How Do I Get Traffic to My Website?

How Do I Get Traffic to My Website?

Most small businesses start out with a great idea.  All the blood, sweat and tears go into getting that product made or manufactured, then getting a website built and perhaps an e-commerce store.  Then – nothing.  They wait for sales that don’t happen.

If you hop online and go to any business Facebook Page, the most commonly asked question out there is ‘How do I get traffic to my website?’.  You need traffic, as traffic = sales.  Sales mean you can keep your business alive and hopefully afford to pay the rent and buy food on top of that. Getting traffic is very often overlooked. But even if you have zero budget for marketing – there are still a shit load of things you can do to increase traffic and therefore sales through your site.

Pfft – What would you know?

Sick of reading stuff from people who have no idea what they are talking about? Yeah me too.  My website has 1,000,000 unique users per month – all totally organic traffic that has taken nine long years of blood, sweat and tears to grow.  Just say’n.

Write Some Damn Articles

Now don’t tell me ‘I don’t know how to write’, or ‘Writing is not my strong point’.  Bullshit.  No one knows your business or your product better than you do.  Sure, you could pay someone to do content writing and articles for your website (hey – I do that for a living!), but good content writers charge upwards of $400 per article (I charge more than that!).  Can you afford to do this on a regular basis?  If so, contact me here, if the answer is no, then get crack your knuckles and get writing.

Articles are great because you can post them on your social media channels which then ‘push’ the readers over to your website to read the article.  Wow – that’s website traffic!  Hopefully one or many of those readers (who are already interested in what you are offering because they clicked)  will buy your product or service.

Some ideas on what to write about include:

• Cover the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ that you get through the day to day running of your business.  Every question can be an article.
• What will people ‘Google’ to find you?  Make that an article.
• Solving a problem with your product or service
• Interview one of your best customers
• Interview your suppliers

Then you need to do these articles on a regular basis.  If you only have time to do one per month, do one every month.  The more often, the better.

via sugar-babies.net

Social Media is FREE – Stop Whining That It Takes Up Too Much Time

Another whinge I quite often hear from people who won’t get off their butts to promote their own businesses is that social media is way too time consuming.  Oh boohoo!  Social Media is FREE – and if you have no marketing budget, then free is fanfreakingtastic.  So grab the bull by the horns and join all of the social media platforms that you can and start promoting your business on these platforms.

Your customers can’t buy from you if they can’t find you!

Here are the mandatory social media channels your business should be on:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Twitter

Others to consider include:

• Whats App
• WeChat
• Tumblr
• QZone
• Snapchat

If you don’t know how to use any of these social media channels, there are seriously thousands of free lessons on Youtube.  No excuses! Just get on there and start playing around with them!

Learn Basic SEO Practices

Before you roll your eyes and tell me SEO is a magic trick – I’m not talking about anything complicated.  In fact, if you write your articles correctly, you are already doing basic SEO and that is about all your need for a small business.

Here are the very basics you can do right away!

Your Article Heading Should be What People Will Google

See at the top of this page, what I have called this article?  ‘How Do I Get Traffic to My Website?’ I called it that, because that is what I would Google if I was looking for ways to increase traffic to my website.  This is a simple trick that works.  You don’t need anything more technical than that!

Include the Key Words in the Article

Now, this very article is all about ‘How Do I Get Traffic to My Website?’.  Make sure you include the keywords of the article a couple of times (where it fits) within the article.  This allows Google to ‘crawl’ the content and know exactly what that content is about.  However, don’t over-stuff your article with keywords.  If you repeat the same keywords over and over and over again, Google knows you are trying to cheat the system and will de-rank you.  So only include the keywords where they fit naturally.

Install a Free SEO Program on Your Website

There are tonnes of free SEO programs out there – and they are marvellous and they work.  They will read your content and will tell you, step by step, exactly what you have to do to get your SEO as close to perfect as possible on your articles.  And the better the SEO, the higher ranking you will have with Google, the higher up in Google your business will be, the more click you get to the website – and this is traffic!

