You have your new website up and running, and it looks fantastic. You’ve spent hours upon hours creating compelling copy and visually appealing images that represent your business perfectly. But now what? How do you get people to see it?
The key to any successful website is generating traffic and grow your business online. Without traffic, your website is merely a decoration. There are several methods for driving traffic to your website, but before we dive into them, let’s first talk about the most critical aspect of getting traffic: Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Search Engines
SEO is all about getting your website to show up early in the search results list. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing use specific algorithms to generate lists of results for each search. They are constantly updating these algorithms to keep legitimate businesses in the results and scammers off the list.
To improve your SEO, determine the best keywords for your market and your site. Put your website to work for you! 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. Make sure that every page has a unique title and meta tag, and every image has a unique alt-tag. Finally, submit your site to search engine directories to be indexed—this improves your chances of making the first page of results.
Now that we’ve covered SEO let’s dive into other ways to drive traffic to your website:
Quality Content
The content on your website should do more than just promote your product or service. It should engage your site visitors and get them 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 and then guests of your site.
Paid Advertising
The major search engines—Bing, Google, and Yahoo—all offer 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 advertising budget: pay-per-click (PPC) 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
Create a presence on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google, where you can 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
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 product or service information, the more likely you are to draw in new potential customers.
Google Tools
Google provides a vast array of tools available to any business website. Tools like Google Analytics help 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 to create a Google Business page for your business. One of the best tools from Google is Google My Business. With this tool, your business’s Google+ listing appears when people do a local search using Google or Maps.
To summarize, marketing a new website is crucial to its success. By implementing a combination of search engine optimization, quality content creation, paid advertising, social media, Google tools, branding, and reciprocal linking and backlinking, you can increase traffic to your site and generate more business. Remember to keep your design simple and mobile-friendly for a better user experience.