Posted by Adam T. Sutton in Driving Website Traffic	July 11, 2007

Create interweaving websites with specific strategies

By Adam T. Sutton, Mequoda Group, LLC

When you think of your online business, are you thinking of a website, or are you thinking of a network of websites?

The distinction is very important.

Ideally, your online publishing business should be a small network of websites, each with specific goals and strategies.

One of those websites should be entirely devoted to drawing website traffic, while others sell products or generate leads for affiliates.

We call the traffic generating website the Internet Hub and it has very specific guidelines for its creation.

The Hub should be the first place users encounter your website.

That means most of your incoming links should point to your hub. This can include:

• Organic search (which means SEOing your hub)
  
• PPC ads
  
• Banner ads
  
• Links from other websites
  
• Links in your emails
  
• Any external source of traffic

Hubs should offer users free and frequently updated content. This will help build your brand and repeat visitor numbers. A stronger brand will help sell your products and more visitors will sell your advertising.

There are several types of Internet Hubs, each with different styles of free content

1. Editorial Hubs rely on content created by the publisher with little or no user content(USAToday, Forbes, Epicurious).
   
2. Social Hubs rely mostly on user generated content (MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook).
   
3. Blog Hubs have content management systems that offer a blend of publisher and user generated content (TMZ, Engadget and The Huffington Post).

One of the most important things to remember when creating a Hub is that the content should be free and frequently updated. That strategy coupled with the Hub's inbound traffic sources drive website traffic.

The Internet Hub is a vital component to a profitable website network for your publication. Your network's other components are relied on to monetize your visitors in ways other than advertising.

Don't create one website that you rely on for all of your online business. Create several websites that have specific strategies and goals that interconnect with each other.

It will prevent your online presence from overwhelming and confusing users.