Whether you work for a multinational corporation or are launching a home-based business, there is one certainty. You want more customers. To do that, you need to get your name in front of people online. While paid ads drive traffic, the results may not always be worth the expense. Even if you do have a paid ad campaign, it helps to support this with additional methods of driving traffic. There are plenty of free, organic methods of boosting web traffic; it simply takes a little effort and creativity on your part to make it happen. Here are five options you may want to try.
Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
Today there is no room for websites designed to look good on computers but fall short on mobile. As of January 2018, nearly 52% of the market share for web traffic originates from a mobile device–add in the number of people who browse from tablets and you have a resounding majority of your visitors who will be using a handheld device, not a desktop, to visit your site. In addition, and perhaps even more importantly, you will never rank as high on Google and the other search engines if you don’t follow mobile-friendly guidelines. Check every page of your site using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test and view the site on your own device to assure things look good to a “real person,” too.
Add Additional Media to Your Portfolio
Today’s most successful websites are more than just blocks of text and an occasional picture. People are often attracted to pictures, videos, and interactive media more than just words. Are you using YouTube to share video content? Have you considered creating compact, shareable infographics that benefit the industry at large? Make sure you are creating content your audience will want to share. From podcasting to eBook creation, there are many ways that you can build traffic while creating something inherently useful for your target audience.
Blogs and Other Dynamic Content
Develop and maintain your blog. As part of your SEO strategy, blogging or otherwise creating dynamic content is vital. Not only do you put more content, likely including keywords, out there for the search engines to crawl, but it gives your page something new and fresh on a regular basis–which is also crucial in SEO. When you create your content, try to produce useful information that serves your visitors–not just yourself. Your target visitors can get to your site and grow interest to your business when they search and land on your blog posts.
Social Media
Link sharing on social media is likely already part of your traffic-building efforts. However, there is much more to it than that. Be active on your own profiles and create a sense of community for those who visit. You’ll drive traffic while at the same time improve your reputation amongst social media users. Don’t get stuck on just one platform either–sites like LinkedIn, Instagram, Reddit, and Pinterest can all be just as useful as Facebook or Twitter.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging, or having articles or blogs posted on other sites, serves a dual purpose. Ideally, you’ll be putting links to your own site out there “in the wild” which can improve your search engine ranking. However, you’re also awarded the opportunity to showcase your expertise and build authority within your industry. Here’s an example of a guest blog that worked well for us and its author. Guest blogging is a fantastic way to reach new visitors and give them an excellent first impression of your company, who may have never found your site otherwise.
Increasing traffic to your website is not something that happens overnight–it is a continuous process. Working with an expert can be a great way to develop a strategy that will build traffic today and continue growth tomorrow. Sustained growth, above all else, is the ultimate goal when it comes to succeeding online.
