Introduction
One of the key challenges for every online business is getting the stable flow of traffic to their website. And in order to attract new business, you need to get more visitors to your website. Increasing traffic to your website can be the most cost-effective way to increase your sales, which means you need a solid strategy for growing your online audience. If you’re looking to increase website traffic with both organic and paid ways, the list below will help you increase the traffic to your website, generate more leads, and improve ROI.
Post engaging content on your website
Create quality content focused on trending industry topics that will naturally attract a higher number of visitors to website. As a result, it will help you establish your authority in a particular subject, which is critical for attracting new customers. Blogging not only keeps your website fresh for visitors but also helps increase your visibility on Google. People use Google to find specific, thorough and accurate answers for their questions, and your content should be there to provide those answers.
To write a good blog post that will draw in the right audience, follow these steps:
- Identify your buyer persona: Understand everything from job title to pain points.
- Conduct SEO research: Learn what your audience is searching for so you can provide relevant content.
- Write an engaging post: Publish it on your blog site and use SEO tools to optimize it.
- Promote it accordingly: Promote your blog post on social media and email newsletters to generate traffic. The more traffic your post generates, the higher it will rank in search engines.
Send Email Newsletters
Promoting content through email newsletters is an effective way to increase website traffic. Here are a few email marketing best practices:
- Include enticing information from the content in the subject line and in the body of the email.
- Insert a link or button that subscribers can click to read more of the content.
- Make sure emails are mobile-friendly and links are easy to see.
- Employ personalization tactics by including the name of the subscriber.
- Make the email visually appealing with the use of well-designed templates.
- Conduct A/B testing to see which versions of emails receive more opens and clicks.
Build Relationships With Influencers
Influencer marketing is a budget-friendly option to drive traffic to your website. When influencers post discount codes, links, reviews, or giveaways, you are tapping into their audience to drive traffic to your website. Hence, build relationships with thought leaders and influencers in your industry. Industry influencers are eager to share content that their followers will love and you can connect with influencers by:
- Tagging them in a social media post if your piece references their content or research.
- Asking them for an interview/ Q&A and tagging them when posting that content so they can share it with their audience.
To find the right influencers in your industry, try using tools like HypeAuditor and BuzzSumo or reach out to a digital marketing agency that can do influencer outreach for you.
Try Guest Blogging
Guest posting for other websites is an effective way to generate backlinks, boost referral traffic, and increase search engine results page (SERP) rankings. To get started, thoroughly research websites within your industry to pitch. Look at a website’s content and make sure it’s high quality, check its domain authority and study its guest posting guidelines. Also, ask the publication if they’ll promote the post on social media and if they’ll tag you. Securing a guest post on a reputable site can increase blog traffic to your website and show you’re active in your community.
Invite Others to Guest Blog on Your Site
Publishing guest posts is a good way to get backlinks, reach a new audience and establish yourself as an expert. In addition to posting content to other blogs, invite people in your niche to blog on your website. They’re likely to share and link to their guest article, which could bring new readers to your site. Just be sure that you only post high-quality, original content without spammy links, in order to rank high on Google.
Get Active on Social Media
Use social media to drive traffic to your website, by using a channel of your choice. Here are some ways to increase website traffic:
- Post useful, relevant content (blogs, e-books, white papers, infographics, videos, etc.)
- Interact with followers by replying to them, reposting their content and tagging them
- Use relevant industry hashtags
- Update the link in your bio to promote new content/service
- Change a cover photo to promote new content/service
- Be active on relevant social media platforms and in niche communities
- Be an early adopter of new features
- Get active in group discussions on Twitter or Facebook
Google+ promotion can help your site show up in personalized search results and is especially effective in B2B niches. On the other hand, Pinterest and Instagram are efficient for B2C product companies. In short- know your audience, offer them value, and craft content that speaks directly to them. Furthermore, stay active with community management. If you humanize your business, people will be coming back for more content.
Use Advertising to Increase Website Traffic
Advertising through paid search, social media and display ads can be an efficient way to increase website traffic quickly, and it’s a good opportunity for newly built websites. However, look at it as the easy way to start getting traffic while working on more long-term strategies.
For small businesses, Facebook advertising and email newsletter marketing are the best places to get an easy return on investment. Both of these options will allow you to easily measure results and adjust your future ads. However, it’s important to set budgets and goals before investing a ton of money into them.
