Websites are a great way to share your brand, build relationships with your customers, and generate sales. The more people visit your site, the more potential customers you have. And that translates to more profit and the possibility of growing your business and expanding your product line or services.
But what if your website traffic is down and your numbers just aren’t improving? Thankfully, you don’t have to be an SEO expert or a marketing genius to drive those numbers up again. We’ll show you ways to drive traffic to your website without spending a cent.
Increase Organic Traffic
Organic traffic is those visitors who land on your site from unpaid sources, which means you got them for free. This type of traffic tends to have better conversion rates (when your visitors turn into customers) than paid traffic, and it’s good for increasing website trust.
How did you get organic traffic? Well, your visitor may have typed a query on Google, and in response, Google pulled up a page from your site. Or, someone may have shared your website and your visitor thought it looked interesting and clicked on the link.
There are many ways to drive traffic to your website, and we’ve listed several of them. They are all free of cost, except for the time and energy spent on your part.
1. Optimize for SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of getting organic website traffic from search engine queries. Websites that are optimized for SEO tend to rank higher on search engines. The challenge is to make sure that when people look for a specific product or service that you offer, they will look for you and not your competitor.
So what does optimizing for SEO involve? The following are little fixes that you can make to rank higher on the search engine:
- Publish quality content on a regular basis
- Make sure your website speed is fast
- Make your site user-friendly and responsive
- Keep your page content keyword-rich
- Add alt image text to your images
- Improve your headlines (make them eye-catching)
- Use meta descriptions
- Add internal links
Publishing fresh content increases your chances to rank higher on search engines. Google, for example, prefers new content to stale ones. And more content means more indexed pages, more links, and more chances to reach searchers.
Site loading speed also affects your SEO. Website speed creates a better user experience resulting in a positive impression of your site. Those that load slowly normally have high bounce rates and will result in a lower ranking on Google. ( Google has indicated that site speed is one of the signals used by its algorithm to rank pages.)
For more tips on building a successful SEO strategy, check out our blog post here.
2. Utilize Social Media
Social media is a form of free marketing. You can use a diverse array of platforms to reach a wider audience. You have Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more. Share blogs from your site, funny memes that are related to your brand, new product launches, etc. The goal is to build valuable relationships with your audience that can turn into important leads later on.
According to research, social media is responsible for 31% of referral traffic. It’s one of the main driving forces of e-commerce. Here are some quick facts: Facebook is used by 69% of adult Americans. 37% use Instagram, 27% utilize LinkedIn, and 22% are on Twitter. It only makes sense to market your company where your potential customers hang out.
For more insights about social media marketing and other eCommerce-related tips, check out our Instagram page here.
3. Create Quality Content
Creating high-quality content isn’t just putting words together on your web pages. It’s about crafting content that is actually useful to your audience. And it must be evergreen. In other words, the content that you produce must be continually relevant.
A blog might seem a daunting task, particularly if you aren’t a writer, but blogging is one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your website. It has been found that websites that contain blogs have 434% more indexed pages and twice as much email traffic than businesses that do not!
You don’t have to limit yourself to blogs, either, although blogs are one of the most effective forms of content. You can also create how-to guides for your customers, do FAQ posts, and more.
Tips for publishing quality content:
- Use interesting headlines
- It must be easy to read
- Add share buttons to each post
- Include images or infographics
- Pattern your way of writing to your audience
Make sure to choose interesting and descriptive headers to catch your readers’ eyes. A majority of readers also tend to skim so avoid big chunks of text in your blogs. Vary the length of your paragraphs, don’t use more than 4-5 sentences in each paragraph, and include list posts as much as possible.
Imagery also tends to hold your visitors’ eye so use one or two for your content. And since your goal is for as many people as possible to see your content (and therefore your site), make sure to make your post shareable.
4. Build Backlinks
A backlink is a link from one website to another. It may sound insignificant, but the more mentions you get from other trustworthy websites, the more authority you build up. And the more authority or expertise you appear to have, the better your website will perform in search rankings and visibility.
What you want to do is to search for a reputable site that is willing to post an article, blog, or web page that links back to you. The keyword here is ‘reputable’ since there are many low-quality backlinks you can buy from dubious websites, but Google has developed an algorithm for identifying these and those links won’t really help build up trust with your potential clients.
5. Use Email Marketing To Your Advantage
Some businesses ignore the power of email marketing, thinking that it doesn’t really bring much to the table. However, according to Statista, the revenue from email marketing in 2020 was $7.5B and it’s expected to grow more in the coming years.
Coupled with the right messaging and the right touch of personalization, email marketing can engage your audience, increase web traffic, and convert that traffic into sales.
Tip: You can collect the email addresses of your potential clients by asking your visitors to sign up on your website in exchange for a discount, free content, or special offers.
Need Help Increasing Your Web Traffic?
If you think of your customers first and produce the answers to the questions they’re asking, you will become a valuable resource without needing to become an authority on SEO, content strategy, or creative writing.
But building a entirely new strategy for increasing your web traffic can be quite tricky and at times, a little bit overwhelming. If you’re not sure how or where to start, let us know. We offer free consultations, and we manage all parts of a website from its development and optimization to content creation and marketing. Give us a call at (888) 498-5361 or drop us a line here.
