10 Best Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website or Blog
A short list of the ten best ways to bring traffic to your website.
Most online business strategies depend on having a website and driving a boatload of qualified traffic to that website. However, the lack of web traffic remains one of the biggest challenges entrepreneurs face when launching a new startup or blog.
Here are 10 proven ways to drive quality traffic to your eCommerce website or blog.
1. Host a contest.
Use your social media pages to organize contests and giveaways. This will encourage your followers and fans to come to your website or blog. This might even inspire some to share your post with their social media friends, thus increasing site traffic.
2. Share posts in social media groups
Become active in Facebook and Linkedin groups. Post regularly to these groups and establish yourself as an authority in your space. On Twitter, use hashtags for a similar effect.
3. Work with Social media influencers
Build relationships with social media influencers and incentivize them share your content on their social media pages. This will boost your reputation.
4. Offer discounts and promotions.
Encourage users to visit your site by hosting flash sales, promotional discounts, and special offers. Send out a tweet, an email and post on Facebook each time you host a promotional event and watch traffic grow.
5. Submit your sitemap to Google and Bing
You should have a sitemap on your site by now. This is a page that connects to all the other pages on your website. Submit this page to Google and Bing. This will allow these search engines to index your site faster and more accurately.
6. Build quality inbound links.
Get links pointing back to your site from popular websites and blogs. Links improve SEO and referral traffic. For help, see SEO Rules! by Nizar Silia.
7. Pick popular keywords
Use the Google keyword planner to identify the top keywords people use to find similar products or services. The Keyword planner even allows you to target a specific geographical location.
Pick keywords that have a decent amount of traffic but are not that competitive. Use these keywords as much as you can in the text and meta tags of your site.
8. Convert Facebook Page likes to traffic
I personally think Facebook presents one of the biggest opportunities for you to get cheap quality traffic to your website. One neat trick is to display an enticing offer or statement in the background image of your brand page. The statement should clearly communicate what your company has to offer and any promotions available.
Then pay a small fee to promote our page for “likes”. Sit back and watch how many of those likes become site visits.
9. Add a blog
Regardless of what kind of business you are in, if you offer your services online and therefore depend on website traffic for customers, then you should have a blog. Having a blog to which you post regularly and share on social media will increase traffic to your site over time.
A blog allows you to present quality content on your site. Resist the temptation to use your blog just to push your products as this will backfire. Instead, post useful information and tips related to your industry or associated industries. For example, if you sell tools, your blog might provide DIY tips and guides.
10. Display beautiful images.
Studies show that content with images simply performs better. Create infographics whenever you can. Infographics allow you to provide simple easy-to-digest information in creative ways. There are awesome tools out there that you can use to easily create infographics.
Bonus tip
Your website should be optimized for mobile browsing. It is estimated that 70 to 80 percent of all traffic online will be mobile by 2019. This is especially the case if you offer your products or services to consumers and not other businesses. Google actually place priority on mobile-friendly sites when ranking websites.