Guest Post by Dan Matthews
There are many reasons to own a business-focused website. You may have your own blog, manage the office blog, run an e-commerce site, or oversee a larger company’s web presence. Whatever the specific situation, though, every site needs traffic in order to survive and thrive.
If you’re struggling to find ways to direct traffic to your site, you’re not alone. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to increase the amount of traffic to your website.
Start With the Hub
Your website is the hub of your online operations. All of your online marketing strategies should relate in one way or another to your site. With that in mind, you want to start by making sure that your website is optimized to attract traffic in every way possible.
SEO
The bulk of this website development takes place with search engine optimization (SEO). In a nutshell, SEO is the process of making sure that the content on your website is optimized for search engines. This involves things like:
- Integrating relevant keywords into your web text.
- Linking both internally to your site and externally to quality online resources (think .gov and .edu domains, for instance).
- Filling out all of your metadata — things like headers, alt text on images, and meta descriptions.
There are many other aspects to good SEO. In fact, in many ways, it’s an ever-evolving art form with each SEO professional having their own “formula for success.” However, focusing on the above elements is a great place to start.
You can do a lot of this by starting (or updating) a company blog. Populate this with relevant articles that establish your company as an authority in your niche. If you’re a plumbing company, for instance, write about frozen pipes, kitchen installations, and how to unclog a toilet. If you’re a bank, write about credit checks, 401(k) plans, and checking accounts.
Whatever your particular industry or niche, open up a Word doc or Google doc and start writing articles for your company blog.
Other Website Considerations
Along with good SEO, you’re also going to want to make sure that you have a way to capture and analyze data on your site. Thanks to AI and cloud computing, that task is easier than ever before. You may already have versions of AI and cloud computing in your life, ranging from Alexa and Siri to Google Home.
In a much different capacity, more robust systems of AI and the cloud power financial institutions, and also website intelligence. Understanding how your site is performing, where traffic is coming from, and being able to provide business insights are necessary components to running a website. Google Analytics, for example, is a powerful cloud computing tool that can streamline how your data is managed making it usable and actionable in real-time.
You’re also going to want to make sure that your site is set up for a quality user experience. This may sound intimidating, but it isn’t. In essence, a good user-experience simply consists of designing your site with the user in mind. Make sure your site:
- Loads
- Is easy to navigate.
- Provides appropriate calls to action.
Finally, take the time to back up your site as well. With so much marketing effort going into it, your site should be treated as one of your primary pieces of marketing collateral. As such, you should always have a backup plan ready just in case disaster strikes.
Utilizing Email
Another way to increase your web traffic is to cultivate a quality email subscriber list. You can use a service like Mailchimp to quickly and easily create emails for your followers.
An email list typically consists of repeat customers and people who already know who you are. However, your list can still drive traffic to your site by using it to promote sales, new products, and general company announcements and information. By including links to your website, you’ll naturally increase your traffic in the process.
In addition, you can often purchase marketing emails, also known as “e-blasts,” to other company’s email lists. You can do this by looking for influencers and companies in your industry that might have audiences that would be interested in your products and services.
If you create walkie talkies, for instance, you might want to approach a tech blogger with an email list of tens of thousands of tech enthusiasts. If they allow you to purchase an e-blast to their list, you can use it to reach a new, highly-targeted audience with your message. Just make sure to include links in your email in order to direct them to your website.
Tapping into Social Media
Arguably the greatest source of potential new customers can be found in the vast world of social media. Creating a social media marketing plan can be the first step in tapping this potential source of web traffic.
A few suggestions for ways to begin creating a social media presence include:
- Looking for social platforms that cater to your industry — Pinterest and Instagram are image-heavy, Facebook is very conversational, Twitter consists of small bursts of often real-time information, and so on.
- Searching for platforms that are ascendant, not descendant — for instance, Instagram grew 39% in 2018 but may struggle in the future due to their new “no like button” policy.
- Locating social media celebrities, micro-influencers, and any other influencers that can work with your brand.
- Focusing on creating content that encourages engagement — two-way customer engagement is a unique factor of social media marketing that should be cultivated.
- Gathering feedback from social followers to improve your marketing efforts.
As a final tip, as you go about setting up a social media presence, consider hiring freelancers to collaborate with you and help you shoulder the tremendous burden of churning out quality social content on a regular basis.
Building Web Traffic
There are many different ways to build web traffic at this point. It all starts with a quality website that is focused on SEO and a good user-experience. From there, you can branch out into email campaigns and social media strategies all aimed at driving traffic back to your main online hub, your site.
Whatever methods you choose to implement, though, make sure to lay your plans carefully and then commit to them fully. Half-hearted attempts rarely yield positive fruits in the online world, whereas a concerted effort is much more likely to succeed.
Author Bio: Dan Matthews is a writer with a degree in English from Boise State University. He has extensive experience writing online at the intersection of business, finance, marketing, and culture. You can find him on Twitter and LinkedIn.