Strategies for driving traffic to your website

We normally think of traffic as a negative — an endless trail of cars creeping towards the same destination down roads not large enough to accommodate the volume. But if you have a website, particularly if you engage in eCommerce, you know how important it is to drive traffic towards your site to increase lead generation, sales, and engagement. Here are a few tips to help develop a sure-fire traffic strategy.

Content creation

This is a bit of a beast to unpack, because content creation involves you knowing your audience. You can blog and advertise until the cows come home, but unless you have a buyer persona in mind it won’t translate into traffic increases.

Once you know who you’re writing for, invest in solid creators who can create cornerstone pieces that are engaging, thought-provoking, and visually appealing. Try scoping out your competition as well — see what they are doing and use that as inspiration to do better.

Creating quality content will not only lead to sharing on social media (more on that later) but bring people back for more. A compelling blog, witty articles, great quotes and sound bytes, will bring people back for more. Repeat traffic and developing a loyal base is hugely important, and great content is critical to achieving this goal.

SEO tools

One thing that is key to keep in mind with content creation is using relevant keywords to improve your SEO ranking. Diving into SEO’s full benefits takes time, work, and patience, but will pay off by improving your search rankings and driving people to your site without prior knowledge of it.

Keep in mind the ‘key phrases’ often used by people in your industry or that people will use when searching for your service or product. If it’s in your budget, consider hiring an SEO specialist such as Tactica. Their knowledge of strategy and rankings will be an asset and an investment worth making.

If you’re a local business with a website, make sure your business is up-to-date on things like Yelp, Google, and TripAdvisor. Use web directories to increase website traffic to your site without having to get too deep into the technical side of things .

Linking to social media

If social media is not your main sounding board, gathering a following still works well in your favour. Be it Facebook, Instagram, or even Reddit, adding visuals and excerpts from website content will help direct traffic onto your main site. Creating easily shareable, visually appealing content creates followers, engagement, and brings people to your site.

Ensure your website has social media ‘share’ icons at the bottom for easy linking as well.  Like a catchy, appealing sign brings people into a shop, social media is the flashy tool that draws in traffic to your site. Even consider things like sponsored posts and paid advertising to further increase your engagement with the public.

Giveaways

Nothing draws in followers and traffic like the prospect of winning a great prize. No doubt you’ve seen all the social media posts sharing and commenting on giveaways in the hope of winning that elusive reward. Contests often require participants to like, share, comment, or tag friends. All of this creates engagement and interest in you and your site. It’s an easy way to increase traffic — provided you have the followers to help create engagement. If no one is seeing your content, the purpose is defeated.

Remember that driving traffic to your website is a multi-pronged approach that takes more than a hope and a prayer. There’s lots of ways to encourage traffic, but it is important to focus on a few major ways to encourage both new and repeat visitors. Keep on creating content, learn about the benefits of SEO, and utilize social media to your full advantage.

Most importantly, be consistent! Results take time, patience, and continual re-evaluation.