You know you’re a marketer when you’re stuck in rush hour traffic, and all you can think about is, “why can’t I drive more traffic to my website like this?” If you’re like most marketers, you’ve struggled when it comes to driving traffic to your website. In 2019, the Content Marketing Institute found the following to be accurate:
- 61% of content marketing professionals are unsure as to what is most important to their audiences
- 50% of content marketing professionals are unclear as to what their audience expects at any stage of the customer’s journey
- 49% of content marketing professionals aren’t exactly sure what the steps of the customer’s journey are exactly
Whether you’re writing a blog post, posting to social media, or launching a new email campaign – it isn’t easy to look back and see what’s driving traffic to your site and what isn’t. The following list will help you increase traffic to your website, cultivate more leads, and ultimately improve your ROI.
1.) Drive traffic to your website by creating content
Inbound marketing hinges on attracting the right people to your company. One of the best ways to make this happen is through blogging.
You need to develop a buyer persona to generate content that will attract the right visitors to your website. Once you know your audience, you can create content that will attract them to your website. But how do you develop a strong blog post that will attract the right audience?
Here are five surefire steps toward driving traffic to your website via content creation:
- Identify your buyer persona: Discover more about your audience, whether it be their job title, pain points, or anything in between
- Engage in SEO research: Figure out what your audience is looking for via search engines so you can provide the right content.
- Start with a draft: Kick things off by writing a draft that answers questions your audience might be asking.
- Publish: Publish your posts on your blog for everyone to read.
- Promote: Promote your blog via social media and email newsletters to drum up traffic. The more traffic your posts generate, the higher they rank on SERPs (search engine results pages).
2.) Master your topic(s) to drive traffic to your site
Ranking higher on Google is a great way to increase organic traffic and drive traffic to your site. Remember that Google prefers sites that are known to be experts on the subject matter they cover. In order to be considered an expert, you can create cornerstone pages, which are essentially longer blog posts that cover all aspects of a topic. Once your cornerstone content is set, you then need to write ‘cluster content’, or supporting blog posts that target long-tail keywords. Doing so will show that you’ve covered every aspect of a topic. It is important to focus on long-term traffic since it will help you ring higher on search engines.
3.) Drive more traffic to your site with paid advertisements
Paid advertisements are a quick and easy way to drive traffic to your website. YOu can run PPC (pay-per-click) or retargeting ads via search engines. You can also display ads or sponsored posts via social media. Your overall strategy will likely feature a combination of different types of advertising. All in all, getting started with paid advertising can be a pretty simple process.
4.) Organic social media
Organic social media is by no means a new strategy. However, it’s still something that all marketers need to pay attention to. Besides posting on social media platforms, you can also make use of Instagram Stories, live video, IGTV, or Facebook Messenger. The essential element with social media is to be an early adopter of new features.
For example, Facebook is releasing an automated lead generation feature on their Messenger. This allows businesses to create an automated chatbot experience within Messenger to link to content offers on your site. This is a superb feature that will drive traffic to your website.
It’s also essential to have a diverse social media strategy and use the right platforms…more than just Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Platforms such as YouTube or Pinterest are a great way to generate a lot of traffic to your site. Pinterest has great engagement rates. In fact, 66% of Pinterest users make a purchase after seeing a brand’s Pins.
5.) Website analysis
Now we’re going to do a bit of reverse engineering of our overall thought process. Before you can drive traffic to your site, it’s vital that we learn about our audience. In order to make this happen, try using a tool such as CrazyEgg, to see where you’re losing visitors. This sort of information allows you to create the right sort of content to drive traffic to your website.
6.) Contests & giveaways
Contests and giveaways are quite possibly the easiest way (besides paid advertisements) to drive traffic to your website. This can give you an almost instant boost, while also rewarding your followers. You can host giveaways on social media, through your email list, or both!
Putting a strategy like this into action can be quite easy. All you need to do is follow these six steps:
- Determine which platform(s) you want to host your giveaway
- Select a prize (free tickets, discount, etc.)
- Select the criteria (website comments, email sign-up, etc.)
- Write ad copy
- Create graphics
- Post & promote!
7.) Drive traffic to your website with influencers
This shouldn’t come as a surprise, but influencer marketing isn’t a passing fad. In all honesty, it’s a budget-friendly option to drive traffic to your website. Per Think with Google, collaborations with YouTube influencers are 4x more effective at increasing brand familiarity than those with celebrities. Whenever influencers share your promos, links, giveaway, or reviews, you’re tapping into their audience to drive traffic to your website.
