How to Drive Traffic to Your Website

If you’ve had trouble increasing your website traffic, you’re not alone. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the exhaustive list of options for driving traffic to your website – and the time it takes to act on it. That’s why we’ve compiled this list of organic and paid options that we know work because we use them ourselves.

We’ll start with a few broad tips for the modern marketer. Then we’ll explain specific details about building overall organic traffic, as well as blog traffic.

Three Top Tips

Think “Multi-Channel” with Content Marketing

When some people think of content marketing, they may picture an old-timey writer in front of a typewriter coming up with satirical copy. But marketers know that content is so much more than words on a page these days. It’s web pages and emails, infographics and checklists, video shorts and gifs, social posts… The options are endless, so be sure to experiment. After all, it’s proven that copy supported with alternative types of content (i.e., multimedia) outperforms standalone copy.

When developing a content marketing strategy, keep these guidelines in mind:

• Tie channels together – Lay out a strategy for keeping the website traffic coming. For example, when a user completes a form to download a resource, automate an email workflow to keep them engaged, and retarget them with ads.
• Create memorable content – Answer your customer’s pain points, and connect your service/product to the solutions. Include multimedia resources your competitors aren’t offering. Focus on engaging voice and tone.
• Focus on evergreen content – Instead of publishing short-term-value PR pieces, design pillar content around topics that will always be of interest to your target audience. This requires building out child pages to address many angles of a broad categorical topic.
• Keep old content fresh – Updating older content improves performance, and it’s a good chance to improve internal linking to your other important pages. For example, get more traffic to your blogs by updating information and expanding copy to answer longtail keywords.

Try Influencer Marketing

Word of mouth isn’t dead. Influencers who make their living off their large audiences are often an untapped source of brand awareness and website visits. Reach out to influencers who have a target audience similar to your business’s and who offer cost-effective services. Influencers do most of the legwork by posting special discount codes, links, and reviews.

Lean into Video Marketing

Video has become the type of content most consumers prefer to consume, especially on social media. Video marketing can be an effective way to drive traffic to your website, and it can be applied in many channels. For example:

• Publish videos on YouTube, optimize them for YouTube search, and be sure the description links back to your site.
• Embed your videos on relevant web pages to rank in more video search results.
• Cut your videos down into ads, pre-roll and still images to make the most of one shoot.

Now we’ll cover some techniques for building organic website traffic and blog traffic.

How to Get Organic Traffic to Your Website

1. Do Excellent Keyword Research

Because Google’s mission is to serve the user first, including relevant keywords in your content is key to getting more website traffic. Make sure you use your selected keywords in a natural way on the page. Create value for the reader instead of simply trying to please the search engines.

Some tools for keyword research include:

• Ahrefs
• Semrush
• Moz
• Keywords Everywhere

Each of these tools has a free and paid version. Depending on your budget, you may want to opt for the paid versions, as they provide more data and features.

The main keyword characteristics to analyze during research include search volume, ranking difficulty, intent/relevancy and which related keywords should be grouped on a single page. Check out our guides to quick keyword research and competitive keyword research for all the details you’ll need.

If you’re considering targeting the keyword with PPC as well as organic search strategies, look at the estimated cost per click, and ensure you’re not competing with yourself.

2. Avoid Writing About the Same Topic Repeatedly

When you want to build authority on a particular topic, it’s a normal instinct to want to publish five blogs about that topic and design a campaign around them. When you have a fundraiser or a fun financial report each year, it’s normal to want to publish a new blog about it every time. But both instincts can be bad for SEO.

When multiple pages on a website have very similar keyword targets, information and intent, it’s very likely that search engines will devalue all those pages because it seems they don’t provide unique value.

So, here are the solutions for this potential content “cannibalization” problem:

• When planning content, make sure the topics you select are those you haven’t written about before.
• If you want to write about something again, consider updating and resharing an existing page instead!
• Document the keyword targets for all your content so you can be sure to avoid targeting the same thing on multiple pages.

3. Build Backlinks

Backlinks are links earned from other sites pointing back to your resources. Creating valuable pillar content – especially content that incorporates unique multimedia – is a quality backlink building strategy. As more high-authority sites link to yours, it will give you more “link juice,” or credibility, which will raise your rankings in the SERP.

The higher you rank on the search results page, the more organic traffic you’ll receive. Backlinks also drive more referral traffic to your site.

Related Content: The Low-Quality Traffic Dilemma

How to Increase Blog Traffic (Paid and Organic)

1. Leverage Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is your friend when it comes to gaining referral traffic. Promoting your content on social media platforms is one way to increase awareness and reach new potential customers.

For example:

• TikTok is ideal for short, snappy video clips with tempting links.
• Google Business Profile (GBP) posts are like social media posts for local search results.
• B2C businesses may find image-heavy platforms like Pinterest or Instagram to be helpful for product promotion.
• YouTube is an ideal platform for how-to content based on keyword research. Share new videos on Facebook (and other platforms your audience hangs out on) for additional visibility.

2. Build an Email List

The best way to your customer’s heart? Their inbox. Creating a newsletter to share your blogs and resources is an excellent way to prompt repeated visits to your website.

In addition to being a traffic driver, email marketing drives more conversions than every other marketing channel. Each email you capture is a warm lead. They already know you and are more likely to click a link to your site, consume your content and convert. Additionally, email lists can be used for building audiences for paid media advertising and remarketing campaigns. 

Don’t have an email list? Now’s the time to start building a list. Add simple capture forms to your site and make sure your existing customers (the ones who are already excited to learn and shop with you) know about the special newsletter and/or deals they can access by handing over their email information.

3. Optimize for Voice Search

Optimizing website content for voice search is one of the best ways to continue to gain blog traffic. About 27% of the online population uses voice search on their mobile devices.

A few things to note about voice search optimization:

• People speak in full sentences rather than typing short phrases, so it’s vital to research longtail keywords to optimize for voice search.
• Be sure to answer the question upfront. Nothing’s more frustrating than having to dig through an article for what you’re looking for. This is where short-form content shines.
• Optimize for snippets and PPA. Smart devices look for short and concise answers. Writing a quick summary in your post makes it easier for search engines to find the answers.

4. Build a Community

Being an active voice within your market is a simple way to gain recognition so that people begin to seek out your blog content. How can you do that? Start a Facebook discussion group. Answer questions on public forums like Quora or Reddit. Be sure to respond to every comment you receive on social media.

The key here is to be a resource, not a self-promotion machine. People want answers to their questions (sometimes one’s they didn’t even know they had), not to wade through endless self-promotional information.

Best Way to Promote a Website

The best way to promote a website is to utilize as many marketing channels as possible: SEO, paid media (search ads; display ads; OTT, etc.), social media, email marketing, and more. Even when you know what you should be doing to promote your website, it can be a challenge to know where to start and to find the resources.

If you’re looking for more direction or more hands on deck, the team at Oneupweb is here to help! We have more than two decades of experience with full-service digital marketing. Contact us online today or call (231) 922-9977.