Lack of website traffic is one of the most widespread challenges we hear from business owners. Many reports having lost a considerable percentage of their search traffic over the past year or two, and are continuously looking for new ways to drive relevant traffic to their site.
We have put this article together with an attempt to give marketers and business owners with most easy and quick 10 tactics to boost traffic on your website. While some of these strategies won’t be a quick fix, but you may be surprised how quickly many of them start to generate results.
1. Advertise
As this one is so obvious and crucial, we will look at it first. If you’re hoping that more traffic to your site will also result in more sales, you’ll need to target high commercial keywords for your business as part of your paid search strategies. Yes, competition for these search terms can be furious (and expensive), but the payoffs can be worth it. Remember no traffic no business.
Fine-tune your paid strategies to suit your goals. Each paid channel has its pros and cons, so think carefully about your objectives before you reach for your credit card.
2. Get Social
Social Media is a great way of getting your name out there and helping people discover your posts and products. RSS feeds, social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, and blogging can all be considered a part of social media. Utilising many of these avenues and channels can help you reach a larger audience and help promote your content when users share and distribute your content.
Make it easy for people to share the content on your site. Have “buttons” or links to help people who come to your site drive even more traffic to your site, by sharing your content on Twitter, Facebook, and other channels. Twitter is ideal for short, snappy (and tempting) links, whereas Google+ promotion can help your site show up in personalised search results and seems especially effective in B2B niches. If you’re a B2C product company, you might find great traction with image-heavy social sites like Pinterest and Instagram.
3. Write catchy and interesting headlines
Headlines are one of the most important parts of your content and will get people in the door. Without a compelling headline, even the most comprehensive blog post will go unread.
Most professional web content writer put together nearly 20 different headlines before finally settling on the one that will drive the most traffic. So think very carefully about your headline before your hit publish/post button.
4. SEO is very essential
SEO still plays a very essential part of diverting traffic to your website. Optimising your content for search engines is still a valuable and worthwhile practice. Ensure you have relevant page titles, image alt text, internal links and Meta descriptions. SEO is a combination of two factors: On site content and off site link backs with SEO friendly titles and headers that incorporate popular search terms.
On page optimisation doesn’t take long and it is very important as it helps to boost organic traffic.
5. Guest blogging
Guest blogging is a two-way process. In addition to posting content to other blogs, invite people in your niche to blog on your own site. 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 spam links. Remember, Google is cracking way down on low-quality guest blogging.
6. Post content on Linkedin
LinkedIn has become much more than a means of finding another job. The world’s largest professional social network is now a valuable publishing platform in its own right, which means you should be posting content to LinkedIn on a regular basis. Doing so can boost traffic to your site, as well as increase your profile within your industry – especially if you have a moderate to large following.
7. Email marketing
Many businesses put their content marketing strategy together and forget about the more and most traditional and approved method – Email marketing to attract new customers. Email marketing can be a powerful tool, and even a moderately successful email blast can result in a significant uptick in traffic. Just be careful not to bombard people with relentless emails about every single update in your business. Email marketing can be used very wisely by providing information that is in the best interest of your customers.
Also, don’t overlook the power of word-of-mouth marketing, especially from people who are already enjoying your products or services. A friendly email reminder about a new service or product can help you boost your traffic, too.
8. Faster and easy navigating website
Would you wait for about 30 seconds for a webpage to load? Me neither. Critically review your website regularly and if you notice it takes forever to load, your bounce rate will be sky high and all the marketing strategies that you have put in place will be a complete waste of time, money and energy.
Make sure that your pages are as technically optimised as possible, including image file sizes, page structure and the functionality of third-party plugins. The faster your site loads the better.
At the same time, ensure that your website is easy for your potential customers to navigate and easily find what they are looking for as diverting traffic to your website will not convert into sales unless your visitor has found the information they are looking for in a short span of time.
9. Incorporate video in your content strategy
Text based content is all well and good, but video can be a valuable asset in both attracting new visitors and making your website more engaging. Data shows that information retention is significantly higher for visual material than it is for text, meaning that video is an excellent way to grab – and hold – your audience’s attention, and boost traffic to your website at the same time.
YouTube is the undisputed champion as it drives the most engaged traffic: lowest average bounce rate (43.19 percent), highest pages per visit (2.99), and the longest visit duration (227.82 seconds).
10. Build relationships with influential people
One of the best ways to drive traffic to your website is to target influencers in a particular industry to try and get them to help you increase your audience. The best way to do this is to form a mutually beneficial relationship with influencers, by sharing their posts and content, or advertising for them on your website as you want to create a relationship that will make both of you happy.
Examples of mutually beneficial relationships:
Newsletter Trades: Offer to feature them in your newsletter in return for being featured in theirs.
Guest Posts: Offer to guest post on influential blogs and sites with links back to your website and blog.
Advertise: Offer specials in advertising on your site or free advertising if other sites feature you.