What’s the single most important ingredient for the success of any business?
If you ask a business owner, the answer is likely to be “more customers”. More traffic on your website is one way to bring in potential customers. Check out these 7 awesome tips to boost your website traffic:
1. Variety is enticing
One of the most passionately waged debates currently in vogue is the question of ‘longform’ or ‘shortform’ content. Is the longer, more in-depth form of content better or is the shorter, more ‘bite-sized’ form of content more worthy of your marketing efforts?
Opinions abound on this topic, and strongly held views are asserted by proponents on either side of the debate. In reality, both ‘longform’ and ‘shortform’ content are equally valuable — provided that you know where, when and how to use each.
It’s important to vary the length and format of your content to make it as appealing as possible to a wide range of readers with different preferences. Create a mix of shorter, news-based articles with longer more in-depth pieces. Add video, infographics and data-driven pieces for maximum impact.
2. Yes, you do have to advertise
Digital advertising provides the opportunity to be highly engaging with your target audience. Paid search, social media advertising and display advertising should all be part of your mix.
Compared to offline advertising, Digital campaigns have greater transparency, allowing you to adjust your cost easily based on performance.
Building more traffic to your site will also result in an almost instant increase in sales. Which is why Google Adwords is such a popular tool. This involves the use of high commercial intent keywords as part of your paid search strategies. Competition for prime search terms can be fierce and expensive, but results are immediate and the payoffs huge.
3. Get proactive with Social Media
One of the best ways to increase traffic to your website is to use social media channels to promote your content. But you need to be pro-active.
For Business-to-Business niches, Twitter is ideal for short, snappy links, whereas Google+ or Facebook Business page promotions can help get your site into personalized search results. If you’re a Business-to-Consumer product company, image-heavy social sites like Pinterest and Instagram might offer better traction.
4. Write irresistible headlines
When it comes to getting your content shared, your headline is key. In the advertising world, it’s commonly agreed that the headline is responsible for about 90% of an advert’s effectiveness.
Without a compelling headline, even the most comprehensive blog post will go unread. This is why you need to make sure that all your headlines are useful, urgent, unique, and ultra-specific.
5. Pay attention to On-Page SEO
Optimizing content for search engines is a valuable and worthwhile practice that produces disproportionate results.
Here are a few simple rules to follow: make use of image alt text; create internal links to new content; use meta descriptions. On-page SEO is an easy way to boost your organic traffic and page rankings.
6. Post content to LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional social network with more than 562 million users in more than 200 countries.
As a valuable publishing platform in its own right, LinkedIn has become so much more than a means of finding a job. Which means you should be posting content to LinkedIn on a regular basis.
Many businesses ignore the LinkedIn platform simply because they don’t understand how powerful it can be for exposing and growing their businesses. While social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are more geared towards social networking, LinkedIn is more geared towards business connections. This makes it an ideal platform to share information, market products and services.
7. Incorporate video into your Content Strategy
Data shows that information retention is significantly higher for visual material than it is for text. Video can be a valuable asset in both attracting new visitors and making your site more engaging.
It’s been predicted that video content will be the driving force behind 85% of search traffic by 2019.
— Source: Cisco.com (pdf)
These are only some of the best strategies you can use to drive traffic to your website — there are many more. Getting more engagement on a website takes hard work and dedication and knowing where to start is half the battle. Implementing a mix of these 7 strategies will produce rapid improvements in your website traffic.