A major key to growing your website traffic is to take many small actions that, when combined, will drive more new traffic to your website and increase repeat visits. This list of basic, essential promotional activities will help your efforts to grow traffic without costing an arm and a leg and you will see results almost immediately.
- First off, give website visitors a reason to visit with high-quality, high value content that has direct meaning to them.
- Then give your website visitors a reason to come back. Post chapter excerpts if you're an author, cooking tips, building tips, home safety; you may not win a Pulitzer Prize for writing, but that doesn't matter as long as what you are saying provides real value, improves your website credibility and builds community.
- Have a business card and always put your website address or book title on the card.
- Print a bookmark or palm card as a give-away with QR code (Even if your website is not related to book publishing).
- Include a QR code on all your printed materials including flyers and brochures to make it easy for mobile users to get to your website.
-
Have an email signature promoting your website, with your logo, contact information and a tagline that you use for every email that you send. This is easy to create in most email programs like Outlook and also on your Gmail account. - Make sure your website name is appearing in search engine searches. Frequently websites have something blocking their being indexed by the search engines. Make sure these roadblocks are cleared from your website.
- If you are publishing a book, always list your other published books and your website address inside your books or on the back cover.
- Register your domain name for at least 5 years. This will give your keyword placement a slight boost on search engines.
- Complete an SEO assessment of your website and implement the recommendations.
- If you don't have a Google AdWords account, get one setup. Many website hosting providers offer free $100 startup credits for pay-per-click ads when you open a new AdWords account. Use that $100 to drive some traffic and test out PPC.
- Social media still works. At the least, setup business Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn accounts. Make relevant, frequent posts and create links within your posts back to your website.
- Make the most of your Facebook account by including links back to your website on your “About Us” page and in all your photo descriptions.
- Get a YouTube channel setup. Create a video about what you do and post it on YouTube.
- Sign up for a Yelp account to get local traffic.
-
Make a list of your customer’s email addresses and send out monthly emails to let them know what you are doing. Make sure you create several different links in those emails back to your website. - Regularly change your website homepage content to let search engines know that this is an active website. This will give your website a small boost in keyword rankings which might help searchers find your website.
- Identify things that make what you do newsworthy, or how you can tie into a holiday or other public event, then submit press releases to news outlets, including community newspapers.
- Become a guest blogger. There are things you do well. Find blogs that focus on what you do best, whether it is as a restauranteur, jewelry maker, conspiracy theorist, productivity consultant, or spiritual advisor. Make time to contact these blogs and ask them if they would like a guest author. Many will also post an announcement of your company or website.
-
Consider promotional giveaways with your website prominently listed. Items such as pens, coffee mugs, refrigerator magnets. Come up with a clever line for the promotional items that make the item worth keeping. - If you have a business to business website, consider mouse pads or memory sticks as promotional giveaways to your commercial customers to keep your name in front of the client.
- Create a discount offer for amazon.com local business.
- Make sure you have a sitemap.xml file to let search engines know to index your pages.
- Setup a Google Webmaster Tools account and submit your sitemap.
- Check your Webmaster Tools account for any pages not found. These broken links will create a barrier to website visitors if they click on a search engine link, but the link is broken.
- Look for other related websites that would create a link back to your website.
- Link internally to other pages on your website. Your internal link strategy not only helps users find your important content, it can help with search engine optimization.
- Interview industry thought leaders and post the interview on your website. In addition to providing valuable content for your website, the individuals you interview will share your website with others.
- Write compelling headlines. This is frequently overlooked, but is one of the best ways you can get good search engine exposure, engage website visitors to browse to that page (which will encourage return visits) and will get you thinking about targeting your website content.
- Partner and collaborate with other websites. This will allow you to share audiences that have common interests, and will help you to develop content with a fresh perspective.
All the items on this list are things that most individuals can do for themselves with a little bit of stretching their capabilities and a little further research. Many of them require an ongoing effort, but, after all, isn’t the purpose of your website to reach people or potential customers? So increasing your website visitors helps maximize your potential for success.
If you don’t have the time, but want to put these ideas into play, hpdDesign can tailor a cost-effective promotional package for you that takes advantage of these 30 ways to grow your website traffic. To find out more, click here to contact hpdDesign.
