The online marketplace is more competitive than ever, and because of this, many businesses are finding it increasingly more difficult to drive traffic to their sites. There are, however, steps you can take to increase the number of visitors to your website. Below are seven suggestions. Some will yield more immediate results, while others will give you pointers as to how you can adjust your marketing strategies to attract a greater number of customers.
Create More Relevant Content
When writing content, whether it is for your site, social media posts or emails, you need to ensure that it remains relevant to your business. Is it addressing questions that your customers will be asking? Is it tackling subjects that your target audience will actually be interested in?
Don’t feel restricted when you write content. If the article needs to be longer, for example, make it as long as it needs to be to address the interests of the reader and function as a worthwhile, comprehensive piece of writing. A headline that immediately states the piece’s relevance to your audience will keep the reader engaged once they have landed on the page. Finally, the content needs to be timely. It should feel like it has been written right now, placed in the context of wider events and developments within your industry.
Write SEO-Friendly Content
Of course, creating relevant content is not just about good writing. You also need to grasp and implement the mechanics of SEO. Before you come up with a list of keywords for your content, you need to consider user intent. This is what the user has in mind when they are typing a search query, and it usually falls into one of three categories: do something, know something, or go somewhere.
Once you have established your user intent, you can begin to list effective keywords to include in your content. Successful SEO optimization also involves using a variation of your keyword(s) in the page title, H1 header, and image alt tags. You should also be using long-tail keywords rather than broad keywords. These tend to be specific to your business, with a lower search volume and therefore less competition.
Create Videos
With search and social engines now preferring video, webinars and videos specific to your written content are a must. Create short videos that complement your writing and embed them alongside it. Upload them to YouTube, ensuring each video’s title and tags match the keywords for your content page, and you should receive search traffic from there as well as search engines.
Engage with Influencers in Blog Posts
This is a smart and easy way of spreading the word about your blog. If you quote someone in a blog post, make sure that you tag them in tweets (using @) when promoting the post. If someone is already demonstrating interest in your posts, contact them and try to build a relationship. See how you can help each other. Perhaps they could write a post for you and then promote it to other contacts they have, thereby driving extra traffic to your site.
Guest-Post on Other Sites
Similarly, guest-posting on other sites is an excellent way of spreading awareness about your business. Becoming a contributor to other relevant sites will help drive traffic to your page and make your business a more familiar, authoritative name among users. Make sure that the content you are writing for other sites is genuinely good, rather than it just linking to your pages and advertising yourself. You want to maintain the respect of other bloggers and be invited back to write again.
Ensure Your Stores and Shops Are Listed and Up to Date
With 76% of people who conduct a local search on their smartphone visiting a physical place within 24 hours, and 28% of those searches resulting in a purchase, you want to make your business as easy to find as possible.
You can do this by having your location details listed across multiple different platforms, such as Google (Google My Business, Google Maps, Google+), Foursquare and Bing.
It’s vital for shops to do this, as 40% of searches have a local intent, and it plays a big role in giving potential customers all the necessary details for planning their visit.
Not only will you be accessing that mobile traffic, but having a Google My Business listing that is up to date will help you to appear on the search engine results pages. In particular, you will appear in the ‘Places’ section alongside competitors for ‘near me’ searches. This also allows you to compete for the attention of customers looking for more general items.
Create an Email List
Email marketing may be more traditional than content marketing, but it can still be highly effective. A reminder about a new product or service could effectively boost online traffic to your site. Just remember not to bombard your mailing list with constant emails, and make sure that what you are sending is relevant. You do not need to update everyone about every single development, just pick a few key things to inform people about.
Conclusion
Increasing your online traffic can be accomplished using a variety of methods. Some are more straightforward changes you can implement, such as ensuring your location details are listed, or ensuring that your content is more SEO-friendly. Other tactics such as building relationships with bloggers and guest-posting on other sites can be a longer process, but are ultimately effective and worthwhile ways of making more people aware of your business and encouraging them to visit your site.
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