A website can be a powerful marketing tool, but getting people to actually visit your site is a challenge in itself. Here are the top 10 ways to increase website traffic.
1. Optimise your website for search engines
Depending on the features available in your website’s content management system, it’s a good idea to add unique descriptions and titles to every page on your site. If you’re up to the task, adding titles and alternate text to your images and hyperlinks can also work wonders. Some of the finer details are best left to the experts, but these should get you started.
2. Create good content
Creating “good” content is as simple as making sure your content is concise, clear and includes keywords relevant to your market. For example, if you sell custom made boats then including “custom made boats” and variations on this keyword within your site will be a step in the right direction. And don’t forget that “content is king”, so the more pages your website has, the better.
3. Submit your site to search engines
There are free services online to submit your website address to search engines. We provide this service for no cost when publishing new websites, but re-submitting over time can have benefits because some search engines and online directories don’t update their listings very often.
4. Increase your inbound links
By increasing the number of sites that link to you, your search engine ranking will improve. This is particularly true if the links are placed on websites which have a lot of traffic themselves. The best way to do this is to create personal or business profiles on directory websites, forums and blogs, but you can also add your website to online directories. Adding your website to industry sites will not only help increase your inbound links, but also give your business exposure on those sites.
5. Use social media
A bit of a no-brainer these days. Add your business to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube and more — but only if you are able to use these channels regularly (e.g. at least weekly). Drive traffic to your website by posting useful, interesting and engaging content for your audience. You can also implement social media sharing tools on your website which can help your website visitors promote your website on social media channels for you.
6. Set up a newsletter
While it may seem old-school to some, newsletters are still very much a huge component in website traffic. Send your subscribers deals and promotional materials and you’ll have plenty of new visitors to your website.
Bonus tip: Keep newsletters either promotional (offers) or informational (e.g. free tips and articles), not a mixture of both.
7. Write a blog
Blogging is a fantastic way to address a topic while also selling your services. Everyone loves free advice so you’ll not only be increasing your traffic but offering a value-add to your customers.
8. Send out media releases
You can write these yourself or, better yet, pay a professional copywriter to do it. Often these articles will be picked up by local newspapers or community groups and can offer a surprising boost in traffic. If nothing else, anyone who stumbles across your published articles online will know you’re on the ball.
9. Run a competition
Offer a free or discounted product or service and your customers will love you for it. In recent years, promoting or even holding these competitions on social media sites such as Facebook has become the norm because of the viral nature of these sites. One entrant posting on your Facebook page about the competition could be seen by 20 of their friends, and you’ve got a snowball effect in no time.
10. Use Google Analytics
A very much under-utilised tool of small businesses, Google Analytics and similar reporting tools offer insights into what your website visitors are doing, where they came from, and why they may have left. By crunching the numbers over time, you’ll find patterns in what does and doesn’t work for your site. You can even track particular advertising campaigns to see which perform best, and then use this information to improve your future efforts.
We’re experts in not just creating beautiful, functional websites, but also in driving traffic to your site and, ultimately, increasing your business. For a chat, phone us on (07) 33 33 2 WEB (932) or send us an email.
