Easy, Top Ways To Get Traffic To Your Website
Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowWhether you’re launching your first (or new) website or enhancing a current one, it’s essential that your business follows best practices and forms web habits that contribute to increasing your web traffic. These best practices range from operational to habitual, and a majority can be performed by marketers of all skills – you don’t have to be a developer to set your website up for success!
Here are some of the top ways to boost your website traffic to build your brand and increase your clicks.
Optimize your blog posts
Publishing a blog post for the sake of creating content is limiting your website’s potential for increased traffic. For example, make sure you’re implementing basic SEO strategies. When you choose a keyword for your SEO plugin (like Yoast SEO), make sure the keyword that you’re using is:
In your post title
Your post meta description
In the first 100 words of your blog post
Bolded 1-2 times in you post.
These are easy, quick ways to boost your SEO within a blog post. Linking to other articles on your website within posts is also encouraged to keep visitors on your website (and your bounce rate down!)
Be relevant
This may seem obvious, but it’s overlooked more than not. With content you’re producing through your website messaging, case studies, blog posts, etc., make sure you know your audience, what they want to hear, and provide content as such. You can easily establish yourself as a thought leader through the content you provide on your blog.
An added way to do this is to link to other industry influencers within your content to try and leverage cross-promotion of information to attract new audiences to your website. In certain industries, it works to play nice with similar sites to leverage more audiences to your benefit. You can see examples of this on websites that have a “more content from around the web” option. You can build these partnerships yourself or leverage tools like Outbrain that provide services to cross-promote your content to drive more traffic to your site.
Promote your website on all material
This seems obvious, right? Some companies make the mistake of not promoting their website in obvious places, like their email signature or other printed material. Think about how many emails you send a day: Provide a CTA (call-to-action) every time you press send by promoting your website in your email signature. Companies like Sigstr provide a more formalized solution for this with even more ways to leverage your email signature.
Leverage social!
If your business isn’t on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or the like – sign up! These platforms are a great way to connect with your customers. All of these social channels have advertising and promotional features, too, so you can promote to a targeted audience. These social outlets are the gateways to connect with the audience you are trying to reach.
Make sure your site is mobile optimized
According to PewResearchCenter, approximately 70% of Americans own a cell phone, and 85% of young adults own a smartphone – and these numbers will only continue to increase. You don’t want to lose potential customers or site views if your website isn’t optimized to function on a mobile device.
Build a community through consistency
The number one rule in producing content or campaigns for your website is consistency. If you launch a blog series on your website – stick with it! Loyal readers will come back if your content is compelling, but they won’t return if you’re inconsistent with messaging. Continuing to showcase your value through your website also organically builds your brand as a leader in your industry and one to recognize.
Leverage analytics – and learn from it
There are several tools available to measure and manage the performance on your website so you and your team can make intelligent decisions tied to a clear return on your investment. Make the time to review your site activity, campaigns launched to drive traffic to your site, etc., so that you are making sound decisions. Many of these analytics tools are free, too, like Google Analytics and SumoMe, or if you run your website on WordPress or a similar CMS there a plethora of free plugins that manage your website’s performance.
Encourage sharing and engagement
Site visitors, customers, prospects – they all like being heard. Make your website responsive to feedback and engagement. Make sure your blog posts have the ability for comments and feedback through tools like Disqus, which allow users to create profiles and contain gamification features that continue to encourage ongoing activity. When promoting your website on social media, include a CTA that drives discussion. When promoting a blog post, for example, ask your followers a question, "What do you think of this latest feature? Check out our thoughts in our latest blog post!"
Shawn Herring is chief marketing officer of Torchlite Marketing.