No business is complete without a website, and most of the time, your website is what will let your target audience know who you are and what you can offer them. You’ve signed up with a website builder, designed all the essential pages, and taken your website live. But now, you’re experiencing an issue familiar to many other website owners — you cannot get anyone to visit your site.
Experiencing a lull in web traffic can be discouraging. Luckily, there are many ways to improve your site, engage with the community, and establish yourself as an industry leader, bringing more people than ever to your website.
This article will discuss all the ways you can get more people on your site, from creating content to working with journalists. Keep reading to learn all the best techniques!
Increasing Traffic Through Content
The best way to increase traffic to your website is by creating and optimizing your site’s content. Many website owners choose to do this through regular blog posts, videos, or infographics.
To create the best content possible for your audience, focus on developing a buyer persona and conducting SEO research. Find out what people in your niche are interested in and searching for, then center your content on that.
There are a few steps you can take to create different types of content that keep your visitors coming back. These include:
- Create new content
- Create evergreen content
- Update old content
- Add guest posts
- Create content offers
- Create knowledge base/academy content
- Create other types of content
Below, we’ll discuss the best practices for each.
Create New Content
The most successful and highest-ranking sites have a blog section. Creating a blog is one of the best ways to increase traffic to your site, but to work, your content needs to be:
- Relevant
- Well-written
- Interesting
- Within your area of expertise
The key to creating the best blog content possible is providing specific and accurate answers to your customers’ questions. Your content should tell your audience that you’re a trustworthy source, so you need to care about the quality of the content you produce. Follow specific guidelines, and ask anyone else who writes for you to do the same. Remember — the more value your site can provide to readers, the more often they will visit it.
Create Evergreen Content
“Evergreen content” is content that will always be relevant, and that people will always be searching for. Although it might be tempting to write on trendy topics, this will only get you more traffic in the short term. For the best results and the highest amount of traffic and backlinks over time, create content around topics that will always be relevant and interesting to your target audience.
The best evergreen content is regularly updated. Every time new information about the topic is released, update your blog post, video, or infographic to reflect it.
Update Old Content
New content will perform well for a while, but your “content freshness” can affect your search engine rankings. For this reason, periodically updating old content through one of the two methods below is essential:
- Content repurposing
- Historical optimization
You can repurpose your content in a few different ways, depending on how it was originally published. For example, you might have an older blog post that’s still generating a lot of traffic. To bring that traffic to a different audience, you might choose to take the post’s content and create an easily-shareable infographic out of it.
On the other hand, historical optimization is probably what you think of first when you hear the words “update old content.” This is when you take an older blog post and update the content to reflect more current information. Historical optimization helps your content freshness, especially if you’re updating something a couple of years old.
It’s easy to historically optimize your old posts, even if no new information on the topic has come out recently. Some of the ways to update these posts include:
- Update keywords
- Replace outdated visuals
- Add links to recent and relevant sources
- Fix broken links or images
- Create a new meta title or description
Even the smallest changes can drive significantly more traffic to your website.
Guest Posts
Writing guest posts on another company’s site, or allowing guests to write for your website, is a mutually beneficial situation. You get your name and website link on another page, and they get some free content.
Before you submit a guest post, it’s important to ensure you’re working with a high-quality, respected site that can direct its traffic to yours. Once you’ve found a website you’d like to work with, create a draft and send a pitch via email. Mention how your piece would be of interest to their readers and how it can fill existing knowledge gaps in their blog section.
In addition to writing guest posts for other sites, you can invite writers from other sites in your niche to write guest posts on your site. They’ll likely share the article they wrote for you on their website and social media, bringing their audience to your site.
The only thing you have to be careful about when it comes to having people write guest posts for you is that the content stays in line with the brand you’ve established. Make sure they only link back to their site when it makes sense, and only accept high-quality original content.
Create Content Offers
Content offers, sometimes called “lead magnets,” are when you give downloadable content away to your website visitors in exchange for their contact details. Most of the time, sites have people sign up for their mailing lists in exchange for this downloadable content.
