How to Drive Traffic to Your Website
The classic question “does a falling tree in the forest make a sound if no one is there to hear it?” has many different credible answers, depending on your philosophical point of view. In contrast, the question “does a website have any commercial value if no one is there to visit it?” has only one clear answer: no. Although there are many factors that contribute to a successful website, none of them matter if no one visits the site. It can therefore be said that visibility, or attracting people to visit your site, is an important web design principle to include in your website strategy. Below are four methods that have proven to be successful in achieving website visibility.
1) Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engines, especially Google, continue to drive the majority of traffic to websites. According to Search Engine Watch, over 70% of all web traffic is driven by organic search . It is therefore critical that SEO be integrated into your site’s infrastructure as well as its content to ensure that your site is visible as high up on the list of search engine result pages as possible. Responsive web design, fast loading times, good user experience (UX), contextual relevance, high quality engaging content, keyword research, and inbound links are some of the key elements your site will need to ensure best SEO results. Most of these tactics are important to incorporate during the build of your site and NOT as an afterthought.
2. Pay Per Click and Search Engine Advertising
If your site is not optimized organically or if your niche is just too competitive to rank for in search, you may need to resort to paying for placement in Google. Pay Per Click advertising is an immediate way to be on page one for keywords that convert. Although Google makes it seem like an easy process to setup a PPC campaign, be warned, Pay Per Click is very complex and nuanced and you can lose a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you need to resort to PPC for driving traffic to your site, use a professional, certified PPC professional to run your campaigns. And make sure that your website converts. There is no point in driving traffic to your site if your site doesn’t close the deal. This is the very reason while any one of our guiding principles alone, will not lead to success without the others.
2) Social Media Marketing
Among social media sites, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and others have the potential to contribute to traffic as well. To increase visibility, be sure to implement a well crafted social media strategy that takes into account not only exposure but also engagement. Just to have a presence on social media is not enough; you must entice people to interact with your brand via likes, shares, tweets, etc. Give social media users reasons to delve deeper into your products or services; your objective is to drive visitors to your site. Most importantly, choose social sites strategically based on where your target audience spends their time. For example, if you are targeting millennials, Snapchat & Instagram may be more appropriate than Facebook. If you are a B2B company, linkedin will likely be your social channel of choice.
3) Blogs
Blogging is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website and increase your site’s visibility. A well-crafted blog can generate interest, engagement, and exponential exposure for your site. The key to writing an effective blog is choosing the right topic – and keywords – and connect it with content on your website. Write about topics that are specific, actionable, and address your audience’s pain points. A reader who is enticed by a topic in which she is genuinely interested (and searching for), will delve deeper into your site and may share your content with her network. In addition, including internal and external links in your blog which will further enhance engagement with your site and improve SEO performance. Blogs are powerful, versatile tools that will increase your site’s visibility.
4) Email Marketing
Email is a powerful digital marketing tool that can impact multiple stages of the Inbound Marketing process, but for purposes of this blog, we will focus on its value to attract visitors to your site. If you are following the key principles of Inbound methodology, you should be collecting as many email addresses as possible. These emails have been generated from people interested in your content and therefore represent qualified leads. A strategic email program customized for each of your target segments will further attract these leads to your site. It is crucial that the content in your email offers something useful and valuable to those receiving it, based on their individual interests and needs.
In conclusion, there are multiple ways to effectively increase your site’s visibility and drive visitors to your site. The key to success is to implement a sound marketing strategy and include as many of the above methods as relevant and not just count on one or two. The only way to cut through the clutter in today’s media landscape and stand apart from the competition is to strategically target your audience with compelling content across all of the platforms they use. If done effectively, your site will surely get noticed.
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