There’s nothing more depressing for a small business owner than to realise no-one’s visiting their website. It’s particularly worrying if you’re relying on your website to sell your product or service. But don’t panic – there are methods and strategies out there that can help, like paid-for advertising and organic SEO. For small businesses, affordable ways to increase traffic are there – you just have to commit to using them.
7 ways to get more traffic to your site
Actually, there are far more than seven ways, but these are some of the easiest to implement. They might involve a bit of time, and you might need to think about using a web maintenance service to help, but they will go a long way to helping you reach more potential customers.
1. Review your website – if your website is clunky, slow or poorly organised, the few visitors you have will leave pretty quickly. Online users are impatient – we expect sites to load immediately and we expect to find what we’re looking for within a couple of clicks or taps. So the first thing to do is to get someone to take a look at your site to see how it can be improved. Today, your site really needs to be responsive – meaning that it is easily accessible and readable on any device, so if yours isn’t, you may need to think about an upgrade. But at the very least, check that there’s nothing stopping your site from loading quickly and smoothly. Consider monthly website maintenance to ensure your site is always performing at its best.
2. Consider organic SEO – for small business owners, Search Engine Optimisation is a great way to target customers. Organic SEO is marketed as ‘free’ because you don’t have to pay for it in the same way as advertising. But you will need an SEO assistant or outsourced expert to help see what needs to be done. Organic SEO involves researching the keywords that people are using to find businesses, products or services like yours. You’re likely to get a long list – from single product or service names right through to ‘long-tail’ keywords which tend to be questions or fuller sentences, such as “Where to find an SEO specialist in London”. Using these keywords throughout your site in content and in the meta-tags attached to each page will help your site to be more visible to the search engines.
3. Become socially active – social media is a great marketing channel. It helps you to reach the right customers at the right time, and it’s mostly a free-to-use option. You’ll need to know which social marketing platforms are best for your business: some consumer-facing businesses do exceptionally well on Facebook, whilst others are able to use LinkedIn to reach new contacts, or Instagram to promote products. Whatever platforms you work with, this is an ideal opportunity to send people off to your website – to watch a video or download a tool or take a questionnaire or just to find out more.
4. Pay to advertise – this is probably the quickest win in this list, and a growing number of companies are choosing to pay for online advertising. This could be with Google Ads, or it could be a Facebook or LinkedIn ad campaign. Again, you need to know which keywords you want to target, and you need to set a budget, because it’s easier to spend more than you think. This is where a virtual assistant for website marketing might come in handy – they will have the time and the expertise to craft good ads, keep keywords up to date and measure your success so you can see what’s working and what’s not.
5. Make use of email marketing – email is a great marketing tool because you are speaking directly to people who are already interested in your business. GDPR rules mean that you can’t email just anyone – you need to have a list of people who have signed up to hear from you, or who you can email because they are existing customers. Send an email with an offer, a discount, some useful advice or a reminder, and link to the relevant page on your website, so that your reader gets taken to exactly the right place to read, download or buy.
6. Keep adding good content – search engines like websites that are fresh and up to date. So the more useful, keyword-specific and relevant content you can add to the site, the more often search engines will take a look and the more likely you are to be found. What’s more, you’ll also be able to share that content with your contacts, your social media followers and your email list, thereby driving more people to your site more often.
7. Get involved with your business community – if you’re regularly at networking events, or you contribute to an industry group on LinkedIn, you’re becoming part of a community. That community, once it gets to know you, might then start looking at your website, or following links to your blog posts. They may also start to refer you to others – and the way they will do that is by sending a link to your details and your website. The old maxim: ‘You get out what you put in’ is really relevant here. The more you can make genuine connections and have useful conversations, the more likely people are to trust you and use you.
To find out more about how we can help manage your content marketing to support your SEO strategy, feel free to call us on 0800 994 9016 or use our contact form in the menu above, and we’ll be happy to chat about how we can help.