The best type of content offers to create depends on both your niche and the stage of the buying journey you’re targeting customers in. You might offer:
- Guides
- E-books
- Free trials
- Demos
- Webinars
Essentially, you can offer anything you think your visitors would be willing to download in exchange for their email addresses.
Create Knowledge Base/Academy Content
Tons of people browse the web each day looking to learn something new — take advantage of the huge amount of traffic searches like these could generate by incorporating some educational content into your site.
Creating a knowledge base or academy content could be as simple as writing a few educational blog posts or as complex as developing a whole certification course. The best choice for your site depends heavily on your niche, knowledge, and time and budget restrictions.
Create Other Types of Content
While most of the content you add to your site to generate more traffic will be in the form of blog posts, that’s definitely not the only type of content you can create. Broadening your range of offerings will help you target people looking for all types of content — not just written content.
Blog posts will probably be the majority of the content you create. However, incorporating one or more of the following will help you get more traffic to your site than ever:
- Videos
- Webinars
- Infographics
Embedding videos from your YouTube channel is a great option, and online tools like Canva can help you create visually appealing easy-to-read infographics.
Increasing Traffic Through Social Media
Today, social media is where people spend most of their time online. For this reason, many companies sign up for business accounts on websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Taking advantage of social media is one of the best ways to increase traffic to your website. Adding a website link to your bio and linking different sections or blog posts is a great way to bring your followers from other platforms over to your website and foster a sense of brand awareness and loyalty.
Some ways you can increase traffic to your website through social media include:
- Create social media posts
- Add social share buttons to content
- Optimize posting times
While your social media presence should always align with your overall brand, it’s important to keep things authentic. People follow businesses on social media for a more personalized feel, so it’s essential that you give it to them.
Create Social Media Posts
Posting is at the heart of all social media platforms. Even if you sign-up for an account and adjust all your preferences to make your page fall in line with your website’s brand, it’s all for nothing if there are no posts on the page.
The best posting practices vary based on what site you’re using. For example, many companies post on Twitter and Facebook at least once a day, sometimes multiple times per day. On Instagram, however, you’ll likely only see a business post to their feed a couple of times per week. But, you can post to your Instagram story as often as you’d like!
There are some important things to keep in mind while using your social media profiles to increase traffic to your site. These include:
- Mix up the type of content you post. Some posts will include photos or videos, while others will just include text and a link.
- Reply to all direct mentions and messages promptly. This will establish you as a reliable source in your industry.
- Retweet and reply to other industry leaders. This will help you get your name and site more recognition among your target audience.
- Include calls to action. Don’t just post a link. Make sure people know they can click it to learn more on a particular subject.
- Use hashtags when appropriate. You shouldn’t stuff your posts with hashtags, but you want people searching tags to be able to find your page and site.
Overall, the most important thing to remember when using social media to increase traffic is to link back to your site as often as possible — especially if someone asks you a question you’ve answered in a blog post.
Add Social Share Buttons to Content
While reading different articles online, you’ve probably noticed tiny “Share” icons at the top of the page. These buttons allow users to click and draft a social media post with a link to the article.
Social share buttons are great tools because it takes all the work of promoting your content off your hands, letting your readers do it for you. Some surefire ways to get more people to share your content on their own social media pages include:
- Create strong, shareable, and quotable content.
- Ask them directly to share the post if they enjoyed it.
- Add multimedia. If a reader likes a video or infographic enough, they’ll likely share it on their page and credit you with a link.
Add social share buttons to all posts on your website, even if you aren’t sure if anyone will share it — it only takes one share from the right person to see a huge increase in traffic.
Optimize Posting Times
When you sign up as a business account on most social media sites, you gain access to a wide range of features that let you know how your page is performing at a given time. Some platforms call these “analytics,” while others call them “insights.”
