Ask a website owner what he’d like most for his website, and he will probably reply: “more traffic”.
As an SEO freelancer my goal is also to bring more targeted traffic to my clients’ website. Fortunately, there are many ways you can increase traffic on your website. In today’s post, I’ll be going to look at these I consider the most effective.
1. Start a blog
My first recommendation for any website is to start a blog. No matter if you have a company website or an e-shop, the blog is a really important part of your company’s online marketing strategy. It can help you to:
- Increase website traffic – each blog post is another opportunity for a new user to find your company’s website. Companies that have an active blog have 434% more pages indexed by Google than those without a blog.
- Generate leads – your blog subscribers could be your future customers.
- Improve website rankings – each blog post is an opportunity to include more unique content and more keywords to your website. And search engines like content and keywords.
- Build credibility and trust – having a company blog is a way to share your knowledge and expertise in your industry. Show the world what you know and what you can do.
- Establish a dialogue with your users – the blog is the place where your users and potential customers can ask you questions, voice concerns, interact with you.
Your blog should be located in a subdirectory of your main domain (example: www.mywebsite.com/blog/).
2. Start a forum
The forum is another way to put more fresh content on your website.
An active and frequently updated forum can help you to quickly rank for long-tail keywords. It can also help you to decrease your site’s bounce rate, increasing time-on-site, as well as building a community.
But there’s one catch: you need an active forum. So before starting a forum, make sure that you have enough time and recourse to moderate the community.
3. Start a niche-specific Facebook group
A lot of companies have official Facebook pages where their customers can ask questions and get support. But official Facebook pages can become very annoying when companies use them only to advertise their own products.
In addition to your company’s Facebook page, you could create a Facebook group, that is related to your niche business and where people can discuss and share news related to your industry, but not necessary to your company and products.
4. Promote your blog posts
You probably spend a lot of time writing good blog posts, but what do you to promote this content? After all, even great articles need proper promotion.
Here are some ideas about how to promote and get more readers (and website visits) for your blog:
- Share links to your blog posts in related social groups,
- Include links to your blog posts in your e-mailing campaigns,
- Start a newsletter dedicated to your blog,
- Submit your blog posts to Tumblr,
- Submit your posts to Reddit,
- Link to other relevant posts on your blog – when you write a blog article, be sure to link to other relevant posts your readers may find helpful.
5. Guest post on relevant niche websites
Before you ask – no, guest blogging is not dead and if you do it properly it won’t get you a Google penalty. Even though Matt Cutts officially announced that guest “blogging is done”, there are still valid reasons to do guest blogging.
One of these reasons is to increase traffic and brand awareness.
But this technique is successful only if you guest post on relevant, high-quality sites that have a lot of niche-targeted traffic. When you publish a guest post, you assume that website visitors will be interested in the subject and read your article, then they will click on your link, visit your website and eventually buy your product. Otherwise, you’ll be wasting your time.
6. Optimize your existing blog posts
Are your existing article optimized for search engines and appealing to readers?
Every blog post contains several areas that require special attention and care: blog title, introduction, sub-headings, relevant images, and others. By incorporating these must-have elements of the optimized blog post, your blog articles will:
- attract and engage more users,
- get more conversions,
- increase their visibility on search engines.
And for more useful tips, you could also read my article How to write SEO Friendly Blog Posts.
7. Banner ads on relevant websites
Display campaigns are a powerful source of new traffic.
Traditionally it is considered as a paid traffic channel, but if you don’t want to reach for your credit card, you can negotiate a partnership with the publisher’s website.
8. Review your targeted keywords
Make sure you have every relevant keyword you can think of on your site. This doesn’t mean that you have to target the same keyword throughout every page of the website. Each page is an opportunity to generate more traffic for a different keyword. Map each targeted keyword to a relevant page and focus on optimizing this page for its keyword.
And when I’m saying “optimizing for a keyword”, I’m not talking old-school keyword spamming. I’m talking about focusing on topical content; and making sure you have the chance of being found for all your relevant keywords, no matter how obscure they may be.
9. Don’t forget about Email Marketing
Email marketing is still a powerful traffic channel. With an effective email marketing strategy, you could instantly see a significant increase in traffic. Target your emailing campaigns to the right audience and don’t spam!
10. Be active on social media
Some companies consider that social media can’t bring qualified traffic to their websites. If you also think that, think again!
Social media is not only Facebook and Twitter. Today there are many industry-specific social media platforms and channels.
For example, you could become a member of Facebook and LinkedIn groups dedicated to your business niche. Comment in the group discussions; offer valuable advice and information to build relationships and drive traffic to your site.
Be sure to include links back to your site in every comment you post.
11. Be active on YouTube
If you don’t have the possibility to record your own videos and start your own YouTube channel, you could simply comment on the most popular videos from your niche.
YouTube drives the most engaged traffic out of all social media sites, with an average of
12. Invite famous bloggers to guest post on your site
In addition to posting content to other blogs, invite people in your niche to blog on your own site. Most likely they will share or link to their guest article on their own blogs or twitter feeds. Which could bring new readers to your site?
13. Regularly comment on the biggest blogs and websites in your industry
Similar to guest blogging, blog commenting is an old technique that doesn’t have weight in SEO anymore.
But if it’s done in the right way, it can still send high-quality traffic to your website. Find the biggest and most popular new websites dedicated to your industry. Regularly read their articles. Comment on the articles. Don’t forget to include the link to your website in your comment or member profile.
14. Join blogging communities
Blogging networks are a great way to network with other bloggers, and to cross-promote each other’s content.
Even though I didn’t speak a lot about SEO through the article, most of the above-mentioned tactics can be considered as ‘essential’ SEO practices.
Others are more related to social media marketing and paid to advertise. The right approach would be to use these traffic sources in combination. This will allow you to diversify your traffic sources across multiple channels and make your website less vulnerable to any algorithm changes.
