You have your new website! It’s bright and shiny and it features all the best information about your business. Now, how do you get people to see it? Generating traffic to your site is the only way to generate business from your site.
Here is a list of proven ways to get traffic to and business from your website.
- SEO– Search engines follow specific algorithms to generate the lists of results for each search. Search engines, like Bing, Yahoo, and Google are constantly updating their algorithms to keep legitimate businesses in the results and keep scammers off the list. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is all about getting your website to show up early in the search results list. Sounds simple enough, but there are many things your site needs in order for the Search Engines to find it.
- Keywords: determine the best keywords for your market and your site
- Analyze the data: use analytics to determine the demographics of those who visit your site, the length of stay, repeat visitors, and any other data you can gather
- Tags: make sure that every page has a unique title and meta tag and every image a unique alt-tag
- Submit your site: Submit your site to search engine directories to be indexed—this improves your chances of making the first page of results
- Quality Content- The content on your website should do more than just promote your product or service. Engage your site visitors, and get the visitors to do more than just a “drive by” of your site. Offer interesting, compelling content about more than your product or service; write about your customers and their stories; write case studies about how your company or product makes a difference to people. Write about current trends or controversial content. You want browsers to become visitors to become guests of your site.
- Paid advertising- Bing, Google, and Yahoo (the major search engines) all have paid advertising opportunities. You can pay for advertising in several ways, with your ads showing in a variety of places, for example, search ads, placement ads, and display ads. One popular method allows you to set your own advertising budget: PPC, or pay per click, offers ad placement and you only pay for each click made on your ad. Social media platforms, like Facebook, twitter, and Pinterest, also offer paid advertising.
- Social Media- speaking of social media platforms, Facebook, twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google + are only a few of the social media venues where you can create a presence that will send visitors to your website. Create a page, or a board, and keep it populated with interesting and trending links to get those “likes” and get visitors to check out your business website.
- Blogs—yours and others. Write a blog. Blog posts allow you to post valuable content that may not be specific to your product or service. You can blog about the latest fashion trends, the current celebrity couple, or even the weather on your site. The more compelling content you have, be it in blog form or in the product or service information, the more likely you are to draw in new potential customers.
- The host of Google Tools—Google provides a huge array of tools available to any business website.
Tools like Google Analytics helps you collect and interpret the data about visitors to your website. Google Adwords offers keyword search and strategy. Google Webmaster provides support, learning and resources to help you improve the traffic to your website. Be sure, too, to create a Google + page for your business. One of the best tools from Google is Google My Business. With this tool, your business Google+ listing appears when people do a local search using Google or Maps. - Branding—create a brand for your business. A unique logo or image that represents you and your business makes you easy to recognize and gets attention. Use the same brand in all your venues—email, social media, and advertising—to gain business. Include your website address in your brand image to generate even more traffic to your site.
- Reciprocal Linking and Back Linking—Linking your site to reputable sites in similar business or geographic area improves your status with search engines. Create links that are relevant to your customers and readers by guest blogging, forum posting, and linking news articles to your site. Reciprocate by linking other businesses to your site, for example, a hair salon might have a link to a fashion boutique (and vice versa) so customers of the salon will be referred to the boutique.
All of these tips are low cost ways to market your website—to increase traffic which can lead to increased business. A beautiful website is only a decoration unless it brings customers.