Taking Your Website or Blog Viral

The word viral only sounds good coming out of the mouth of a techie! The reality of the matter is, going viral can boost your links and subsequently your ranking in record time.

There are good ways and bad ways to go viral, however, and you should be sure that you are behaving in a manner that won’t harm your site later on! You don’t want to get a reputation as a scam artist, even for an insane amount of temporary links and a boost to the top of the SERPs.

Something truly clever, however, can’t hurt a bit. Linkbait is good, if you are smart about it (just steer clear of cheap sensationalism, as we saw earlier this year). A really top notch hysterical video, or a piece of funny celebrity news is always a good draw, and you can promote it around and get the hits coming.

Make sure you have a Digg button on your blog, if not your site itself, and leave the door wide open so people can submit you to contests. Hey, start a contest of your own, and get as many interesting pictures, videos or jokes as you can! You can compile them into a top ten list later (people love lists!)

Lists themselves are another good idea. They get linked to and passed around like candy, particularly if you hit on a particularly relevant topic at just the right time. ‘How to’ information is always in demand.

Don’t be shy about asking folks to check you out, and promote yourself even to the big time bloggers – there’s always a chance you’ll catch them on a whimsical day and they will give you a nod.

Once you get a spark of interest, nurture it! It might take a few false starts, but once you get a reputation for having interesting videos, helpful information, clever widgets or fantastic humor, people will start coming back for more.

Set yourself up with an RSS feed, so people can sign up for regular updates from your site. This can be a powerful tool to remind people you are still around, but also raises the bar – you don’t want to be reminding people that you just posted boring pictures of your family’s vacation in Nantucket – well, unless you are a site devoted to Nantucket! Make sure you keep all content fresh and entertaining.

Continue to build your site and practice constant SEO. When the wave comes, you want a sturdy surfboard! Be prepared and never lose sight of the goal. Keep coming up with ways to show people how beneficial your site can be, like a free e-book.

E-books are simple to prepare, and people love freebies! If you don’t have time to do it yourself, you can have one ghost-written by a freelancer for a one time charge, and distribute it endlessly!

Above all once you do ‘go viral’, enjoy the ride. Not many people get to experience this phenomenon, and getting ‘Dugg’ by thousands can be pretty heady. Try to live up to the expectations of people who will be watching you and remind them that you are not a one shot wonder.