So you’ve invested time, money and a lot of energy into getting your website set up, now how do you get people to visit it?
Increased website traffic can help you gain more leads, stand out from competitors and improve sales. There are a lot of ways to help increase the number of visitors to your website but here are some of our top tips:
Utilise your social media pages
This step may seem obvious but take advantage of social media and encourage your followers to visit your website. Social media is said to be one of the top sources for generating website traffic.
Include links on your social media posts wherever relevant. These links could be to find out more about your product or service, to read a blog post, to sign up to something or anything else. The goal is to encourage followers to want to visit your website and the best way to do this is by offering them something of value, like information or free downloadable content.
You should also make it easy for your website visitors to share content they like from your site to their social media. Include social media share buttons at the end of your blog posts to avoid missed share opportunities.
Build your content!
Providing good quality content on your website is a great way to increase your number of visitors. A blog focused on your company and the industry you’re in will provide value for your site visitors and encourage them to stay longer. The more helpful and relevant the blog content is, the easier it will be to build trust with among your potential customers. Make sure to include at least one image in your blog post!
It’s not enough to create a great piece of content and just hope that someone stumbles across it – you need to put in the work. Promote your blog posts on whichever social media you’re active on.
If its relevant to the industry you’re in, then make sure you’re using LinkedIn to promote your articles & blog posts. It’s an excellent platform for long form content and not only will it help increase your website traffic, it will also boost your profile or company page on LinkedIn too.
Take a shot at guest blogging. This is where you reach out to reputable sites and ask if you can write a guest blog for their website. This allows you to get your brand in front of a new and relevant audience.
Focus on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search engines like Google decide whether or not to rank your site on their results page based primarily off of words and text use on your site. The quality of your website design, content, and images also comes into account in this ranking. This is because Google want to provide users with the top quality and most relevant websites. Google’s result page shows 7 to 10 organic search result links to websites, as well as a few paid ad links.
This essentially means that SEO is the process of improving your company’s website so that it shows up more often in users search engine results. To test your current page ranking in the search results you can head over to Keyword Rank Checker.
There are a few things you can do to improve user experience on your website.
- Break up long blocks of text into paragraphs to make it easier for users to digest.
- Include videos on your website. On average users will spend 2.6x more time on webpages that include video.
- Use sub-headers and bullet points. Make it easy for users to scan your website and find the information they’re looking for. Otherwise they’ll just get frustrated and leave.
- Add images! They help improve user experience, increase social shares, and conversion rates.
- Remember that white space is a good thing! Too much text and images can overwhelm visitors and make it harder for them to take in your content.
- Check your websites loading speeds using the free PageSpeed tool. Site speed has a big impact on how Google ranks your website and how likely users are to stay on your site. You should be aiming to score above 85 in both mobile and desktop.
Take a look at your website from a first time visitors point-of-view (or maybe get a friend to do it for you). Is it easy to navigate? Can you find what you’re looking for without having to search for it? Is the next step you should take obvious?
When someone visits your website they shouldn’t have to think about what their next move is, it should be immediately clear to them through clear call to actions. A call to action (CTA) is a prompt on a website that tells the user to take some desired action, like ‘Request an Appointment’ or ‘Buy Now’.
Run paid ads
Another way to increase your website traffic is through paid ads. Pay-per-click Ads, Retargeting Ads, and Social Media Ads are an example of some popular advertising strategies. Running paid ads is a quick low effort way to increase traffic to your website.
Pay-per-click ads are an online advertising model in which advertisers pay each time a user clicks on one of their online ads. These ads appear when people search for things online using a search engine like Google. The businesses running them are only charged when a user actually clicks on their ad. Ads are placed at the top and bottom of the search page. Ads are a useful way of ranking higher on competitive results pages, but unsurprisingly high ranking organic search results are much more effective.
Retargeting is a form of online marketing that targets users who have already visited your website and displays appropriate advertisements to them (Darren explains it in this short video). The average online customer journey is not as straightforward and linear as you may think. A significant 96% of people who visit a website leave it without completing the action you want them to take, which could be signing up to a newsletter, making a purchase, or anything else. It’s highly likely you have been the subject of retargeting in the past. You may have visited a website and left only to see an ad for that website and its product or service a short while later.
Lastly, paid social media ads are a great way to create highly targeted campaigns. Find the platform that best suits your business and is most relevant to your audience. There’s Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn YouTube, and more.
Try implementing some of these tips and you’ll see a difference in your website traffic!
