Last Updated on October 25, 2017 by
There are no ifs, ands or buts about it – you have to increase your website traffic if you want to succeed going into 2016 and beyond as a business owner. Now, to begin with, is it safe for us to assume that if you already have a website up and running, you understand the importance and value of web traffic?
Let’s make an analogy here: The way we see it, Web Traffic is to Internet Marketing as Location is to Real Estate…in other words, it’s the ONLY thing that really matters. Think about it: If you can’t generate targeted visitors to your site, you won’t make any money through sales.
Your Website CAN Make You Money
But all is not lost! We’re here to help you understand the dynamics behind this whole approach so you CAN make money through an effective web presence. In our experience, it’s normally the owner or designer of the website who is responsible for driving web traffic to it. The chief ingredient in the web traffic generation soup is the search engine. Can you utilize the power of advertising? Sure, but it’s going to cost you. By tapping into the myriad of possibilities using search engines to generate targeted – i.e. people interested in your service or product – web traffic, you will be taking advantage of the least-expensive method available.
Don’t be Just Another Pretty Face
You know what pains us the most when we work with prospective clients? The fact that so many of their website people don’t understand the importance of search engine visibility…an element that eventually leads to web traffic. By placing more importance on creating a “pretty” site, they lose focus on the primary factor here, which should be search engine placement.
Let’s get into the meat and potatoes, so to speak, of what this blog is all about by studying:
Six Ways to Increase Website Traffic
1. Generating Organic Traffic
What have we been stressing in the opening statement above? It’s all about website visibility. First, let us explain what we mean by “organic visitors”: This is the kind of audience containing ideal subjects for analyzing the psychological tendencies of customers. Regardless of what they’re searching for, these people refuse to scroll down and usually click on only the first two to three links, and the bad news about this is that the kind of impatient demographic we’re talking about here makes for a large quantity of your audience today.
The good news? Your website can be amongst the top three these people first come in contact with. It’s all about website visibility. From identifying the exact amount of organic traffic to identifying relevant keywords connected to your particular business, there are a plethora of avenues to explore here. Well-written and strategically-placed SEO articles also harness the power of attracting more organic traffic.
If you’re seriously looking to grow your customer base, this first approach is the primary element you should consider…and we’ll be touching on certain aspects of it later on.
2. Blogging and Content Marketing
As one of the best Internet marketing strategies we stand behind to increase website traffic, blogging and content marketing helps you:
- Get traffic
- Keep loyal readers
- Make your business visible to prospects
- Make a personal connection
- Close sales
According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Marketing Report 2012 and Science of Blogging 2010:
• Approximately 57-percent of marketers acquired customers through blogging.
• Frequency of blogging impacts customer acquisition; some 92-percent of companies that blogged multiple times a day acquired a customer through this process.
• About 46-percent of people read blogs more than once a day.
• Some 81-percent of marketers rated their blog as “useful” or better.
You only have seconds to grab someone’s attention before he or she reads your content, so it’s essential to get things like headlines, numbered lists and statistics right. Beyond these elements, it is vital to understand that your website content approach can trigger immediate trust or distrust.
In this ever-evolving world overrun by social media applications, sharable content is king. We’ve already covered why content marketing is so important when increasing website traffic, but your content should also be easily sharable so that your readers can do the job of spreading the word for you…this encompasses a good headline and perhaps an interesting image, as well as a captivating lead-in. All of these elements create a perfect bite-sized chunk of an article that others can share through Facebook, Twitter and other platforms.
Also, you should be looking to offer long, comprehensive articles in addition to shorter, to-the-point variants – let the content’s subject dictate the size, and don’t spend too long on a single point (don’t be too brief when detail is needed, either).