Looking at your Analytics or Insights page, you can find out exactly when your page sees the most engagement. It should tell you your page’s most active day of the week, as well as the most active time of the day. Using this information, you will be able to learn when exactly you should share links for the highest engagement potential.
Increasing Traffic Through Collaboration
It’s a well-known fact that people are always more likely to interact with businesses with a positive industry reputation. What’s the easiest way to build your reputation through positive word of mouth? Collaborating with the right people.
You should try to collaborate with two types of people to increase traffic to your site as much as possible — industry influencers and industry thought leaders. Influencer marketing is typically a very budget-friendly option, while most thought leaders will agree to an interview with a reputable site.
Collaborate with Influencers
Every industry has a community of influencers they trust. Messaging one of the influencers in your industry and asking them to collaborate with your site is a great way to tap into a larger audience.
You could offer an influencer a free premium account so they can share their experience with their followers and drive more people to sign-up on your site, or you could give them a discount code to share with their followers in exchange for a small commission. Some companies even choose to collaborate with influencers to host a giveaway.
Choose the option your target audience would enjoy the most, then start messaging relevant influencers with an offer.
Interview Industry Thought Leaders
Similar to influencers, every industry has thought leaders who people turn to for new ideas, innovations, or products. Thought leaders are well-respected in their industry with lots of wisdom to share, and the name recognition alone should be enough to drive more people to your site.
The best thought leaders to work with are known storytellers and up-and-coming experts. If you can be the first site to interview an up-and-comer, it’ll mean a huge boost in traffic not only now, but for years to come as they gain more popularity in the industry.
Find a few thought leaders you’d like to interview, then email them requesting an interview. Ask questions your followers would like an answer to, and choose the best, most thought-provoking answers to publish.
Not only will interviewing industry thought leaders increase traffic, but it will also boost your credibility as a website. Additionally, the interviewee will share the interview on their own platform more often than not, allowing you to tap into their massive audience.
Increasing Traffic Through the Use of Emails
Email marketing is another cost-effective way to increase traffic to your site. There are many email marketing platforms online that can help you optimize your email list and send out the most informative, well-designed emails possible.
To increase your website’s traffic through the use of emails, you’ll first have to build an email list. Then, you can get to work on creating your newsletters.
Build Email Lists
Before people can sign-up for your mailing list, they need to know you have one. All relevant pages of your website should have a sign-up form or subscribe button, including:
- Homepage
- About Us page
- Contact page
In addition to these pages, you can also promote your newsletter on your blog. Include a short section at the end letting readers know that, if they liked this article, they can sign-up to receive more like it.
You can also use your social media pages to promote your newsletter or make signing up a requirement to access content offers. However, it’s essential that readers can unsubscribe from your mailing list at any time. If they can’t, they’ll likely delete your emails before they open them, or worse, mark them as spam.
Create Newsletters
Once you’ve gathered a sizable mailing list, the next step is to create your email marketing materials. As mentioned, many online platforms can help you do this. Some offer free plans or free trials, while others require you to pay a monthly fee. Choose the platform that offers all the tools you need for the best monthly rate. Ideally, you’ll choose a platform that features:
- A/B testing
- Personalized emails
- Mobile optimization
- A wide range of templates
The most important aspect of any email newsletter is the subject line. This is the first thing subscribers will see when the message pops up in their inbox, so it’s essential to draw them in and encourage them to read the email. Many email marketing platforms offer subject line A/B testing so you can tell what subject line will perform best.
Apart from that, the body of your email newsletters should be appealing — both visually and content-wise. Use easy-to-read colors and fonts that align with your overall branding, and make sure there are plenty of links readers can click to read more about a particular subject.
Increasing Traffic by Building a Community
The most successful websites have a loyal and dedicated community of supporters behind them. Fostering a sense of community, and engaging with the industry at large, is a great way to build word of mouth, establish yourself as an industry leader, and encourage more people to support your site.
Community Building
Social media is a great tool for building a community around your brand. You could create a Facebook Group connected to your main Business page or use your Twitter account.
