Who wants more web traffic, and more specifically how do I get more traffic to MY website?
Getting More Web Traffic on the Information Superhighway is a thing. A big thing. Increasing the number of visitors to get more traffic to your site doesn’t happen automatically, but requires you to implement a conscious strategy. A professional will be able to assist you to create a thorough plan to improve your website traffic, but there are also steps you can take yourself which are likely to have a noticeable effect on your visitor numbers.
Here are our tips and tricks to get more traffic to your website!
Test the Website – Continually
This is a crucial step to take to ensure the best possible user experience for your site, which will improve your Google ranking and therefore lead to more traffic. Simply pretend to be a random user and assess the functionality of every aspect of your site.
If you want more traffic then you have to ask the following questions:
- Does your navigation make sense?
- For each page of your site, can you click back to the Home page?
- Are there any links, external or internal, that are broken?
- Does each page have a definite ‘call to action’ leading the user to their next move on the site?
- Are you able to send your business an enquiry via your ‘Contact Us’ form?
- If you have a subscription box, does it work? Can people easily subscribe to newsletters and your blog?
- If you have e-commerce functionality, can you place a test order and is it received accurately?
- Do your social media share buttons work?
If you find yourself unable to step back, be objective and forget the insider information you already have, it may help to have another person conduct this trial run. However, you should still also test-drive your site yourself, so that you are fully aware of how the site flows, that the navigation makes sense and that plug-ins (like email capture boxes) actually do work.
Aim for Organic Traffic if you Can
Searches via search engines can be both paid or unpaid, with ‘organic’ referring to the more highly coveted unpaid searches which lead people to your site. Organic traffic is best. So that Google and other search engines know which sites to direct users to, search bots crawl over your site, scanning it to work out its content.
This info is then fed back to the search engine and is factored into the resulting search listings. For the search engine to determine you are a trustworthy, useful and relevant site, you need to have fresh and exciting content, as well as create an easy, user-friendly experience.
SEO techniques exist for helping you to incorporate the valuable keywords you are aware of, for example by updating metadata (title tags and the like). But what about the important keywords you may be completely unaware you are missing? To discover such keyword opportunities, the trick is to analyse your successful competitors’ sites and learn which keywords they are using that you are not. Ensuring you have a solid understanding of who your target audience is will also help shape your keyword list, as you can work to anticipate and predict their likely searches and key search terms.
Get on Social Media
Social media enables businesses to directly engage with users and create a conversation with them and is a good way to get traffic to your site. You may not need a presence on every single social media channel there is, but these days, you will at least need a few. Establish which social media channels are most appropriate for your type of business, and focus on these.
Tools such as Google Analytics exist to help you track social media mentions which will enable you to work out which of your channels are most cost-effective and produce the best results. You can then invest in promoting these channels. And it’s easy to add social media share buttons to your site so that readers can share your content with their friends, in an online version of ‘word of mouth referrals.
Start Blogging as Regularly as Possible
To search engines, websites with blogs appear to be a more useful resource than ones without so for an increase in traffic, get blogging! Blogs can be regularly updated with new content (whether original pieces or industry news and so on) that appeals to your target audience.
To create content, consider what it is that your customers most need and want to know.
You can use keywords that you have established are most successful in directing traffic to your site, and use them to inspire blog content. If you regularly freshen your site’s content via your blog, your Google SEO ranking is bound to improve, since Google favours original content.
Create Content Partnerships to Bring More Traffic
Building connections with others in your industry is a great way to get your business name out there and help drive traffic to your website. Think about writing relevant articles and submitting them to be published on other websites within your industry (those which are not direct competitors!) in order to reach a new audience.
People who engage with your article are likely to click through and check out your site as well, so the key is to create unique and interesting content.
It’s worth spending the time to craft a query email to send to suitable websites to let them know of the potential mutual benefits in having you contribute content to their site–and vice versa.
Be active on your industry’s most popular websites
Interacting with respected websites in your industry which have large amounts of users can be another way to drive traffic to your site. They may have directories where you can list your business or they may keep lists of recommended resources to which you may be added.
Reach out in whichever way you can and make it known that you share their vision or message. Commenting on articles they may post on their blogs will also help build awareness of your business in the audience for that site.
AffiliateProgams = More Traffic
Consider joining an affiliate program to increase traffic. These promote your business to users in their network with you paying a small commission for every sale you make through the program.
Advertising
Advertising can provide an immediate web traffic boost to a targeted audience, and services such as Google Adwords Pay-Per-Click can be a great investment. Other inexpensive forms of internet marketing are also available, such as email marketing, where you encourage your site visitors to sign up for your email mailing list or newsletter.
Incentives such as offering free samples or subscriber coupons and discounts can also be highly effective. Try listing your business in some relevant business directories.
Need a complete internet marketing plan to increase the traffic to your website? We can help. Please fill in our contact form.