Traffic is the lifeblood of any business website. But not all traffic is created equal. You want highly engaged traffic – people who are likely to click and convert. And making this happen is easier said than done.
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4 Ways to Boost Traffic to Your Site
A successful website needs high quantities of quality traffic. In other words, it’s not a quality or quantity challenge – you need both. How you do that is up to you. But we have a few suggestions:
Invest in Paid Search
Everyone wants to talk about free traffic – and we’ll touch on plenty of these tactics below – but don’t discount the importance of paid search. And while it’ll cost you money on the front end, a well developed paid strategy is profitable.
“Lets just say that out of the 200 clicks, you received 3 sales, which were tracked with a Facebook conversion pixel. Those 3 sales resulted in $800 in revenue. So your $100 investment just drove $800 in sales,” R.L. Adams writes for Forbes. “Now, this is simply a generic example , but when you know how to track your ads or other marketing efforts, then you’ll know what’s paying off and what’s not.”
You can’t rely on 100% paid traffic forever, but there’s nothing wrong with layering it in with different organic traffic sources.
Build an Email List
There’s a reason so many marketers, bloggers, and business owners swear by email list building – it works! It might not seem as sexy as social media and other newer mediums, but it’s still one of the most effective traffic generators when handled the right way.
Building an email list is half the equation. The other half requires careful and consistent nurturing. You want to email your list enough to stay top of mind, but not so much that they get turned off. You want to promote your brand, but you don’t want to appear selfish and narcissistic. You want to personalize your emails, but not appear creepy.
The margin for error is thin in email marketing. And while there’s too much to go into great detail, resources like this are extremely helpful in answering questions and ironing out wrinkles.
Commit to Link Building
It’s easy to get overwhelmed when thinking about SEO, but it helps to simplify things. Rather than viewing it as some complicated technical endeavor, look at it through a common sense lens.
Think about SEO like a search engine would. Google is in the business of serving relevant content to its users. The more relevant, high-quality content it gives its users, the more likely they are to return over and over again. How does Google determine what content is high in quality? Well, they certainly don’t have time to review everything manually. So they’ve developed sophisticated algorithms that analyze a variety of factors. Most notably, they study what content other authoritative individuals and websites are linking to. And the more backlinks a page has pointing to it, the more likely it is that Google will rank that page.
If you want your site to be visible in the search engines, invest in link building. It can take a few months to gain traction, but once the results come, they’ll start flooding in.
Include Your URL Everywhere
Don’t be shy about sharing your website URL. You should give it away like it’s candy – online and offline. Here are some different places you can include your URL:
- In your email signature
- On your business card
- In your social media profiles
- In online business listings
- In your author bio on guest blogging sites
- On promotional materials (including digital and print)
You’re not going to get a ton of traffic from any one of these, but they’re powerful as a collective. A couple of clicks here and a few there add up. Plus, having your URL in so many places enhances visibility and increases your chances of acquiring future traffic.
Grow Your Biz
In many respects, it’s never been easier to grow a business. The internet makes it possible for even the smallest companies to gain exposure and create visibility (even in the most crowded markets). But in order to capitalize on these opportunities, you must be able to drive traffic to your website. Hopefully this article has given you some practical ideas and tactics that can be implemented into your strategy moving forward.
