If we were to ask you what your business needs most right now, chances are you’d say more clients, customers or sales. But how do you get clients, customers and sales? There are many ways, but having steady website traffic is a major one.Of course, any marketer or business owner wants as much foot traffic on their site as possible, but the reality is many of us find ourselves stuck within a range of traffic and find it hard to grow beyond that, even after putting a lot of financial investment into it. It’s true that website traffic is the biggest player when it comes to conversions, so it’s important to think about how much traffic your website is getting and how you can grow that traffic to help create more revenue.
According to Hubspot’s State of Inbound 2017 business report, for 55% of respondents, their top marketing priorities for this year is to grow the traffic to their website. And, with respect to inbound marketing, 61% of respondents said growing their SEO and organic presence is most important, followed by 53% who said blog content creation was their top priority. Really, the two marketing tactics go hand in hand. Consistent, informed and fresh blog content can greatly improve your SEO ranking and organic presence. In this article, we’re going to provide you with easy tips on how to grow traffic to your website, with tools that are both free and paid.
Blog, blog, blog
If you run a small business and you’re not blogging, now is the time to start. Blogging is not only an essential part of driving traffic to your website but also keeping visitors on your site longer. If you can show people through consistent blogging that you’re an authority in your industry and you know what you’re talking about, they’re more likely to trust you.
Blogging is also a great way to connect with your audience and talk to them on a personal level. You know how you have (hopefully) optimised your website pages around keywords that your buyer personas are looking for? Well, you should be doing the same thing with your blog posts. What are the questions your buyers are asking? What problems are they currently facing and searching on the internet? These questions and problems can be answered through blog posts. Not only will blogging in this way attract more visitors, but it will attract the right kind of visitors. It will help form a trusting relationship with your potential buyers, as well as keep your business at the top of their mind next time they are looking for help.
Optimize your website for SEO
SEO or ‘search engine optimisation’ isn’t about optimising your site for search engines. It’s about optimising your website for the people who are using search engines. The good news is that search engines see websites that are optimised for searchers to be fully optimised in general.
There are a few ways you can optimise your website, but the first thing you should think about is what you want your visitors to get out of coming to your website. What are they searching for? What keywords will they be typing into search engines to be led to your site? If you work at creating a website that is optimised for the searcher, then search engines will follow your lead.
We could go into a lot of detail about SEO and rankings et cetera, but honestly, it can get complicated and we will probably put you to sleep. Of course you can do your own research but we suggest for now, just think about making your site look good and read as well as possible. Powerful software tools like SEMrush can provide you with a complete SEO audit and highlight what needs fixing on your website. Here is an additional article with a list of SEO tactics to help your small business get found online.
Optimise your keywords
Following on from the above, keyword optimisation is an essential part of driving the right kind of traffic to your website. You could have hundreds of thousands of clicks on your site, but if it’s not your target audience, then what’s the benefit of this traffic? Keywords are an important part of growing your traffic because they are the bridge that connects searchers who have never heard about your website to you. So how do you know what searchers are looking for and what they would theoretically type into search engines to find you? One way to find out this information is through your buyer personas. Its important that you use keywords throughout all your website pages that speak to the problem or challenges your buyers face. Usually when people turn to search engines, they’re looking for answers to a problem, so if you’re answering that problem with your website content, it will make it easier for people to find you.
Advertise
If you’ve exhausted all your free and organic options and are still finding your website traffic lacking, try advertising. Paid search and social media advertising are a simple yet highly effective way of growing your website traffic and building your brand name. You can alter your paid advertising strategies in order to suit your goals, too.
Get social
While paid social media advertising works well, so does having a presence across a few social channels. The important thing to remember is you can’t be everywhere at once, so while you’re starting out, focus on one or two social channels you’re comfortable with, such as Facebook or Instagram and work at creating a presence there. Building a following on social media is a great way to promote your content for free.
If you’re still stuck (which you won’t be with these tips) and are looking for more ways to grow your website traffic, there are so many avenues you can take, and it doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg. Here is a list from Forbes that contains 39 actionable ideas for driving content to your website.
