There is no point having a great website if your potential customers can’t find you. It’s not just a case of having some keywords stuffed on your website in the hope that people find you and if you really want to drive customers to your website, then you need to try and market your website using all the different digital marketing and search engine optimisation techniques to help increase your traffic and revenue.
Here is are 15 techniques to help drive customers to your website.
1) GOOD CONTENT
Content is king and is the most important way to drive traffic to your website. You need to have engaging content on your website that gives your customer a reason to visit your website, with useful information on what they are looking for, like your products or services. Try and keep your content clear and concise, making good use of your keywords to help with your search engine optimization.
2) SEARCH ENGINE FRIENDLY
Search engines are still the most popular place where your customers will go to first to find what they are looking for, so make sure your site is search engine friendly.
3) OPTIMIZE EACH PAGE
Make sure every page on your website is optimized for the search engines. Check out Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide for more information. https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf
4) META TAGS
Your meta tags and titles on your page are really important as that is the description used in the search engine results. The better quality your descriptions and titles are, the more chance you have of winning the click in Google. We use Yoast SEO and it is really easy to add tags to your pages and is installed in your website admin.
5) UPDATE REGULARLY
Updating your website regularly is really important to the success of your business. Google will reward you for updating your content in the search engines and it keeps users coming back for more. Your website is a content managed website, so you have the power to keep it updated regularly by adding blogs, news, info etc. It also gives you the opportunity to share content on Social Media to drive more traffic to your website.
6) RESPONSIVE & MOBILE FRIENDLY
Make sure that your website is mobile friendly and responsive. On average 50% of your customers will visit on a mobile device. Most users will just click away if your website is not optimized to your competitor’s website. Google have just introduced penalties if you are not mobile friendly and will reward mobile friendly websites in the search rankings.
7) DIRECTORY SUBMISSIONS
Make sure your website is in every available directory that offers a free business listing. Target directories that are in your niche or related to your website.
8) SPREAD THE WORD
Place your business website on absolutely everything, including social media, business cards, adverts, blog posts, business directories.
9) EMAIL SIGNATURE
Ensure that your website URL is part of your email signature.
10) USE SOCIAL MEDIA
Use social media to promote your website. Set up a Facebook page, Google+page, Twitter or Pinterest account for your business. Use them regularly to engage with your target market and send them to your site. Don’t forget to use whatever special tools each social media platform provides, such as Google Hangouts or LinkedIn groups to build relationships and community.
11) FACEBOOK/TWITTER ADS
Social Media Ads are a great way to drive traffic to your website and are one of our most popular techniques that we use. You can get your advert in front of thousands of people that are a targeted, specific audience from as little as $10 a day
12) PARTICIPATE IN FORUMS/SOCIAL MEDIA
Participating in forums/social media and offering your opinion and helping others and being seen as an expert is a great way to drive customers to your business website. You can include your business name and website URL in your signature.
13) GOOGLE ANALYTICS
Google Analytics is the best way to analyze how many visitors are visiting your website and how they interacting with your content. Look at the pages they are visiting and tweak the popular pages to engage them more and increase your conversion rate. Make sure you are getting Analytic reports or even better full access to your Google Analytics account or our custom reporting dashboard and understand what everything means. https://www.ocreativedesign.com/understanding-google-analytics-your-website-traffic-report/
14) CHECK BROKEN LINKS
Check your website’s links regularly to make sure they all work. Use a free broken link checker like Online Broken Link Checker. Google rewards websites that don’t have any broken links.
http://www.brokenlinkcheck.com/
15) EMAIL NEWSLETTER
Send your customers a regular newsletter. We have set this up on dozens of our client’s websites and have seen the huge benefits it brings with large increases in traffic and engagement on their website. Tools like Mail Chimp are free (up to 2000 subscribers), easy to implement and this is something you can quite easily manage yourself to keep in touch with your clients.
Every week, we will dive into more of these topics in more detail as well as other useful advice to help you take your website to the next level.