4 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website in 2019
You’re about to launch your website. You sleep long enough only to jump up, find your list and start all over again. You’ve done all the planning, all the meticulous detailing and checked all our bases. You can spend weeks making sure every detail about the user experience is just right, only to hit “publish” and see exactly zero visits despite all the blood and sweat you just put in. At this point, you’re probably scratching your head and thinking, “well, what’s going on here? Where are all my customers?” The truth is building a website alone isn’t enough. The expression, “if you build it, they will come,” just doesn’t apply to website traffic the way you think. Luckily, with StartUp TakeOff, you have a whole toolbox and team of experts at your disposal to help you drive traffic to your website in 2019. We all know that launching a new website can be intimidating, but it doesn’t have to be and here’s why.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO has been around for a long time, almost as long as the Internet itself. It’s the bread and butter of helping your website rank in Google’s eyes. It should be a key component of any website’s traffic strategy. SEO is the process of organizing the structure and content of your website so that search engine bots can go in easily discover it and understand what the site is trying to say. The more effectively your site does this, the higher Google (and other search engines) will rank your site in search results.
Not convinced by how important SEO is? Around 75% of all search result clicks go to websites displayed on the first page of results, which means if you’re not ranking, your Clients are not seeing you. SEO is one of the most important ways for you to increase traffic to your site; ignore it at your own risk. How do you track it, you ask? Easy! If you use WordPress, you can download the Yoast SEO plugin to get insights on how to improve your site’s score. No guesswork needed.
Content Marketing
Content, content, content. It’s the lifeblood of driving traffic to your website. Content marketing is the process of creating consumable content (in the form of videos, infographics or blog posts) that provides value to your Clients. Those blog posts you read in the morning (like this one) are a perfect example of content marketing in action.
When done well, content marketing allows you to build a deeper, stronger connection with your Clients. It also helps you build your brand as a thought leader in your industry, and thought leadership ultimately helps drive conversions. Many marketers succumb to common myths and misconceptions about content marketing, but with a little insight, you can make your content work harder for your business goals.
Social Media Marketing
With over 3 billion active users on social media, you can’t afford to ignore sites like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn. All of these networks offer an unparalleled opportunity for businesses to engage with potential Clients.
The key is to be active on whichever social networks you choose and to do it with a bit of flare. Sure, you should share product news and your latest blog post with members of the community, but remember to engage with what other people are posting as well. Think of social media like a bank account: before you can make a withdrawal, you need to deposit something in. As a rule of thumb, for each self-promoting piece of content you post, you should be engaging with around four posts others have written. You want to appear authentic, not self-serving.
Answer Questions in Forums
Forums and Q&A sites like Reddit and Quora can be great places to gain visibility, share expertise and drive traffic to your website. The key is to provide detailed, well-articulated, useful answers to the questions people are asking. Again, it’s about making deposits into the bank account before you make a withdrawal.
When you’re looking for questions to answer, try to find questions that relate in some way to your business. That way, in your response, you can include a link back to your website for further reading in a way that feels natural. And that authenticity is key: if you come across as too self-promotional, the users of these communities won’t be shy when it comes to letting you know about it.
Driving traffic to your website can be a daunting task. There are so many options that it can be hard to know where to begin, and there’s no silver bullet formula that works for everyone. You’ll have to experiment, test, learn and adapt to see what works best for you and your business. If you start with these four tips though, you’ll be well on your way to driving incremental traffic to your website.
At StartUp TakeOff, we understand the value of a strong team. We also know that finding the right people can be nerve-wracking and time-consuming, so we made it easy for our Clients. Choosing the wrong partners can be a costly misstep for any entrepreneur, which is why StartUp TakeOff’s founder, Stefani Thionnet, has assembled a diverse group of marketing experts from across the industry who will provide you with solutions that save you time and money. Our team of marketing industry veterans will get to know you and your brand so that we can provide solutions perfectly tailored to your needs. It’s difficult to find the best people, so we’ve brought them together to get results you will love. Call today: (855) 209-0226 (New inquiries, press 1; Current Clients, press 2).