Make your URLs as SEO-Friendly as Possible

When writing an article, it’s easy to just save the title as the URL – but that is a common mistake.  Your URL should just be a summary of your keywords.  Sounds a bit confusing but here is an example:

This here is an article on a Phone Sanitizer.  The name of the article is:  Forget Hand Sanitizer, Now there is a Phone Sanitizer (and it’s a pretty great idea!).

But if you look at the URL for the article – it only contains the keywords: Phone Sanitizer

Now, this is much more SEO friendly and therefore is likely to rank higher in Google as Google instantly recognises what the article is all about!

 

Research Keywords

Keyword research isn’t just about finding that ‘pot of gold under the rainbow’ which is a high volume keyword with little competition.  Keywords are a long term strategy to attract the right audience from Google that is looking for your goods and services.  So all of your content has to be relevant to you and your brand.  The easiest way to do this is to use the questions that your current clients ask you – and create an article answering their questions.

Channels to Direct Traffic to Your Website

There are loads of different channels (both free and paid) that will encourage good quality website traffic to your site.  Some ideas include:

Online Directory Listings

There are literally thousands of online directories out there – many of them are free. Get as many backlinks as you can to your site on these directories.  This is a good, free way to build traffic to your website. However, there are dodgy ones out there too that can actually HURT your Google ranking.  Look for the directories that are on the first or second page of Google and go from there.  Another way to tell how to find high-quality directories is to use websites like Ahrefs or SEMrush.  Sure, they cost money too – but they are the best in their class!

Online Ads

Of course online Ads such as Facebook Ads or Google Ads are not going to be cheap, but they are a good way to get traffic to your website.

Link Insertions with High-Value Influencers

Look for high-value influencers in your area of business and get a link included on their website.

Articles on Your Business with High-Value Websites

Can a blogger or news outlet do a story on your business?

Instagram Stories

Instagram is now the largest social media platform there is – see if you can book an influencer to promote your brand.

Paid Advertising

Then there are paid campaigns – videos, articles or a combination of both.

Take Care with The Images You Use for Products or Services

The internet is all visual.  And people will judge a business by the images they use.  If you are using your own images – fantastic!  Make sure they are clear and bright.  There are many free photo editing programs out there that you can use to change the style, shape and colours of images so there are no excuses for posting a bad photo.  With nearly everyone owning a smart phone now, you have a fantastic quality camera at your fingertips.  A phone is all you need for both video and images – take time to learn how to use the features on your phone, and if you don’t know how, use Youtube.

If you don’t want to use your own images – don’t just steal them from Google – this will not only de-rank your website but you can also get a nice bill from the original photographer for use of the image.  There are loads of free stock image sites around, and even more paid image sites.  Check them out and use them for generic photographs.

List of Free Stock Image Sites

• Unsplash
• Pexels

List of Shit Hot Paid Stock Image Sites

• Shutterstock
• Istockphoto
• Getty Images

Good images posted on social media will encourage people to click through!

Very important images that people will judge you on include:

• Your Facebook Timeline Photo
• The main image on your website
• Your own profile picture (get professional photo’s done)

Use Google My Business

How do you find people these days on the internet?  You Google them.  But did you know that you can get a free Google Listing with all your business details – and that most people don’t do it?  Crazy huh!

You can set up a free business profile on Google My Business and when people Google, you are more likely to come up (often at the top on the right hand side) – and you look a whole lot more legit.  Google says that customers are seven times more likely to click on a Google My Business listing than a Google.  If you are confused – don’t be – here is a nifty little Youtube video that explains how to do it!

 

These are just the beginning of the right ways to start getting traffic to your website.  Once you have the hang of them, they will literally only take you about an hour a week – that is an hour you are working on your business, rather than in it!

Get more leads and have more customers – by driving traffic to your website!