Do you recall Brian Halligan’s INBOUND 2018 keynote speech? Customers are far more likely to buy from organizations with excellent word of mouth support. How do you create great word of mouth support? First, delight your customers. Second, work with influencers!
8.) Email list building
Your current readers and customers are a great way to drive traffic to your website. When posting a new blog or content offer, you can promote it to your followers and subscribers for a quick traffic boost. With content-heavy websites, having repeat readership is helpful for traffic goals, conversions, lead generation.
To get this started, build an email list or grow your current list. Below are a few strategies that you can use:
- Content offers: Generate gated content for visitors that requires them to offer up their email address to access it. Include CTAs (calls-to-action) for your content offers on your website.
- Easy-access newsletter sign-up: Showcase sign-up forms across your website, from your homepage to your about us page. If a visitor has a delightful experience on your site, they might want to sign-up for a newsletter. Why not make this an easy process?
- Social media: Promoting your email newsletter on social media, whether that be through a post or a contest/giveaway, is a superb way to convert current followers into subscribers.
9.) Community engagement
The more brand awareness you have, the more traffic you’ll drive to your website. It’s really that simple. One way to garner brand recognition is to be active and engaged in your community. You can put into place an engagement strategy today by taking part in Facebook group discussions in your industry, answering questions on public forum websites, and interacting with your followers on social media.
All in all, just remember to be helpful and human. Nobody likes spammy links when they’re asking a quick question online.
10.) Guest posting Helps Drive Traffic to Your Website
On a similar note, writing guest posts can corral traffic to your site. Guest posting allows you to show that you’re active within your community, while also linking to your website. We’ll touch on generating backlinks more in a bit.
In order to implement a guest posting strategy, you need to find a site that would be a good fit for your company, draft a blog post, and then compose a draft.
11.) On-page SEO will drive traffic to your site
On-page SEO helps your website rank higher in search engines and drive more traffic to your site. A few of the more essential on-page SEO elements include the page title, header, meta description, image alt-text, and the URL…just to name a few. Showing up in search engines will certainly drive more traffic to your site.
12.) Drive traffic to your website with quality backlinks
It goes without saying that you need to rank high in search engines in order to drive traffic to your site. In order to rank higher in search engines, you need to be an authority in your industry. One such way to do so is by acquiring quality backlinks. If websites with high authority link to your site, that gives you more credibility.
There are two main ways through which backlinks can drive more traffic to your site: boosting ranking and driving referral traffic. First, backlinks are one of the most essential ranking factors for every core search engine out there. By constantly earning high-quality backlinks from relevant websites, you’ll improve your rankings in SERP and, in turn, see a lift in your organic traffic.
On the other hand, backlinks can also drive a substantial amount of referral traffic. There’s certainly something to be expected if you’re mentioned in a popular news website. You’ll also see referral traffic come through if you’re mentioned (and linked to) in an article that’s already ranking well for high search volume keywords and is earning a constant flow of traffic.
13.) Video marketing is a Great Way to Drive Traffic to Your Website
It’s about high time to incorporate video marketing into your content strategy. Per a report by Cisco, video marketing will account for 82% of traffic by 2022. This is why you need to start implementing video marketing into your content strategy as soon as possible because this is the stuff that people are clicking on!
You can generate videos for Instagram or Facebook Stories, live videos, IGTV, Facebook Watch, news feed videos, YouTube, etc. What better time than now to start revving up your video marketing engines!
14.) Content repurposing
Need content to drive traffic to your website, but are struggling to come up with ideas? Don’t worry – this is totally normal! A superb way to get over this hump is to repurpose old content. For instance, you can take a well-performing blog post and repurpose it into a video. Or, if you have a podcast that did really well, write a blog post on the same topic. Using content that has already performed well will continue to drive traffic to your website.
15.) SEO tools Help You Drive Traffic to Your Website
In order to drive traffic to your website, it’s vital to be a student of SEO. Learning how to engage with SEO tools such as Google Analytics, Ahrefs, and SEMrush will works wonders and will help you develop a strategy to generate traffic to your website.
Said tools will help you learn and analyze what’s working on your site and what isn’t. It’s really that simple. Furthermore, these tools help you come up with ideas for content that has the potential for high traffic.
