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9 Ways to Immediately Increase Your Web Traffic

9 Ways to Immediately Increase Your Web Traffic

Before you can increase website traffic, there has to be a website, right? Your website is the beginning step to creating web traffic, so here are a few things to keep in mind.

1. Your Site Needs to be Fast and Responsive

We’re living in a fast paced world, and nothing is a bigger turn-off to your audience than a slow computer. This is number-one on our list because everything following this is pointless if there is no site to drive traffic to.

When creating your site, make sure to test it before you launch it. This will keep you from losing potential customers and followers due to a faulty site launch.

Make sure from this point on you are consistently checking your site and fixing issues in a quick, responsive manner. Think of your site like a car engine. You may not have issues often, but when you do, they need to be fixed fast or it all falls apart.

2. Utilize Long-tail Keywords and SEO

Long-tail keywords and SEO are the things that take your site and really put it out into the world. The Internet is a huge place, full of relevant content. So, how do you get people to look at yours? Keywords and SEO.

When you’re writing the copy for your site, or anything else, consider what your audience will be Googling. Use these questions and phrases throughout whatever you write, and it will be more likely to be found. For example, if I’m a company that delivers fresh saltwater to people with saltwater pools, on my site I could write, “Our high-gravity water allows for a pristine water-to-salt solution, ideal for aquatic activities.”

Sounds great, but the average joe is Googling, “Saltwater delivery for my pool.” Between my site and what my audience is Googling, there are only two words in common. That’s a problem because my site isn’t going to pull up, so I just lost a visit to my site.

Don’t complicate it. Instead try, “We provide saltwater delivery service for pools and other saltwater operated mechanisms.” The long-tail keywords that I’m going to repeat through my site are “saltwater delivery”, “saltwater pools”, and so on.

This is just one part of having great SEO (search engine optimization). More ways are to produce relevant content on your site often, internally/externally link from your site, and use meta-descriptions. More on these things later.

Now that the site has set you up for success, it’s time to start offering something to the people you want on your site. Before you can even begin this step carefully consider and break down just who those people are. Go ahead, we’ll wait. Ready? Perfect, time to get started.

3. Content, Content, Content

It’s vital, if you want to drive traffic and keep people on your site, that you are producing desirable content. Everyone loves free stuff, especially if they feel like it’s beneficial.

This can look a lot of different ways, but a few are eBooks, white papers, and webinars. These things should teach them, or tell them, something about their industry.

Make sure when you are producing these things you’re still using keywords and SEO. Remember that you want everything you do to help you, and that’s not going to happen if people never see what you’ve created.

4. Be a Thought-Leader, Not a Follower

Part of reaching out to your audience is not always to offer them a piece of content, or pushing your product/service. Sometimes, it’s important just to be viewed as a thought-leader. What does that mean? That means when people have questions about your industry, they go to your site, or social media, for answers because they view you as an expert in the field.

A good way to become an expert in your field is staying up-to-date on the latest trends in your industry, disseminating new information via social media and blogs, and talking to people in your community.

These steps are so important because getting people to your site is pointless if they reach it and you have nothing of value to offer them! Content and thought leadership never stops, so make sure you’re being consistent and up-to-date on your site.

At this point home-base (your site) is covered. Time to branch out and reach people you aren’t getting to right now (psst, that’s a lot of people).

5. Get on a Guest Blog

Wondering how else to be viewed as a thought-leader? Get on a guest blog. You can try to prove you are an expert all day long, but your street cred, or Internet cred, skyrockets when someone else validates that statement. Not only will this showcase you as an expert, but it also increases your visibility by almost double. You’re reaping the benefits of all their keywords and SEO efforts.

However, make sure this is a credible blog that is somewhat related to your industry. For instance, if I am a Mommy and Me class owner, I’m not going to be featured on a blog for teenage boys. I’m probably going to pick something already known, in my circle of interest, and local. For example, I would probably reach out to the Knoxville Mom’s Blog.

6. Go to Your People

The cheapest way to do this is with social media. Getting on social media will create a presence with other people in your industry and their friends. The best part of social media is that it reaches a mass amount of people.

The easiest way to do this is by pay-per-click. When you use PPC (pay-per-click) you are using a company to boost your visibility when people search in your industry. The more people who click on your site, the higher you become on the visibility scale. Kicker is, for each click, you pay a fee.

Our advice–use both.

7. Email Marketing

People think that email is annoying and that people don’t want extra notifications in their inbox. However, this isn’t necessarily true. If your emails are thought provoking, and come with a content offer, then email marketing becomes a win-win for you and your audience.

While, yes, there is a limit to emails, it’s probably much higher a number than you’d think. The idea of email marketing is that the people you email have, in some way, already shown interest in your company. Email marketing is really just a reminder that you have things they want.

By this step you would definitely be seeing improvements on your web traffic, but why stop there? Time to seal the deal.

8. Have A Voice

After some time, people are going to start to comment on your social media, blogs, and so on. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. Either way, respond! People want to feel they’re being heard. They say communication is key to relationships, and that’s true. When a feeling of community is developed, people begin to feel like they can trust you. Trust is a huge step forward for traffic and, ultimately, customers.

9. Use Analysis

You’ve made it this far, don’t stop now. It’s time to reflect. What didn’t work? Can you fix it, should you change it, or should it go away all together? On the flip side, what is totally working for you, put more effort into that.

It’s like watching a tape of a game, and seeing how you can get better and grow. Without analytics you can’t progress. A good way to begin this is by setting goals before you begin campaigns and referring to those goals to diagnose how well you are doing. If you don’t know what this looks like, check out our blog on it.

From here you have a great starting point with lots of tools and tips. The rest is up to you, so get out there and increase your traffic. If you’re ready for the next step in your marketing efforts, pop on over and chat with us.