Increase Website Traffic with These 5 Proven Strategies
As technology and business advisers, we have helped organizations with many different challenges including the need to increase website traffic. Business owners often want to know the best ways to drive more traffic to their websites in order increase brand awareness and obtain more leads and paying customers. Below are 5 proven strategies we recommend to increase website traffic:
1. Attract Visitors with Content Marketing
A blog is a great way to continuously publish new, interesting content for your target audience. Readers often come to your blog because they found one of your articles in their search results. If you include links to other related content, products and services on your site, they will browse further in to explore what else you have to offer that is valuable to them.
Besides a blog, other content ideas that you may want to consider to increase website traffic include
- Publishing videos on channels like YouTube and Vimeo. Great video topics include how-to information related to your products or services.
- Publishing audio podcasts that discuss topics and issues relevant to your industry.
- Writing eBooks or white papers that go deeper into a topic.
- Creating infographics to help your target market quickly understand an idea or issue. Lists also make great infographics (e.g., the Top 10 and Top 25 lists).
- Sending email newsletters to help you keep in touch with your customers. You can also publish your newsletter on your website.
You can get the most out of your content marketing efforts by writing about one piece of content in multiple channels. For example, if you publish an ebook or infographic, share a link to the page where it resides in your social media channels and talk about it in your blog and podcast.
For some content, such as white papers and ebooks, you may want to use a download form and capture email addresses. This gives you the opportunity to follow up with your readers to see what else they may need and invite them to subscribe to your newsletter so you can stay in touch.
2. Optimize Your Website for Search Engines
How easy is it for your customers to find you in search results? In order to get to the top of search results, you’ll need to address Search Engine Optimization (SEO) throughout your website. SEO is a science that involves following the rules that govern search engines.
Learn more how to get found locally and globally with SEO
3. Establish a Regular Social Media Presence
Your customers and your target market are likely active in certain social media channels. You can get in front of them and develop more interest in your brand by having a presence where they are. It depends on the nature of your business as to which social media channels will be most important to you. Once you figure that out, regular social posts will help draw your audience over to you, including to your website.
To have a good presence in social media, it’s recommended that you make posts anywhere from once a week to daily. You will likely find that once you get started on a schedule of posting regularly, like our own clients you may run out of ideas for what to say. Here are a few of the ideas that have helped our clients:
- Announce contests and giveaways in your social media to generate excitement, gain more followers, and draw people to your site where they could participate
- Promote an event your company is participating in
- Announce a sale or discount
- Share tips about your products or services, or tips relevant to your industry
- Mention your latest blog post
- Announce that your latest newsletter is out and what’s in it that they don’t want to miss
- Tell what inspires you, perhaps by using images and quotes
- Share stories about challenges that led to success
Be sure to keep your posts positive and interesting. Additionally, keep a careful balance of informative posts that offer useful information or perspective versus sales or marketing-oriented posts that promote your business. Monitor your followers and responses (their likes, shares/retweets, follows) to evaluate the effectiveness of your efforts, and then adjust accordingly. And be sure to periodically post links to content on your website in order to increase website traffic.
4. Gain High-Value Links from External Websites
We recommend a link building strategy that focuses on high value links. Of course, the links that have the most value depend on your business. Some to consider include:
- Get listed in directories like Yelp, Google My Business, and any industry-specific listings relevant to you
- Include your website address in your social media profiles
- Submit press releases; a press release distribution service can publish widely to many publications for you
- If you join the Chamber of Commerce, you may be able to get a listing in their member section
- Submit articles to industry news sites
- Guest blog
- Answer questions in forums and include your website link in your signature
5. Run Paid Advertising Campaigns
There are a wide range of online Pay Per Click ad networks out there. Some options to consider include:
- Advertising in search engines. Since Google is the most popular search engine, it gets the highest volume of traffic to benefit your ads. This gives you the ability to appear ahead of organic search results.
- Advertising in social media. The benefit of social media advertising is that it provides you with unique targeting options. For example, you can display your ads based on the users’ demographics, interests and geographic region.
- Advertising in industry-specific directories. There are a surprising number of directories out there that can either place ads in their listing or rank your placement based on a Pay Per Click model. The higher your bid and relevance, the higher your placement in the search results. These directories then do their own advertising or otherwise have great SEO so that they appear at the top of the search results for keywords you may want to rank for.
Need Help with Your Strategy to Increase Website Traffic?
Our team of digital marketing experts can help you identify the best tactics to improve your organic rankings and get the most out of your paid advertising. We can also manage campaigns for you, allowing you to focus your attention on the core of your business. Contact us to learn more.