Your business website is worthless without traffic. You need a steady flow of new visitors hitting your website day-after-day. Unfortunately, here’s really no secret to getting more traffic. It’s simply a matter of doing what works over and over again. The good news is the more you do what works, the more you get rewarded for it. This is especially true with SEO and search engine rankings. The more you consistently do the right things with your website, the more of a compounding impact it generates for you over time.
Here’s my list of 5 best practices to help you get more website traffic:
1. Blog
This is absolutely, without question the single most reliable way to get more traffic to your website. You need to be blogging, and you need to be doing it frequently and consistently. I always recommend publishing at least one new blog post each week — 4 per month. That’s the absolute bare minimum. Challenge yourself to do more. There really is no limit to how many blog posts you can publish and enjoy the search engine and traffic benefits that result. The sweet spot is about 3x per week (12 posts per month). The ideal spot is 5-7 blog posts per week (or about 1 post every day).
2. Be Social
Blogging is really the first form of social media. Today, there are so many new channels for sharing and interacting with people online. The most important social media channels for business are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Pinterest. We call them the “Big 5.” But be sure to include any other industry specific social networks that really matter to your marketplace and your customers. To get more website traffic, you need to share your blog posts on your social media channels. But don’t be overly aggressive with sharing your own content. Strike a balance between sharing your own content and other content, ideas, quotes, images, etc.
3. Optimize
I always recommend you build your business website in WordPress. For lots of reasons, WordPress is the most “search engine friendly” and “social media friendly” website platform available. If you’re using WordPress for your website, I recommend the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast. The plugin is free, but they do offer a “Local SEO” upgrade for a small price. If you’re running a “local based business” and using WordPress, it’s a no-brainer to upgrade the plugin for even better search engine results. The only thing you really need to know about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is that every page on your website should be focused around one target keyword phrase (and only one!). The Yoast plugin will help you do just that.
4. Advertise
I often find that small business owners and entrepreneurs are either way too focused on SEO or way too focused on PPC. You should try to strike an even balance between both for best results. PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising is an excellent way to test new waters in your business. It can often take months or even years to achieve top positions on Google, Yahoo, and Bing for your most desirable keyword phrases. PPC helps you accelerate that process and find out just how valuable those keywords are to your business. And don’t stop with PPC. You should also investigate banner advertising, social media advertising, and as many different forms of paid traffic as possible. Just be sure you focus on advertising that generates real results for your business.
5. Send Email
Finally, don’t forget about your existing customers and contacts. Be sure you’re sending email at least once per month to your list. A friendly email newsletter is a great way to stay in front of your customers, but this is just scratching the surface of the many ways you can use email marketing to get more traffic on your website. Special promotions, exclusive content, seasonal reminders — there are lots of reasons to send your customers email and keep your business at the front of their mind.
Get More Website Traffic Now!
All of these strategies are effective when used alone. Just imagine how much of an impact you can have if you do all of these in concert together this month!
