Increase Website Traffic by Flaunting Your Stuff
A great way to increase website traffic to your portfolio is to submit your website to design galleries. There are many very popular website design galleries that you can submit to where users are allowed to vote on site designs.
So make sure your design is up to par and better then the ones on the site you are submitting to if you are interested in maximum exposure.
If your site design is highly rated, many of these sites will feature your website on the home page for a while, which could really boost the traffic to your site.
Top 15 Website Design Galleries
1. http://bestwebgallery.com/
2. http://www.css-website.com/
3. http://www.cssclip.com/
4. http://csscollection.com/
5. http://cssdrive.com/
6. http://www.csselite.com/
7. http://www.cssflavor.com/
8. http://cssmania.com/
9. http://cssremix.com/
10. http://www.designmeltdown.com/
11. http://www.designshack.co.uk/
12. http://www.mostinspired.com/
13. http://www.professionalontheweb.com/
14. http://www.dailyslurp.com/
15. http://www.w3csites.com/
Increase Website Traffic by Showing Your Generosity
Creating artwork to give away as a free download on a website or blog can be a great way to increase traffic to your website for free. You can also submit your artwork to download sites, a few of which are listed below and can get you additional exposure!
www.freevectors.net
www.vecteezy.com
www.brusheezy.com
16. Create Free Photoshop Brushes – Here’s a great guide on how to create your own brushes in Photoshop
17. Create Free Icon Sets – General icons sets ( such as blog icons and computer related icons) usually do best and are more useful then niche icon sets
18. Create Free Wallpapers – Large widescreen monitors are becoming more popular so if your artwork is not all vector, be sure to start high in resolution!
19. Create Free Vector Artwork – Make sure your illustrations are clean, well crafted and colored nicely. Don’t just live trace stuff and offer it as a download, people want quality vector artwork
20. Create Free Patterns – Seamless patterns are most sought after. Here is a guide on how to create a seamless pattern in illustrator
21. Create Free Fonts – fonts are another great option, here is an example of 3 free fonts created by a studio to gain exposure and below are some of the best font sites to submit your free fonts too.
www.urbanfonts.com
www.dafont.com
Increase Website Traffic by Exposing Yourself!
Make sure your work is up on as many portfolio hosting sites as possible. A lot of companies and studios are on these websites and search for hot new talent on them. It’s a great way to gain free exposure and network with other designers and potential employers.
Below are a few of the largest design portfolio hosting websites:
22. Coroflot
23. Behance
24. Design Related
25. Deviant Art
And yes, even link to your work on your Myspace, Facebook and other social networking websites, you never know who will see it!
Increase Website Traffic by Joining Communities!
Joining forums is a great way to meet other designs and to network. If you become an active member in forums you can use your reputation to promote your website. Many forums receive large amounts of traffic and people pay attention to well respected members with high post counts. Below is a list of some of the best graphic design forums:
26. Your Design Forums – A new and active graphic design forums
27. www.designerstalk.com/forums
28. graphicdesignforum.com
29. estetica-design-forum.com
30. forum.howdesign.com
We will post more ways to promote your website for free in the future and start to discuss ways to get natural traffic from search engines by performing basic search engine optimization techniques on your website or blog.
It’s important to use all methods available to promote your site and we will help you master these methods, so subscribe to our RSS feed and stay tuned for more!