When doing pay-per-click (PPC) ads, start with one campaign and a few different ad groups containing the keywords you want to target most. Once campaigns begin, see how audiences behave with various keywords. Monitor which one resulted in impressions and which one resulted in clicks and conversions. If you’re hoping that more traffic to your site will also result in more sales, target high commercial intent keywords. Ultimately, your strategy will most likely include a combination of different types of advertising like social media, display, and search ads. Check out our Ultimate Guide for Advertising to help you out.
Submit Press Releases to Influential Publications
Distributing press releases can help you build brand awareness and generate traffic to your site. If done correctly, your press release can be picked up by multiple outlets, which means more exposure for your business. When creating press releases to promote your business, send them to influential websites and publications in your industries that your audience reads.
Perform Keyword Research
Include relevant keywords throughout your content- the meta description, the page title, the URL, headers. Furthermore, use tools like Moz, Ahrefs and SEMrush to conduct keyword research. They will show you valuable information to guide your keyword strategy. For example, what keywords competitors are using, how often people search for keywords, how expensive the keyword is for pay-per-click ads etc. Hiring an SEO agency is also an option as they can offer valuable insights and perform audits to identify issues that may be keeping your site from being shown in search engines.
Start Affiliate Programs
An affiliate program is a deal between a marketer and a content publisher, also known as “performance marketing.” You can set the terms of engagement, paying the publisher who is promoting your content based on the number of clicks or sales he or she sends your way. Usually, these are partnerships are set up through a network, such as CJ Affiliate or the Google Affiliate network. The network will help ensure your promotions get in front of an interested audience.
Create a Helpful Industry Tool or Content
Giving prospects something of use is a great way to drive more traffic. For example, create various free tools and content that would help out others in your industry. Offer them in exchange for the user’s contact information to maximize your returns and find new leads.
Exchange Backlinks
Reach out to relevant sites and offer your content as an additional resource to include in one of the site’s posts. Moreover, you can ask for a mutually-beneficial backlink exchange, offering to add one of their links to a post of yours as well. If websites with high authority link to your site, it will give you more credibility.
There are two main ways in which high-quality backlinks can help drive more traffic to a website: boosting ranking and driving referral traffic. By constantly earning high-quality backlinks from relevant websites, you’ll improve your rankings in SERP and, as a result, see a lift in your organic traffic.
Backlinks can also drive a substantial amount of referral traffic. For example, if you get mentioned on a popular news website or in an article that’s already ranking well for high search volume keywords and is getting a constant flow of traffic.
Pay Attention to On-Page SEO
Optimizing your content for the search engine can help your website rank higher in search engines and bring in more traffic. Some on-page SEO elements include the page title, header, meta description, image alt-text, and the URL (plus more). Showing up in search engines will generate more traffic for your site.
Interview Industry Thought Leaders
Request an interview with thought leaders in your industry, and publish the interviews on your blog. As a result, name recognition will boost your credibility and increase traffic to your website. Moreover, the interviewee will probably share the content too, further expanding its reach.
Make Sure Your Site is Responsive and Fast
Today, more people than ever before are using mobile devices to access the web. Hence, ensure that your website is accessible and comfortably viewable across a range of devices, including smartphones. Furthermore, if your site takes forever to load, your bounce rate will be sky-high. Make sure that your pages are as technically optimized as possible, including image file sizes, page structure and the functionality of third-party plugins.
Examine Your Website Analytics Data
Google Analytics is an invaluable source of data and you should use this information to inform your promotional and content strategies. Pay attention to what posts and pages are proving the most popular. Inspect visitor data to see how, where and when your site traffic is coming from. Analyze your website using platforms, such as Crazy Egg, to learn about your audience. Accordingly, you can create the right content to drive the right traffic to your website.
Foster a Sense of Community
Building a community into your site is a great way to start a conversation and increase traffic to your website. Implement a robust commenting system through third-party solutions such as Facebook comments or Disqus, or create a dedicated forum where visitors can ask questions.
Utilize Video Marketing
Video content can be a valuable asset in both attracting new visitors and making your site more engaging. Video marketing is an excellent way to attract your audience’s attention and boost traffic to your website at the same time. You can create videos for Instagram or Facebook Stories, live videos, IGTV, Facebook Watch, news feed videos, YouTube, etc.
Research the Competition
Don’t forget to check out your competition and conduct a competitive analysis. You can use software like BuzzSumo to check out what your competitors are up to. These services aggregate the social performance of specific sites and content to provide you with an at-a-glance view of what topics are resonating with readers and, most importantly, making the rounds on social media. Find out what people are reading and talking about, and emulate that kind of content to bring traffic to your website.
