Nothing makes a website owners eyes light up more than the thought of more traffic to their website. Traffic is the holy grail of the online community; and could lead to more exposure, more subscriptions, more leads, more sales, and more reasons to smile.
The tips below are tried and true methods you can start applying now to get the traffic you need to make your website a success and worth smiling about.
1. Advertise
With advertising you can get your website in front of those who are most likely going to be interested in what you talk about on your website.
If you choose to go down this route—and you should seriously consider it—be sure to pay attention to your goals. For example, do you want more traffic, more conversions, or more engagement?
Depending on what your goals are, there are many advertising channels you can use, each with its own pros and cons.
2. Apply On Page SEO
SEO’s not dead! Optimizing your content for search engines is still as relevant today as it was yesterday. Make sure you use Alt text, incorporate internal links to new content, resize your photos, and use meta descriptions. None of these take a long time to implement, but the rewards are worth it.
3. Guest Blog on Websites Relevant to Your Industry
Any guest blog on any sort of website used to result in traffic to your own website and higher rankings on SERP.
Those days are gone.
But that doesn’t mean guest blogging no longer works. Just make sure you stay away from spammy websites to concentrate on high-authority blogs relevant to your industry. Guest blogging this way leads to more traffic and increased brand exposure and awareness.
4. Invite Guest Posts from Others
Invite other bloggers or website owners to submit content to your website. These contributors are likely to promote their content to their followers and bring in a ton of traffic as a result.
Just make sure the content submitted is high-quality and valuable to your audience, and without spammy links (These could invite Google penalties).
5. Target Referral Traffic
Referral traffic is the sort that comes to your website because somebody followed a link from content on another website. This is very valuable traffic, one that leads to higher SERP rankings, and authority.
Referral traffic can also be a pain to get. Your best bet lies with creating high-value content which other people can’t help but link to.
6. Get Social
After creating great content, you want to promote this content to your target audience, and that means going to where they hang out which just happens to be social media.
Depending on who makes up your target audience and the sort of content you wish to promote, different social media sites can be prioritized. Image heavy content would look good on Pinterest and Instagram for example, while short, catchy links might go well with Twitter.
7. Get Listed
You can significantly increase your traffic and boost your brand by get listed on online directories and review sites. These sites usually include a link that leads to your website and offer a unique opportunity to interact with those who interact with your websites.
8. Target Long-Tail Keywords
Long tails account for the majority of search engine queries. Failing to target them will cause you to miss out on the majority of people who are actively searching for content and services which your website is offering.
9. Interview Industry Thought Leaders
Not only does this increase your authority and credibility in the eyes of your audience, it also opens your website to tons of resulting traffic when your interviewee promotes the interview.
10. Make Use of Email Marketing
Regular emails are not only a great way to nurture ongoing relationships with your customers; they could lead to an uptick in website traffic as well—especially when you need to get the word out on something new happening on your website.
11. Make Your Site as Fast as Possible
Slow sites lead to high bounce rates. Nobody is going to wait 30 seconds for a slow website to get ready.
12. Make Sure Your Website is Responsive
Visitors will hit the back button fast if your website does not look good on the screen they are using. Make sure your website is responsive to avoid losing traffic in this manner.
13. Engage Online
Join discussion groups with hashtags that are relevant to your website or content, provide thoughtful answers in the comments section of relevant sites in your industry, respond promptly to comments on your social media posts; all these get you noticed and set you up as an authority in the eyes of your target audience.
14. Host Webinars
Combined with an effective social media campaign, webinars are a great way to drive traffic to your website. People love to learn, don’t hesitate to leverage that to your advantage.
15. Attend Conferences and Build Authority
Attending—or even better, speaking at—conferences and events relevant to your industry are a great way to gain exposure to your site. There can hardly be a better way to establish yourself as a thought leader and get people interested in what you have to say.