3. Boosting Traffic from Social Media
When we speak of ways to increase website traffic through social media channels, we’re referring to five crucial approaches:
- Building a fan base
- Social media management
- Website social media optimization
- Social media sharing
- Social media paid advertisements
We here at Multiverse Media Group have used the power of social media for targeting just the right audience for our clients in their respective industries, made possible by avenues such as Facebook Ads. Further, using Google Analytics demographic and interest data, we have managed to create remarketing and targeting campaigns for the targeted audiences in addition to visitors that have arrived on these clients’ websites.
What are we getting at here? Building a large fan base on social media networking sites such as Pinterest and Facebook allows you to construct loyalty patterns and acquire return visits from your users.
MVMG Tip: Once your followers see an update or announcement from your social media profile and clicked on it – especially if it contained a link – you have just gained traffic. Now imagine publishing updates from your social media sites on a DAILY basis…which could easily translate into daily website visits.
4. E-mail List Building and Marketing
Put succinctly, e-mail marketing uses electronic mail to distribute your marketing message or build relationships. How is it applied, exactly? Organizations and marketers utilize the strategy to build brand loyalty while applying it for acquisitions, conversions, advertisements, communications, support and more.
Believe it or not, e-mail still remains one of the most preferred methods of communication with regard to the majority of consumers; if you’re still a bit hesitant about what we’re saying about e-mail, consider these eye-opening statistics:
- E-mail marketing boasts an ROI (Return on Investment) of 4,300-percent.
- Some 66-percent of in-house marketers rate e-mail as having “excellent” or “good” ROI characteristics.
- Companies that use e-mail service providers are more likely to be satisfied with their e-mail marketing than those that do not.
- E-mail is the most popular activity on Smartphones among users 18 to 44 years of age.
- Some 64-percent of decision-makers read their e-mail via mobile devices.
MVMG Tip: Before you even begin an e-mail marketing campaign to increase your website traffic, sales and conversions, you should consider building an e-mail list first.
5. Ensure Your Site is Responsive and Fast
Remember the days when Internet browsing was executed only on desktop PCs? It’s difficult for us to, as well. Today, more people than ever before are using mobile devices to access the Internet, but if you force your visitors to careen and twist their way around your site, you’re basically asking them to look elsewhere. The primary thing to remember here is that you want to ensure your website is accessible and comfortably viewable across a range of devices – including smaller Smartphones.
Likewise, the days of waiting 30 seconds for a webpage to load are gone – if your site is taking until eternity to load, something is wrong and your “bounce rate” will skyrocket. By making sure your pages are as technically optimized as possible – and this encompasses image file sizes, page structure and functionality of third-party plug-ins – the faster your site will load…and this is GOOD.
MVMG Fun Fact: According to a study conducted by Elizabeth Sillence that asked people to find websites about hypertension, 94-percent cited “design problems” as the main reason why they distrusted a website.
6. Tag and Describe Articles Appropriately
Here, we will take a look at the tags, description and metadata of website content/articles and how this affects the way it turns up in searches. Beyond assisting people with finding articles or information they require, a fully-functioning and successful website must ensure:
- Tags are in place and links are unbroken.
- Sitemap files are submitted to Google so that the site shows up in Google’s search engines.
- Keywords are used effectively (Search Engine Optimization).
- Keywords flow naturally with text.
- Keywords don’t only get inserted into headings and page names but into “meta tags” (the software code that website visitors don’t see but search engines do) as well.
- Keywords aren’t overdone or “overstuffed,” as this will result in a very low search ranking for the website.
Let’s face it – you may have a product you’re really proud of, and you believe it should speak for itself…but when it really boils down, you know you still need to get customers to your website. This is especially true if you’re running an e-commerce operation. When it comes to ethically increasing website traffic, the concept of content marketing in particular is a quality game, not a quantity game. We can tell you that if your site boasts poor content, people won’t bother reading it or sharing it, which is basically the entire point of building an online presence.
When you consider the content on your site, constantly ask yourself if you would actually take 10 minutes out of your day to read it and/or share it with others. If you can’t see yourself taking either of those actions, then you really need to survey your website strategy again.
