How to Get More Traffic to Your Website
“Build it and they will come.” Sorry, Kevin Costner. But that just isn’t the case.
The task of getting traffic to your online business isn’t as straightforward and clicking ‘live’ on your new website.
In a world where everyone and their dog has an online presence, how do we get people to look at our website? It’s a crowded place out there, yes. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be visible.
The good news is there are many ways to drive traffic to your website. I truly believe we can all rise above the noise and show off all the amazing services and products that we offer.
Here’s 7 tried and tested methods to get traffic to your gorgeous site. I can’t wait for you to see the results!
1. Clever design
If you follow all these steps then yes, you will get more traffic to your site. But what if your site doesn’t tell them what you do? Or where to go next?
That’s right, they click that ‘X’ and head back to their Netflix binge.
So, we need to get the website set up and ready to welcome your new audience. To do this it’s important to balance functionality and beauty.
2. Use social media to your advantage
How long do you spend on social media each day? Earlier this year I took a peek at my phones stats and *gulp* it was embarrassingly high. I enforced a ‘screen time limit’ to try to curb my time spent scrolling. Can you guess how that went? Yep, not great.
The truth is, today we’re connected to the world in a wonderful way. And whilst social media has its limits (that’s one for another day), it’s a powerful tool at establishing your business and drawing in traffic to your website.
So, it’s important that we make sure to link back to our website in social media. Promote your opt in. Direct your audience towards your services page. Share your latest blog post - just as I’ll be doing after this goes live!
3. Create juicy content on your site
It might be a little time consuming to begin with but content is evergreen. This basically means that your content is going to last a long time. So, whereas an Instagram post will stop reaching people after 24 hours, a blog post can continue to bring in search engine traffic a year, 5 years down the line. Amazing, right?
Step 1: Get to know your ideal customer.
Step 2: Provide lots of interesting and useful content for this customer.
Step 3: Link to other juicy content to keep the visitor hanging around wanting more and more - and more.
Aim for longer, high quality posts. It’s also beneficial to keep them full of internal links to different blog posts. This makes your site a destination. Your audience stay on your site for longer, clicking through to different posts and buying into you and your business in the long term.
Keeping consistent and posting frequently are both brilliant green lights for visitors and search engines.
4. Make the most of email
Email. The gold gal of digital marketing for any business.
With an average conversion rate of 1%, email marketing is definitely one for the top of your to do list.
I know, I know. Email marketing is not the most glamorous way to spend your time in your small business. For a long time I knew it was something I needed to work on but to be honest I was lazy. Now? I wish I had taken it more seriously sooner!
Much like your website, you own your space and content. You can arrive in your customers inbox without them having to seek you out or stumble across you. And the best bit? Your subscribers are already your cheerleaders. They’ve chosen to give you their email address. And today that means a lot more than it did 10 years ago. I mean, I’m certainly picky these days about who gets a hold of mine.
So, let’s make the most of that list with frequent emails and links to our website content.
5. It’s All about SEO
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is essentially the techniques we can implement to help search engines like Google to see our website as producing high quality, useful information for a searcher. The better your SEO, the more often you’ll be seen on Google - and the higher up you’ll appear in the results.
So, it’s pretty darn important. How many times have you told a friend to “just Google it”? It’s been my best friend since starting my business. Just think of all the thousands of people Googling things right now. We really want to capitalise on this.
6. Make it easy to share
Now, let’s make sure all your wonderful content is shareable. Because if it’s easy to share your content, guess what? People are more likely to share it and more people are going to read it.
There is often an easy setting to switch on in the back end of your website platform. For Squarespace users, there should be . To turn on Pinterest Save Buttons in Squarespace head to:
Settings > Marketing > Pinterest Save Buttons > Enable
Whatever you do, make sure you investigate that these settings are switched on. You don’t want to be missing out on free marketing from your visitors sharing with their networks.
7. Make the most of Facebook groups and forms
In the early days of my business, Facebook groups were an amazing place to connect with other business owners. In fact, I really enjoyed spending time in these groups. It became my daily routine. Sit down at the desk, check emails then log into Facebook for a bit of early morning networking. It never looked so good!
Here’s what I’d do:
provide useful content
chat to other people
reply to job offers
All this helped feed people back to my content and my services. I saw a big boost in site visitors in my analytics as the people I was engaging with clicked my links.
Bonus: I got to hang out with some lovely business owners. I’d highly recommend if you work from home - it’s a great way to socialise without having to leave the front door.