The best way to build a community around your website is to engage with and learn more about the people who follow you. Always answer direct messages, mentions, and comments in a personable way that lets your followers know you care.
Engaging with your audience frequently will keep you at the top of their minds and ensure they turn to you first when they have a question they need to be answered.
Community Management/Engagement
In addition to fostering a sense of community around your website, engaging with other big players in your industry is essential to establishing yourself as a trustworthy source and increasing traffic to your site. The more people see your name or website in industry discussions, the more likely they will turn towards you.
Staying engaged on social media is one of the best ways to engage in the industry. Reply to other industry leaders, participate in talks or discussions, and answer questions publicly. Always remember to be helpful and personable to achieve the most positive reputation possible.
Increasing Traffic by Optimizing Your Website
The number one way people find new websites is through simple Google searches. But, if you want people to be able to find you this way, you need to rank high on search engine results pages, or SERPs.
Optimizing your website is the easiest way to get your ranking up so more people can find you. You can do this through:
- SEO
- Improving page loading speeds
- Making your website mobile-friendly
- Performing A/B tests
Many of these changes are simple to make, and you’d be surprised just how much they can increase your website’s traffic.
SEO
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the process of making small changes to your site to help them rank higher on SERPs. There are lots of ways to incorporate SEO into your website, but for this purpose, the best methods include:
- Build backlinks
- Use internal links
- Perform on-page SEO
- Use technical SEO
- Incorporate long-tail keywords
Below, we’ll discuss the best ways to employ all of the above.
Build Backlinks
Backlinks are links to other websites you incorporate into your content. Linking to well-known, reputable websites will increase your trustworthiness and credibility, and many websites like yours will be willing to exchange backlinks with you.
When other websites backlink your content, it boosts your search engine rankings. This is because you’re getting more organic and referral traffic. Exchanging backlinks is mutually beneficial — you get more traffic from other sites’ audiences, and the other site gets more traffic from your audience.
Internal Linking
Internal links, on the other hand, are links within your content to other pages on your website. Including internal links is good because it keeps people on your site, engaging with your other content, and greatly reduces your bounce rate.
When people read more than one page on your website, it boosts your rankings and encourages people to come back to learn more. While internal linking is an essential part of SEO and increasing your site’s traffic, it’s important to only use internal links when relevant. Make sure the text you’re linking is relevant to the page you’re directing readers to, or it could negatively affect your credibility.
On-Page SEO
While all of these tactics will help you rank higher on SERPs and bring more traffic to your site, the most important type of SEO is on-page SEO. On-page SEO changes you make to your content itself so it ranks higher for specific keywords.
Creating keyword-rich content is important, but you should always avoid “keyword stuffing,” or incorporating keywords where they don’t really belong in hopes of ranking higher. In general, keywords should be placed in the following sections of each post:
- Title
- First H1 heading
- Two H2 headings
- First 100 words
- Meta description
- Images (file names and alt text)
In addition to these essential spots, you should naturally incorporate keywords into the article’s body. While keywords are important, they should never detract from user intent. If people can’t get a clear, accurate answer from your content, your bounce rate will increase and your rankings will suffer.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO refers to how a page is actually set up and organized. There are many ways to improve your technical SEO from the backend and bring more traffic to your website, including the following:
- Add custom headings and introductions to every page.
- Fix any broken images, videos, links, or redirects.
- Improve your page speed by limiting slow-loading elements.
Improving your technical SEO doesn’t take much time, but it can help your rankings significantly.
Long Tail Keywords
There are a lot of generic keywords out there that many sites compete in ranking the highest for. However, long tail keywords are much easier to get the top spot on SERPs. These specific keywords will bring the most relevant traffic possible to your website.
For example, let’s say you own a website centered around interior design and are trying to increase your rankings for a post titled, “How to Brighten Up a Small Kitchen.” Instead of using keywords like, “kitchen design” and “small kitchens,” try incorporating keywords like, “brightening up a small kitchen” or “making a small kitchen look brighter.”
