Introduction
There is nothing more exciting that starting your own business. Your dreams have finally become a reality, and there is something incredibly satisfying about launching your website. Your hard work has finally paid off; you have the perfect website, which, let’s be honest, has taken time to design – from logos and brand colours to choosing the ideal layout. Launching your website somehow makes everything real.
There is just one issue; your site isn’t getting any traffic. And as we all know, the main objective of your site is to engage potential customers, and no matter how incredible your website is, without website traffic, that is impossible.
Fortunately, there are some simple, yet effective ways to increase your traffic without having to spend a fortune. Here are our top 5 recommendations:
Content, content, content!
We can’t stress this one enough. Having an optimised site is crucial to showing up in those all-important Google searches, and with a few tweaks, you can ensure you get the most out of your content.
Many businesses make the mistake of writing content for SEO (search engine optimisation) purposes instead of writing content for their customers. In other words, write for your customers, not for search engines.
Filling up your content with keywords won’t make for a great article. Nothing beats high-quality, original content. Search engines follow users, and if your content is valuable, you will increase your rankings as more users will view your site because you are offering them something they need.
Using keywords is an important aspect of content writing, but the trick is to use the right keywords! It is important to identify which ones to use. Fortunately, you can use sites like Keyword Tool, which are great for picking the best keywords, as you are able to see which words are popular and then work them into your content – just don’t overdo it! WordStream, is another great site that provides ideas for keywords based on your initial keyword search.
No one likes boring content, so it is important to plan your content in advance and ensure that it is relevant and consistent. Your objective is to create engaging and quality content making you the go-to place to be – so publishing a post once in a while isn’t going to cut it! Consistency is key!
Social Media
Having a website, as you know, is not necessarily going to generate traffic. Your potential customers need to know about you, and social media is the ideal marketing machine and a great way to drive traffic to your site. As Neil Patel says,” meet your customers where they like to hang out.”
Social media platforms are often underrated when it comes to generating traffic for your website. Take Instagram, for instance; it extends your reach across the globe and is expected to reach 1.2 billion users by 2023. Think about it; you only need to capture a fraction of that. Instagrammers also behave differently, they form connections with brands, and approximately 90% of Instagram users follow a brand.
Pinterest is another platform that is overlooked as it may just be “another” social media platform, but it is also a powerful visual search engine used by millions of people daily. With over 400 million active monthly users and monthly searches in excess of 2 billion, its another platform that can have a positive impact on your website traffic.
Facebook is the ideal platform for those CTAs (call to action buttons) and considering that there are 2.9 billion Facebook users, it definitely shouldn’t be ignored. Especially considering that 1.9 billion people use Facebook every day.
When making use of any form of social media, you always want to drive users back to your site, so you need to ensure that your website link is prominently displayed. Your content on social media shouldn’t necessarily be in the form of aggressive sales; it should be focused around creating interest in your brand and making users want to know more.
Content from your website can be shared on social media, so ensure you make it easy for your visitors to share your content via easily accessible social media buttons. This type of content can be in the form of long-form content, quotes, images, videos, or even infographics.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Away from your content, there are a host of other ways you can optimise your website for those search engine rankings. SEO is constantly evolving, and search engines like Google make a multitude of changes a year to their algorithms.
Search engines make use of a variety of ranking factors and algorithms so that they provide their users with the best possible results according to their search criteria, and you need to keep up to date with the latest trends and algorithm changes.
SEO is crucial for any website, so keep an eye out for our post next week, where we go into more detail about SEO and how it can benefit your business.
Responsive website
Having a responsive site is critical, as without it, you will be losing potential customers at a rapid rate. A responsive web design involves creating web pages that look good no matter what type of device is being used to view them.
A responsive web design automatically adjusts for all different screen sizes. It will automatically resize, shrink or enlarge your site to ensure it looks great on everything from desktops to tablets and phones. This is particularly important when it comes to mobile phones.
The majority of internet searches actually occur via mobiles as opposed to laptops. According to research, nearly 8 in 10 customers would stop engaging with content that doesn’t display well on their device.
To put it in perspective, in 2022, the number of smartphone users in the world today is 6.648 Billion, which translates to 83.32% of the world’s population owning a smartphone. In addition, if your website is not mobile optimised, you will also rank lower in search engine results.
Website Analysis
Understanding how your website performs and how users interact with your website is integral to your online strategy. There are many tools, and perhaps one of the most popular and well-known is Google analytics. These types of tools provide you with invaluable insights into your website, for example, how people use your website and how you can improve that user experience.
They are able to evaluate and measure how your marketing, content, and products are actually performing according to your users’ engagement. The biggest advantage is that they collect all the relevant data and sort it into actionable information.
Tools like Google Analytics provides various information, like how many visitors you have, how they found your site, and the number of views your pages have received. In addition, you can also gain a better understanding of your customer’s behavior in terms of your conversion rates, visitor’s demographic, traffic sources, bounce rates, the average time spent on your site as well as which keywords led the visitor to your site.
The most popular metrics that are used are as follows:
Tracking your visitors, as previously mentioned centers around how many visitors you have, page views, etc.
Tracking your traffic sources which, in simple terms, is the answer to, “How did they find me?”. This is important as you can identify if your traffic came via social media, searches, or paid advertisements.
Tracking your content is another vital insight as you will better understand how visitors to your site interact with your content. This helps you figure out what is and isn’t working.
Tracking conversions lets you know if your potential customers are actually buying once they land on your website.
Tracking mobile performance – as we mentioned earlier, having a responsive site is critical to your online success. This metric allows you to look at which devices are used to view your site and identify if certain devices are spending less time on your site than expected. For example, if your mobile user numbers are significantly low, you may want to double-check your site’s appearance on a mobile device.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are definitely ways you can improve your website traffic, but we often forget that old, non-digital marketing technique called “word of mouth.” So when starting a new business, ask family, friends, existing customers, and anyone else you can think of to visit your site, like, and share your content across their social media platforms.
Ask satisfied customers if they wouldn’t mind recommending your service or writing reviews; great reviews are the ideal way to build trust and gain new customers. And if you have a list of existing customers or potential leads, you can easily create a great email campaign letting them know you have launched your new website.
Join industry groups and participate in value-add conversations – build up your reputation before jumping into your sales pitch. Research is key, and when we talk about research, we are also referring to your competitors, keep up to date with what they are doing and what is working for them.
So, in summary –
- Make sure you post regular, quality content
- Utilise your social media platforms to drive traffic to your site
- Optimise your site for search engine rankings
- Ensure your site is responsive across all devices – your site should look great no matter the screen size
- Analyse your website to gain valuable insights
Lastly, you are going to need a bit of patience, website traffic doesn’t happen overnight!
