So you've got a great product or service and designed your website. Now, all you need to do is figure out how to get traffic to your website so sales roll in, right?!
From social media to non-traditional marketing hacks, I'm here to help you figure out what it really takes to increase website traffic on your website.
So what is website traffic?
First off, Website traffic means how many users visit your website. And the more website traffic you get, the more opportunities you have to convert your audience.
But you’ll often see that with more traffic comes lower conversion rates. This could be because traffic can be not as targeted. This means that though more people are coming to your site, they might not all be highly qualified leads likely to purchase your product or service.
Here are some of the best ways to increase website traffic in 2022:
Optimize your website for search
Find keywords that represent your niche to base your blog content and store pages on. Typically, you’ll choose to focus on one or two main keywords per webpage.
In the beginning, focus on keywords that have the search volume of under 10,000 searches a month. After a few months of creating blog content and optimizing product pages, you can then focus on going after higher volume keywords.
To get good website traffic you need to build a strong foundation of relevant keywords first. To do this, host a blog on your website so that the keywords used can drive organic traffic to your website.
Submit your site to search engines
Also helpful for SEO, you can request that search engines to crawl and index your site, which increases your odds at appearing on results pages for relevant searches.
For Google: Submit your site via Search Console
Check out your competition
It's always good to be a little curious about your competitors. Understanding what their traffic sources are can help you understand which marketing channels you should prioritize.
If you see that Google tends to be the top choice, then you need to focus on Google Ads and SEO. If Facebook is the top website then you know you’ll need to create Facebook ads. Or if a niche blog is the highest source of traffic you can then focus on building out an outreach strategy to collaborate with that blog.
Drive traffic with social media Facebook
While Facebook’s organic reach continues to decrease that doesn't mean you can't get website traffic from Facebook groups, Facebook Ads, Messenger, and of course your own business page.
Store owners can promote products in buy and sell Facebook groups too, to get website traffic from people who are interested in buying the sort of products you offer.
Instagram is becoming a great marketing channel for online retailers because of its business-friendly features and large audience size.
You can boost website traffic by creating traffic ads. And you can add links to Instagram Stories, posts, and photos. And best of all, you can tag your products directly in the posts you publish and have them link back to your website, so that your audience can literally shop your feed.
Optimize your best traffic source
Check out your analytics and find out what your best traffic source is. To figure out the best source(s), consider:
Which sources send the highest volume of traffic
Which sources send the highest-converting traffic
Which sources send the most engaged traffic
From there, determine why those sources are so effective. Then double down on it. This is optimizing.
Start guest blogging
Guest blogging can work either by you submitting posts to other sites, or accept posts from other contributors to post on your own blog. Most do both as a collaborative effort which helps to promote you to each others' audiences.
To find blogs to collaborate with, search for popular blogs in your niche and then reach out to those with active, engaged audiences and posts that get a lot of attention.
Add new content constantly
One of Google’s ranking factors is how fresh content is, so it’s a good idea to update your website on a regular basis; even daily if possible!
And this isn’t just a good move for SEO. It also gives your audience a reason to keep coming back to your website. If they know you tend to post useful content at a regular schedule, they'll be more likely to come back and check for updates.
Add social share buttons
Social share buttons should be added to shareable pages like blog posts, product pages and images, and other website content. These social share buttons make it easy for users to post your content (with links!), giving you social proof and traffic.
When their network sees these posts, they can click through to your site.
Try email marketing
While email marketing may seem dated or spammy, it's one of the only marketing channels you can have complete control over. And building a list for email marketing can take a long time, so it’s important to start on day one.
With email marketing, you’ll be able to keep driving website traffic to your store as long as your customers stay subscribed.
Get into Facebook Groups
Facebook Groups have become really popular recently, and ecommerce brands are getting in on the opportunity to get involved in these communities.
Search for groups relevant to your niche, and join conversations when you have value to add. Just like with forums, it’s important to avoid being overly promotional. Relationships first, traffic second.
Participate in forums
Forums are online communities where people ask questions and have discussions about any given topic. Some popular ones are Reddit, Quora, and Yahoo Answers. But they can come in many forms and these discussions, groups, and threads talk about basically every topic possible.
When engaging in a forum or community group, make sure to not be too salesy. You need to add value, build relationships, and earn respect before you promote your own business.
Collaborate with other brands
Brand partnerships are a great way to boost the credibility of your brand and also put you in front of a targeted audience. Collaborating with other businesses or entrepreneurs means you have a variety of channels through which new audiences can reach your website though.
And it could be as simple as a cross-promotional post on social media or a brief email - with links to your site of course!
Are you struggling to get traffic to your website?
Check out my web design and social media marketing services to find out how we can get you noticed online!