There aren’t as many people writing about or searching for, keywords like these, so when someone does, it’s almost guaranteed that they’ll see your site on the first page of their search results.
Improve Loading Speeds
Nowadays, people expect the sites they visit to load within two seconds flat. If it takes any longer than this, a visitor will likely exit a page without taking any action. Because of this, most search engines now list speed as an essential ranking factor.
If you notice that any pages on your website take more than this two-second threshold to load, there are some things you can do to reduce your loading time, rank higher, and drive more traffic to your site.
Remove as many slow-loading components as possible, including any plugins you use. Larger image files should always be compressed before you upload them, and embedded videos that increase loading time can be removed.
Remember — the content on a page means nothing if no one waits for a page to load. Keep things visually appealing and informative, but remove anything that negatively impacts your loading time.
Make Your Website Mobile Friendly
Google now uses “mobile-first indexing,” meaning pages optimized for mobile platforms will always rank higher than sites that do not. Mobile optimization is essential in today’s world, as more people than ever are accessing the internet exclusively from their smartphones and tablets. If a page is not easy to navigate on their device, they’ll almost definitely leave it in favor of one that is.
Before a page goes live, preview it on all platforms. This includes:
- Web
- Tablet
- Mobile
If anything looks off on any of these previews, go back and adjust until you get it right.
A/B Test
If there’s a particular page or email you’re particularly interested in generating traffic to, A/B tests are essential. A/B tests test two versions of a page, email, or campaign and let you know which they expect to perform best based on your audience.
A/B tests can give you key information about the people visiting your site. This will help you determine what type of content to focus on in the future, as well as what pages will drive the most traffic to your site.
Increasing Traffic Through Media, PR & Ads
Media coverage, public relations, and advertisements are excellent tools for generating public interest in your website and getting more people to visit. If you have it in your budget, you could run pay-per-click or retargeting ads, or hire a public relations agency.
If you don’t have the resources for this type of thing, you could even reach out to journalists that can get your comment on a relevant story to help you generate positive word-of-mouth.
Media Coverage and Public Relations
A story about your business, or a quote from you as an industry leader, can do wonders for your site traffic. There are a couple of ways to get media coverage for your business and, therefore, your website. You could hire a PR agency, or you could register as a source on journalistic websites.
A PR agency can be pricey, but hiring one often yields the best results. Registering as a source usually does not cost anything, but if there’s a lot of competition, you might not get as many journalists reaching out to you for a comment.
If you cannot justify hiring a PR agency, the best practice is to register as a source on as many sites as possible. The more sites you’re registered on, the higher the chances of a reporter contacting you.
Being quoted in a story about your industry, or better yet, having an entire story dedicated to your business increases brand awareness and opens you up to people who may have never found you before. It also establishes you as an industry leader — if a reputable news publication requests a comment from you, it says a lot about who you are in your niche.
Ads
Running ads for your website will cost you, but it is an all-but-guaranteed way to get more people to visit your site. As a website owner, there are two types of ads you should be focusing on — pay-per-click and retargeting.
Pay-per-click ads, as the name suggests, only cost you when someone actually clicks on your advertisement to visit a page on your website. This is a very cost-effective form of advertising because you’re always getting something out of the money you’re spending.
Retargeting ads, on the other hand, are meant to reach people who have previously visited your site but left without converting. Both types of ads are tailored specifically toward the goal at hand.
If you want to get started with paid advertising, Google Ads is a great place to begin. They offer both pay-per-click and retargeting ads, as well as all the forms of advertisements you’ll need to pull people toward your site.
Conclusion
If you’re experiencing a lull in traffic on your website, don’t panic. There are tons of ways you can increase the number of people who interact with your site, from creating new content to working with industry leaders. Choose a few methods to start with, then slowly begin incorporating more techniques to see traffic growth like never before!
