In today’s mobile world, having a website is a necessity for every business owner. Your customers want to know who you are, what you are about, and how what you are selling can benefit them. The best way to help your customers is to provide them with helpful information that answers their questions quickly and effectively.
But what if they never find your website? You may have a fantastic website that is, easy-to-navigate, beautiful, optimized to convert leads, and looks great on smartphones and desktop computers alike, but if no one is actually visiting your website then what’s the point?.
The point is that you want to grow your business and you need more website traffic to help you do that. So what do you do to attract more traffic? We’re glad you asked. Here are three things you can do:
1. Socialize Your Brand
Networking meetings expose you to a cadre of potential customers by bringing together business leaders from various sectors. Think of social media as a virtual networking method that will put you in front of people who develop an awareness of your brand and then they help spread that brand awareness to their virtual network. Whether your customer base is millennial, Gen X, Boomer, or the Silent Generation, they are all using social media and making buying decisions as a result of the posts they are viewing.
If you aren’t on social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.) you are missing opportunities to drive traffic to your website. Here are a few suggestions on using social media for your business:
- Share useful information that your audience will appreciate.
- Don’t make it all about you. And don’t make every post a sales pitch.
- Share links to your blog posts.
- Boost some of your posts (e.g., links to your blog) to your target audience.
- Pay for likes on Facebook. You can use paid ads to increase the number of people who like your Facebook page which grows your audience which gives you more people to share your content with which can drive more traffic to your site.
- Pick the social networks used by your target audience. If they aren’t on LinkedIn, it doesn’t make sense for you to spend much time there.
- Be consistent. It doesn’t have to be every day, but do show up.
Watch Eric Qualman’s Socialnomics video below for a fascinating look at social media. Want to see some statistics that will really blow your mind? Go back to his original Socialnomics video in 2009
Socialnomics 2017
Socialnomics 2009
2. Search. Engine. Optimization: STAT.
If your SEO is anemic or on life-support, you will be guaranteed placement on a ‘way-back’ search results page like page 2, or 3, or worse! Let’s face it—only the search results on page 1 really matter anyway, and creating killer SEO will help ensure you are front and center. Here are some basic rules to get you started with SEO:
- Fill out the metadata in your SEO forms (these are usually at the bottom of every page and post you publish)
- Use alt-tags, or alternative text descriptions. This enables search engines to easily locate your site.
- Include keywords in your URLs that are high-performing. Use this tool to research great keywords.
- Use links that are descriptive. Don’t say ‘click here’ or ‘use this link’ in your text. Instead, make your links humanly readable so search engines can find you.
- Make sure you have a sitemap.xml file as it will allow the search engines to interact and ‘crawl’ your site more effectively. Not sure how to do this on your own? Go to this sitemap generator: https://www.xml-sitemaps.com/. You can use any XML sitemap plug in to help get your sitemap installed.
- Submit your site to the major engines. Instructions are listed below:
- For Google, go to www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
- For Yahoo! Search, go to http://submit.search.yahoo.com
- For MSN, go to http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx
- For Bing, go to: https://www.bing.com/toolbox/submit-site-url
- Ask.com no longer accepts site submissions
3. Pay to Play
Advertising still works to engage prospects. Especially Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads on social media. PPC is a model of internet marketing where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. It is an advertising vehicle that allows you to purchase visits to your site, instead of trying to earn those visits through organic search results.
Keywords matter with PPC, so research high-performing keywords to use in your ad. Also, consider the landing page you are using for your ads. Don’t just use your homepage. Use some of the same keywords on the landing page as you do in the ad for greater consistency and effectiveness.
This will get you started building up the traffic to your website. We also suggest this article by Wordstream for 25 more traffic-building activities.
