No matter your business, there is only one reason to have a website. That goal is to engage as many people as possible to bring attention to whatever you are promoting.
Engaging people, however, requires them to see and visit your site, which can be tricky.
Here are five suggestions for increasing web traffic, whether you are an established entity or developing your website, and everything in between.
Make Use of SEO
There is no way to get around it: Search Engine Optimization is almost mandatory if you want your website seen. Even specialized, non-business organizations with websites can benefit from strategic SEO. The challenge is deciphering what is strategic versus just dumping keywords, hoping you will get a match.
SEO encompasses a plethora of tactics and strategies, all designed to improve your website’s rankings in the search engines (like Google) when users are searching for something that indicates a potential interest in your products or services. Common SEO tactics include analyzing your competitors, identifying target keywords, building backlinks, creating content that’s optimized for search engines, and more.
Avoid Stuffing Keywords
Anyone that has read verbiage posted on the web has seen SEO documents that are overstuffed with keywords or keyword phrases. The text reads awkwardly to make a keyword phrase fit, or the phrase or terms are out of context. An effective SEO effort will flow naturally in a document, just like in a conversation. While you want to write content that will appeal to search engines, your readers should always be the first priority.
Adopt Social Media Share Buttons That Work
Share buttons provide a customized social network for every visitor to your site, allowing them to promote your content quickly and easily. Smart share buttons from companies like ShareThis let your customers and visitor share your content with their like-minded friends and family members on their favorite social media platforms.
That means you can piggyback off someone else’s interest in your content and gain free exposure through sharing, reducing marketing costs, and increasing at least two levels of potential customer engagement. Because the share tool is customized, your visitors can promote you to sites they actively engage in, allowing you to benefit from their connections.
Earn High Profile Guest Postings
Another way to promote traffic to your site is to use high-profile guest contributions. These can come in many different forms:
- Informative articles by industry leaders
- “How-to” tutorials by prominent segment leaders (marketing, sales, social media, etc.)
- General opinion articles (stay away from politics unless you are political in nature)
- Promotional pieces (a high-profile customer raves about your product or service)
There are three keys to ensuring every guest post drives web traffic to your site:
- The article content is relevant to your target audience, as well as the publisher’s audience.
- The article body contains a link to a relevant page on your website using relevant anchor text in a way that seems natural.
- The article is SEO-optimized so it gets more attention, thus driving more traffic to your website.
The first two are self-explanatory, but the last requirement often gets overlooked.
Why Content Matters
If you have ever read content on the web that is irrelevant to your interest, has a misleading headline (clickbait), or is written by someone lacking writing skills, you know how excruciating it can be to get through that content. Potential customers often find the content too difficult to be worth their time — and it may leave them with a poor first impression of your company.
Your content must pertain to your products and services and be titled accurately (avoid clickbait). While you can be flawed grammar-wise, you must produce content your target audience can understand. Finally, you need to make sure the content is fun to read.
Collaborate
Collaboration on your web efforts can be in the form of working with a guest poster or utilizing the skills of an influencer to help promote your site to a wider audience. Ideas you can use in coordination with an influencer include but are not limited to:
- Posting discount codes
- Endorsing products or services
- Reviewing your product or company
- Hosting a contest or premium giveaway
Collaboration involves more than just social media influencers, however. If you work closely with an individual, company, or organization, you can use their promotional efforts to boost your traffic. Additionally, you can have them function the same way as an influencer, although for that to work, you need a high-profile organization working with you.
Self-Promotion
Self-promotion is often the best way to promote yourself, your products, or your services. Offering your expertise on sites like Reddit and Quora or writing guest articles to industry magazines, as well as mentioning your website every time you discuss your organization, its products, or services, gets you in front of new potential customers.
Final Thoughts
These five ways to promote yourself, your company, or your product to drive traffic to your website are common sense but often get ignored for flashier options. Thankfully, you don’t need to spend tons of cash to get your name out there. Use the tools available and ensure that what you provide on your site is worth considering, and you will succeed.
