How to Increase Website Traffic
A website is vitally important and it should be one of your most important sales tools. If you haven’t got a business website already, then you really need to make that investment as soon as possible.
If you do have a website – make sure that you look after it, update it and don’t just leave it to stagnate or your website will suffer as a result.
Here are a few tips and tricks to help you increase and maintain website traffic:
Keep Your Website Up to Date
A website needs to be maintained from a technical point of view to make sure it is secure, that the software & plugins are all up to date and that it is functioning correctly. Your web developer or hosting company should provide this service for you and it is really important that you keep on top of it.
As well as the technical maintenance, you also need to update your content regularly. Write blog posts or news articles, publish customer reviews and make sure you don’t let your website stagnate. Google likes active websites so you must keep your content fresh and up-to-date if you don’t want your web traffic to suffer.
Analyse Your Website Traffic
You need to understand how many visitors you are getting to your website, where they are coming from and if your website is engaging with your audience. Google Analytics is a brilliant tool to do this. You can use it to:
- See how many visitors you get to your website & which pages are most popular
- See how engaged your web visitors are with your content
- Find out where your traffic is coming from
If you haven’t set up a Google Analytics account already, you should definitely do so!
What to Do if You’re Not Getting Any Web Traffic
Once you’ve set up Google Analytics, you will be able to see how many visitors you get to your website every day. If this number is really disappointing, there are a number of things you can do to help you to reach more people online.
1. Optimise Your Web Content for Search Engines
Whether you sell products or services, you need to have a strong online presence. Your website needs to be optimised for search engines so that when a customer types specific keywords for your products/services into a search engine – your business is in the results. Without SEO, your business website will be less visible online so it is really important. You also need to pay attention to local SEO too so that people can find you when they search for businesses like yours nearby.
2. Write Website Content Which Engages Your Customers
Website Content needs to be striking, informative and to the point. When people search for products and services online, they expect to find what they want quickly. Very few people will spend time reading through reams and reams of text. Be concise, show them how you solve their problem, and talk to them like a human.
3. Be Visible on Social Media
Social media is a brilliant platform to raise your brand awareness. I don’t think that all platforms are suitable to all businesses, but you should be on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram as a minimum.
Set up business accounts on social media then sit down and write out a social media strategy. Look at your target market, where they are most likely to be and start there. Write out some key messages and plan some content. Take a look at what your competitors are doing too and how your potential customers respond to their content. You can learn from their mistakes and use it to your advantage!
Please remember that these platforms are called social media for a reason though! You need to be social. Interact with people and don’t just write sales posts and expect your web traffic to soar. You have to strike the right balance.
4. Advertise
Word of mouth is by far the best form of advertising, but while you are building up your online presence, use tools such as GoogleAds and Facebook marketing to get in front of your target audience and to drive traffic to your website. You will need to pay for these, but you do not have to pay a fortune. Ensure that you set a budget and time period that you can afford.
5. Make Sure Your Website Isn’t Slow!
As mentioned above, people expect to have information instantly and tend to be very impatient. How many times have you left a website because it wasn’t responding quick enough for you? Your potential customers will do the same. Make sure that you have adequate website hosting and maintenance to stop your site from becoming slow.
6. Make Sure Your Website is Mobile Friendly
A high percentage of people now do their online browsing on a mobile device. You must make sure that your website is mobile friendly or you will be missing out on a lot of potential traffic.
7. Start a Blog!
Adding a news or a blog section to your website is a brilliant way to drive traffic to your site. Write regular useful & informative (non-salesy!) blog posts that will interest your audience and then post links to the content across your social media channels.
What Next?
I appreciate that all of this can seem a bit daunting when all you want to do is get on with running your business. There are many things you can do to increase your website traffic but they all take time and effort. Get in touch and ask for a website audit. We can provide all the information so you know where to start
