chapters for free. The first chapter details how he went about marketing the book. Early on, his strategy heavily relied on getting the people interested in the book to share their interest with others. And he wanted to be remarkable. So he sold 12-packs of his book and shipped them in milk cartons.

There was a big risk in that method, as you'd think not many people would be willing to pay $60 to spread an idea. But the gamble worked, and the reward was huge. The Purple Cow took off.

That got me thinking about how it can be easy to forget the need to be remarkable. In fact, I think it's ingrained in many of us not to be remarkable! In school, you're taught to run with the pack, to fit in at all costs. But to succeed in business, you must be unique. You must be special. It's very interesting that traditional conformity must often be unlearned in order to make a name in business.

The idea of a purple cow got me thinking about the need to differentiate. The internet is saturated with copycats, both intentional and accidental. In order to get the amount of visitors that can make a site successful, that site must be worth visiting. It must be remarkable.