So, you’ve launched a website and started publishing stuff on it but there’s no one around? You have a great product, a well-designed store, and a kick-ass blog. The only thing you need to figure out is how to drive traffic to your site.
From email marketing and social media to content marketing hacks, this article offers actionable ways to help you boost your website traffic.
1. Update Your Content on a Regular Basis
You don’t have to rely solely on new blog posts to drive traffic to your site. Find older blog posts that performed well in the past and think about how you can update them to extend their lifespan. For instance, you can update older links and references, or intervene in the content body to adjust it to current trends. You should also consider creating evergreen content, i.e. content that is always relevant.
Besides being a great hack for driving traffic, updating older content is also great SEO-wise as relevant content tends to rank higher on SERPs.
2. Add Metadata to Your Pages and Posts
SEO is a term that refers to the process of adjusting your website’s content so that search engines can find it, understand it, and rank it better. This means that SEO is a vital factor in driving traffic.
But SEO is more than just inserting keywords in your articles (even though this is also an important tactic). SEO is also about optimizing the metadata. This includes the title and meta description for each post, as well as the alt text for each image. These details are very important to search engines even though human visitors can’t see them.
3. Guest Post on Other Websites
Guest posting content on external sites enables you to reach new audiences, but also to build connections with authorities in your industry or niche.
Reach out to blogs in your industry that might appeal to the audience you’re targeting. But don’t send a full article right away. Start by providing title ideas and/or blog summary so that the blog editor can approve it first. This increases your chances of getting published successfully.
4. Take Advantage of Email Marketing
Start building a list of your customers’ or readers’ emails and sending out messages. Email marketing allows you to market new products, offer promotions, and build a relationship with your target audience. You can also use it to share interesting information, news, or let your subscribers know when new content is published. All these can have a positive effect on your website traffic.
Use automation tools like GMass to get information to personalize your emails, create bulk emails, and send mass automated follow-ups.
5. Use SMS
Did you think SMS marketing was fading away? You couldn’t be farther from the truth. Although messaging services like WhatsApp and Facebook are becoming increasingly popular for chatting with friends and family, more than 6 million text messages are sent in the US every day.
Add to this the fact that SMS messages have an open rate of 98% in the first 15 minutes, and it’s easy to conclude that SMS is a powerful traffic driver.
SMS marketing is a very effective marketing channel but not many businesses are taking advantage of it. And this includes your competitors. So, get yourself a great SMS API and start crushing your competition.
6. Post on Social Media
One of the best ways to drive traffic to your website is by increasing your reach and visibility. Get active on social networks and make it easier for people to find you. By sharing your blogs and posting updates on a regular basis, you can attract the attention of new audiences and increase engagement.
7. Start a YouTube Channel
Video is huge at the moment and you need to take advantage of that. It is estimated that by 2020, there will be close to 1 million minutes of video crossing the internet per second.
Creating a YouTube channel for your website enables you to offer a content format that people are very interested in. In addition, you can use your YouTube channel to build an audience and send them back to your website.
But simply starting a YouTube channel isn’t enough. In order to maximize the results, you’ll need to SEO-optimize it and spend some time promoting it on other social networks. Add your YouTube videos on your site as well to provide more value to your existing audience.
8. Add Knowledge Base or Forum
If you want to drive traffic to your site, you’ll need to expand the offer. We’ve already mentioned making updates to your existing content but you should also consider adding something completely new.
One example is a knowledge base where you can answer visitors’ questions and provide means for self-help. Creating high-quality ‘Q&A’ blog posts can even get you featured in Google’s ‘answer boxes’, which is another great way to attract traffic.
Forums can also be very effective when it comes to driving traffic because they encourage visitors to engage rather than just consume content passively. A forum allows you to build a community around your website, which is a great way to keep people coming back.
9. Start a Podcast
Podcasts are very popular and for a good reason. People like them because they are portable and flexible to consume. You can also feature your podcast on sites like iTunes and SoundCloud and reach larger audiences.
Starting a podcast does take some time and effort but in general, it’s not complicated. Consider uploading your podcast episodes to dedicated streaming platforms, and featuring them on your own website.
Final Thoughts
Implementing the above-listed tips might take some work, but the resulting increase in traffic will be worth the effort.
This is a list of different strategies that could work for your site but don’t implement all of them at the same time. Use it to draw inspiration from, test, experiment, and find which ones work best for you.