Host Webinars
Combined with an effective social promotion campaign, webinars are a great way to increase traffic to your website. Send out an email a week or so ahead of time, as well as a “last chance to register” reminder the day before the webinar. Make sure to archive the presentation for later viewing, and promote your webinars through social media.
Engage In A Community
Building a community of brand enthusiasts is a great way to continuously drive traffic to your website. The more brand recognition you have, the more traffic you will drive to your website. One way to achieve brand recognition is to be active and engaged within the market. For example, participate in Facebook group discussions in your industry, answer questions on public forum websites, and interact with your followers on social media. Furthermore, build a Twitter chat, LinkedIn Group, or Quora Space specifically for your followers and others in your industry where you create value, while also linking back to your site. It’s a great way to engage with your followers and learn more about your audience as they evolve over time.
Repurpose Your Content
A great way to continue driving traffic and leads is to repurpose old content. Take a well-performing blog post and repurpose that into a video. Or if you have a podcast that did really well, write up a blog post on that topic. Using content that has already performed well will continue to drive traffic to your site.
Utilize Voice Search Optimization
In order to drive traffic to your website, it’s important to show up where people are searching. Voice search is an increasingly important area in which to rank and optimize your content for voice search is essential.
Here are a few tips to get started:
- Research long tail keywords: When people use voice search, they speak in full sentences rather than short phrases. To optimize for voice search, research longer-tail keywords.
- Write answer-focused content: Your content should answer your audience’s questions.
- Optimize for snippets: Smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home look for short, concise answers. Writing quick summaries in your posts makes it easier for search engines and smart speakers to find the answer they need.
Implement Local SEO
To gather information for local search, search engines rely on signals such as local content, social profile pages, links, and citations to provide the most relevant local results to the user. For example, when someone types in “best family attorney” on Google, the results are generated by the user’s location. Tools such as Google My Business can help businesses manage their directory listings and citations so they show up in local searches.
To rank for local search:
- Ensure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) is consistent on your Google My Business and social media pages.
- Use a directory management tool to monitor directories like Yelp, Foursquare, Best of the Web, etc.
- Research and use location-based search terms on sites like Google Trends, which analyzes popular search terms across various regions.
Here are our SEO tips to help with your overall strategy.
Don’t Forget Technical SEO
Technical SEO focuses on the backend of your website to see how the pages are technically set up and organized. It includes elements like page speed, crawling, indexing, and more and results in growing your organic traffic.
To get started with your technical SEO, use the following steps:
- Fix broken links and redirects.
- Create an XML sitemap for your subdomains.
- Set up language meta tags.
- Add custom H1 and introductions to topic pages.
Link Internally
When a visitor comes to your blog, your goal should be to get them to stay longer on your website. It can be done by providing internal links for them to continue reading the other pages of your website. As a result, they’re more likely to convert and become brand enthusiasts. Consequently, it will boost your site’s credibility on search engines, while also increasing the likelihood of a conversion. In addition, it will result in a better, more useful experience for the user – the cornerstone of increasing traffic to your website.
Include Social Share Buttons
Social share buttons are links that make it easy for your readers to share your content on social media. When your readers become promoters of your content, your traffic will increase. Once you’ve created your social share buttons, get people to create action by:
- Asking them to share on social media.
- Creating strong content.
- Including quotable content.
- Adding multimedia such as images, videos, infographics, etc.
Create Knowledge Base Posts
One form of content that can drive traffic to your website is educational content. If you create courses, certifications, or educational posts that are helpful to your audience, you’ll likely see an increase in traffic. For example, provide videos, certification courses, and knowledge base articles to answer your audience’s questions.
Organize Contests and Giveaways
A simple way to drive traffic to your website is through contests and giveaways. For a start, you should decide what platform on which to host your giveaway. You can host giveaways on social media, through your email list, or both. Next, choose a prize- it can be free tickets, discounts, etc. Afterward, select the criteria- e.g. website comments, email sign up etc. Write the ad copy and create the graphics. Finally, post and promote the contest or giveaway accordingly.
Conclusion
There are so many paths your future customers can take to reach your website, and you have to find the one that works best for your business. While many of these tactics can provide instant gratification, others will take more time and patience. By trying out these methods, you will see which one will provide a significant traffic boost. By using a combination of these marketing techniques, you can begin to drive more traffic to your website.