Starting up a new website is the most daunting challenge a webmaster/blogger faces. Weeks of sleepless nights, getting the site ready for launch, are likely to produce only a trickle of visitors within the first weeks. It can be downright discouraging.

So how do we get eyeballs to the site? Job 1 is knowing your target market; your audience. Do you know the top twenty sites in your niche market? Why does your target audience like those sites? Have you been active on the forums and blogs for your niche market? Do you frequently comment and join discussions? Have you made some connections? Do you have a feel for your audience and their needs?

When launching a new website for a bricks and mortar business my clients often generate traffic from existing relationships with customers, partners, suppliers and even the press. They add their website URL to their brochure and flyer mailouts and drive traffic to their site. Internet-only businesses don’t have that luxury.

So where do we get eyeballs? We must become part of our niche communities. I’m surprised at the number of bloggers who are afraid to comment on blogs they feel are competitors.

For the record, if you have an SEO blog, you’re most welcome to comment (yes, even disagree with the writer) and leave your website URL in the signature block at the bottom. If you’d like to post an SEO-related article on this site as a guest contributor or regular author, contact us. If our visitors like your comments and articles they are very likely to click the signature link to your site. More eyeballs!

Email other bloggers. Bloggers are always hunting for content. Time your offer for content or a scoop. When you see a blog with YouTube clips two days in a row, or very skimpy content, you know they’re scraping the barrel for content or simply too busy to write. A really nice article would be welcome about then.

Get involved with social networking communities like MyBlogLog, BlogCatalog, BUMPzee! and Blog Cave. Visit other sites, post comments on peoples sites, leave messages to them in the communities, join their communities and add them to your contacts. Include the social networking buttons and/or widgets on your site.

Make sure people can vote for your site and subscribe to your RSS feed. Is your Orange RSS feed button prominently displayed close to the top of the page? Have you made Technorati, StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, digg and other buttons available so people can vote for your content?

Have you joined forums in your niche market? You have to be more careful on forums as they don’t accept naked self promotion the way blogs do. However, with some tact, you can present a solution to a guest’s problem and then provide a link for a download or additional information on your site.

Include link bait wherever you can. Is there a plugin or tool you can offer as link bait? How about a top ten list? Are you privy to some latebreaking news or an insider scoop? Can you give away a free ebook? Something really funny can spread like wildfire, especially if you include a ’send this to your friends’ script.

Lastly, and most importantly, write good content. Make it interesting and helpful. I keep a file of ideas for future articles so I don’t run dry (hopefully).

Consistency pays. Plan your work for networking and posting to blog or updating your website and then work your plan.

I welcome your input…