Websites can be useful to businesses in many ways. They can be used to sell products or services, increase consumer awareness, or simply establish an online presence. However, as many a business owner could attest, thinking that everything it takes for a website to achieve its goals is to put in online is very misleading. Websites without traffic usually don’t serve their purpose. You need to get people to visit your website because the logic that if you build it, they will come doesn’t apply to websites.
Websites need traffic, and you need to do what you can to get yours the traffic it needs. Luckily, the list of things you can do to drive traffic to your business’ website is extensive, and plenty of it doesn’t require much technical knowledge. We’ll take a look at the things you should be doing on your website and the things you could do which involve other sites and services.
Making Sure Your Website and Content are Up to the Task
The first thing you should do is look at the existing state of your website or blog. Ideally, you should have already organized the content on your website in categories. They will help your readers navigate your website easier, and they are very useful for your website’s optimization. Next, look at the content you already have on your website – is it well optimized? Does it have relevant meta tags, descriptions, URLs? All of those are critical if you want your website to be found through search engines. Also, check if your content has any comments you should respond to because responding to comments increases reader engagement.
Next, you’ll probably want to add new content to your website or blog.
Let’s say you want to write a new article or blog post. You should determine what are the topics that have previously drawn visitors to your website, and try to stay in that ballpark. You need to write an attention-grabbing headline for the article – there’s no need to go full-on clickbait, but it has to make readers want to read the first paragraph to see what the article is about. In the article, you need to make sure you include images, links to other posts on your blog that might be relevant, and quality keywords. If possible place the title and your website’s address somewhere in the image, just in case it gets shared. Including links to existing content in your new posts is an excellent SEO strategy, and “quality keywords” is a term for “as many relevant keywords as possible without keyword stuffing.”
You should also make sure the content you write is relevant to your industry and is posted frequently enough. Writing long, well-researched posts once in a while is a strategy that will help you establish yourself as an industry authority, as will writing posts that are direct responses to other people’s posts. Being a part of an industry-wide discussion will do wonders for your credibility. You can also interview people who establish names in your industry and post those interviews on your website because they will be very likely to promote the interviews.
Moving the Effort Away From Your Website
Now that you’re sure your content is high-quality and well-optimized, you can move your efforts away from your website. You can start doing two crucial things: networking and promoting your website.
People need to know who you are, and you need to get to places where you can get some visibility. The success of your business’ website can depend on your ability to promote it, especially if you want to establish yourself as an industry expert – in that case, you promote your website by promoting yourself. Building connections with people who work in your industry is a necessary step because it can lead to further opportunities. Becoming a member of industry groups on social networking websites like Facebook and LinkedIn will give you a chance to see and be seen. Getting in touch with people who are sending you traffic and asking if you could return the favor is a good way to make acquaintances in the industry.
Establishing your presence on social media would be beneficial.
You can create a Facebook group of your own where you can promote your content and offer advice and insight. You should submit your posts to Reddit, StumbleUpon, add your blog to Alltop, and if at all possible create a YouTube channel. If you have an email list, you should use to promote your blog posts. If you don’t have it, start building one.
A few other things you can do to increase your visibility would be to start writing columns for well-known websites. Or guest posts on relevant blogs. You can also solicit guest posts from established bloggers. And you can even arrange advertising swaps so they can promote your website on their, and vice versa. If nothing else, at least write comments on relevant industry websites or blogs. Make sure that people know you’re there, and make sure that your name associates with your business’ website. Most importantly, be patient – some of these tips will produce results faster than others. You’ll have to work on it for a while until you see the full effects of your efforts.
