Drive Traffic to Your Website: 12 Essential Ways

Driving traffic to your website is more competitive than ever today. And the competition will just keep increasing. Take ecommerce for example.

• In 2019, ecommerce retail sales accounted for 14.1% of purchases worldwide
• In 2023, that number is expected to hit 22%
• By 2025, online purchases are expected to make up on quarter of all global purchases

Even if you aren’t in retail, there is no denying that people increasingly get information online and make their decisions based on that information before contacting businesses.

Now we could write a series of books about how to drive traffic to your website.  But in this article, we would like to lay out some must-use methods with which to begin.

Start with Analysis and Strategy

• To begin with, take a look at where you are and where you want to go. Just a few questions you will want answered are What is the traffic to your site? Where is it coming from? Where do people go when they leave your site? How long are they staying on each page? A good digital marketing agency or marketing consultant can list many others.
• But don’t stop at your own website. Also look at the amount of traffic your competitors generate and its flow.
• Know your longtime goals, because it is impossible to reach goals if you have not set any.
• Don’t get too alarmed if your competition has more website traffic than you do. All website traffic is not created equal. You must define the personas of your audience closely so you know who you want to attract. After all, there is no point driving people to your website who aren’t likely to convert.
• There are many analytical tools of course, but the place to start is always Google Analytics.

Advertise

This one is obvious, but there is no getting around that advertising can generate traffic very quickly. You have a lot of available options including advertising on search engine pages, display ads, social media ads and boosts and sponsored content.

Post Organic Social Media 

Even if you advertise on social media for fast results, you will still want to play the long game and also publish organic posts. Social media is a great way to connect with your customers. Advertising a special or sending customers to your website for more information on an intriguing topic can go a long way to increasing your traffic. So can partnering with social media influencers.

 

And don’t forget to follow related (but noncompetitive) accounts. Interact with likes and comments.

Optimize for Search

If you want to drive traffic to your website, of course you must do everything you can to optimize your site for search engines.

Following are a few quick tips.

Keywords

Select keywords for which your audience will search. Check Google Keyword Planner for high search, low competition keywords. And don’t overstuff your content with keywords, or Google will interpret it as spam.

Metadata

For people to find your site, it’s important to write effective title tags and meta descriptions. You should Include your primary keywords in your meta title. Write your title tag to attract attention and entice people to click. This is what comes up when people see your link come up in search.

Your meta description is a description of your content. This will also come up in search and help people determine whether or not they want to visit your site.  Also use important keywords in your meta description.

And don’t forget the meta titles, meta descriptions and alt text for your images.

URL

A basic to drive traffic to your website is to write a short URL for your content that contains your primary keyword.

Internal Linking

Link your content to related content on your site where it makes sense. It shows people where else they may want to visit on your site and it also helps search engines find your page.

External Linking

Link to relevant, high-authority pages. For example, you may want to cite a respected study to back up the credibility of your content.

Backlinks

You should have a backlink program where you build backlinks to your website from other sites. Quality matters. Some marketers post substandard content on external sites just for the backlinks. It is far better to have a smaller number of backlinks from quality content on authority sites.

Publish Fresh Content

Content marketing can be very effective in driving customers to your website. But you need a strategy across all your marketing channels not just your website. Integrate your content, so when you are focusing on a topic on your website, you reflect that in your social media and email campaigns.

Just throwing up a blog post now and then isn’t going to cut it. The foundation of content marketing is to publish content that your customers value, rather than content that just talks about how great your company is.

Here’s some things to consider:

• Videos are great for SEO, and they can be humanizing.
• Brainstorm how you can engage your customers rather than just writing at them. This could be anything from surveys to games.
• You will want to have various types of lead magnets. White papers are great, but don’t limit yourself.
• Invite guest bloggers, preferably influencers in your industry.

Page Speed

Nothing frustrates people more than slow loading speeds. There are tools to check this. Your audience will not stay long on your website if they have to drum their fingers while a page loads. Don’t make this kind of needless mistake when you are trying to drive traffic to your website.

Responsive Design

Your customers use all kinds of devices to access your website these days. Make sure your designer tests your site on phones and tablets not just on desktops and laptops. You want your users to be able to easily navigate your site.

Usability is also factored into Google’s algorithms. In fact, Google now primarily uses a websites’ mobile versions for ranking and indexing.

Umbrella Can Help You Drive Traffic to Your Website

This article barely scratches the surface on what you can do to increase traffic to your website. If you are not an expert, you may want to contact the experts at Umbrella Xact amp up your traffic. Call us for a free consultation.