Steady traffic is the lifeblood of any website. Whether you’re selling a product, offering a service, or just want people to absorb your content and spread awareness of your brand, no traffic means your site is dead in the water. Generating the traffic necessary for a healthy site can be a daunting task, one that requires a clear strategy. While there are many tips and tricks out there tailored to getting the job done, three stick out as superlative options and can be fine-tuned to suit just about any kind of business you’re promoting. Here’s what you’ll need to do.
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Strategy One: Tighten Up Your Advertisement Game
If no one has heard about you, they won’t be able to check you out. To spread the word about your site, advertisements remain a steadfast option for getting “eyes on” from ideal customers. Social media is ripe with such opportunities, with platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter having vast quantities of users you might succeed in attracting.
Facebook, for instance, has more than a billion users who access the platform monthly. It’s the largest of the social media sites and has integrated advertising services that businesses can use to drive customers. What’s great about these is that they allow you to focus your efforts based on a potential visitor’s location, interests, behavior, etc., meaning you can funnel exactly who you want to your site with the proper research about your target audience.
Instagram, on the other hand, provides a prime resource if you know you have an audience that may be a bit younger (millennials are known for using Instagram to a greater degree than other age groups). It too has tools for marketing, and businesses, especially those that have taken the time to cultivate large followings, can direct large numbers of users to their sites by making use of the platform.
Beyond the social media options, though, there are also PPC advertising avenues like Google AdWords, which allow you to get your site in front of individuals looking for specific keywords through the search engine, which leads to another point…
Strategy Two: Leverage Search Engine Traffic
Search engine traffic offers a way to grow an organic and steady following for a website. The trick here is gain a high search ranking for your keywords and hang onto it so that those searching will be more inclined to head to your site. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the name of the game here, and, as pointed out by Michigan Tech, publishing relevant content, updating that content regularly, making use of metadata and links, along with using well-suited alt tags are tried and true methods for building SEO strength.
In addition to that, though, you’ll also need to refrain from engaging in activities that could harm your search engine ranking. Engines like Google have various guidelines in place that, if violated, could result in a ding to your overall score. Your score drops, your ranking slips, and your traffic could take a hit along with it. Thankfully, if you do see your ranking start to slip, there are plenty of resources with tips on how to recover your rankings from a google ranking penalty, though, it’s best to try and avoid ending up in such a scenario to begin with.
Strategy Three: Ensure Your Website “Works”
You’ll also need to ensure that once visitors arrive at your site, they’ll want to return. Having a slow or poorly-designed site is a surefire way to get visitors to vow never to access it again, as is providing little of value for them to gain for their efforts. The remedy, naturally, is creating a website that looks good, loads fast, and has lots of worthwhile content.
Both The Balance and Inc. have great step-by-step guides on the right way to go about creating your site, highlighting proper design choices, crafting your message, and having the right attitude for success. There are also plenty of tutorials on the right way to craft content in a way that visitors will find engaging (and will encourage them to make repeated stops to your site, increasing traffic).
Overall, you’ll want to make sure that your content is informative, actionable, and well-written. Including calls to action and encouraging readers to share will go the extra mile in putting your name in front of others, and boosting the number of visitors to your pages.