16.) Historical optimization
Historical optimization is the process of updating old blog content and generating more traffic and leads. Historical optimization is a tactic best designed for a blog that’s been around for a number of years because you need to generate a large amount of organic traffic, have built up a critical mass of subscribers and social media followers, and you need a respectable arsenal of old posts at your disposal. Historical optimization should be a piece of your overall blogging strategy – not the whole strategy.
17.) Voice search optimization
Voice search is an ever-increasing area of importance in which to rank. In fact, PwC states that 65% of 25-49-year-olds speak to their voice-enabled devices at least once per day. This is why optimizing your content for voice search is flat out essential.
Here are a few tips to help get the ball rolling:
- Research long-tail keywords: Whenever people use voice search, they speak in full sentences. In order to optimize for voice search, start researching long-tail keywords.
- Write answer-focused content: The content you write should answer your audience’s questions.
- Optimize for snippets: Smart speakers like Alexa and Google Home look for short, concise answers. Writing quick summaries in your posts makes it easier for search engines and smart speakers to find the answer they need.
18.) Local SEO
If your company is a brick-and-mortar store, local SEO is an essential component to consider. Search engines rely on flags such as local content, social profile pages, links and citations to provide the most relevant local results to users. For instance, if someone types in “best coffee near me” on Google, the results are generated by the user’s location. This is where tools such as Google My Business and Moz Local help businesses manage their directory listings and citations so they show up in local searches.
In order to rank for local search:
- Make sure your name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent on your Google My Business and social media pages.
- Make use of a directory management tool to monitor directories such as Yelp, Foursquare, Best of the Web, etc.
- Research and use location-based search terms on sites such as Google Trends, which dissect popular search terms across various regions.
19.) A/B testing
Going beyond driving traffic to your website, you definitely know you’re a marketer when your motto is “test, test, and test again!” A/B testing is a split testing method that helps you figure out what version of a campaign performs best. These sorts of tests can provide you with key information about your audience so that you can create customized content and offers that drive traffic to your website. There are many tools out there that you can use to get started, such as Omniconvert, Crazy Egg, and AB Tasty.
20.) Internal linking
Whenever a visitor visits your blog, your goal is to get them to keep reading other pages of your website. This is why internal links – links to other pages on your site – are extremely important. When visitors hop from one page to another on your site, they’re more likely to convert and become brand junkies. You can create an internal linking structure using Yoast’s internal linking tool.
21.) Technical SEO
Technical SEO zeros in on the backend of your website to see how your pages are technically set up and organized. Factors such as page speed, crawling, indexing, and more are the backbone of technical SEO. Never underestimate the power of technical SEO because it can result in an increase in organic traffic by over 50% in just one month in certain cases!
Here are a few tips to help you kick things off with technical SEO:
- Fix broken links and redirects
- Create an XML sitemap for your subdomains
- Set up language meta tags
- Add custom H1 and introductions to topic pages
22.) Community building
Constructing a community of brand enthusiasts is a superb way to regularly drive traffic to your website. You can form a Facebook group, Twitter chat, LinkedIn group, or a Quora Space tailored for your followers and others in your field where you generate value, while also linking back to your site.
Communities keep you at the forefront of your customer’s minds. Plus, they’re a great way to engage with your followers and learn more about your audience as they evolve.
23.) Content offers
Also known as lead magnets, content offers are a superb way to employ content to drive traffic to your website and generate leads. Content offers differ depending on which stage of the buyer’s journey your customer is in, but can include the following:
- Webinars
- Guides
- Reports
- Trials
- Demos
- Checklists
24.) Media coverage and public relations
Earned media coverage is an awesome way to drive brand awareness for your company and drive traffic to your website. If your marketing and public relations teams collaborate, you can corral traffic to your site and create stellar word of mouth.
Even though most media outlets try to avoid including backlinks in their stories these days, that doesn’t mean that a good story won’t drive folks back to your site. Media coverage offers great third-party validation for your company. Stories about new products or services, your company culture, or even industry-specific thought leadership can all serve as extraordinary drivers for readers who maybe hadn’t heard of your company before and want to learn more.
25.) Social share buttons
Social share buttons are simple links that make it easy for your audience to share your content via social media. As your audience becomes promoters of your content, your traffic will follow suit and increase.
Once you’ve incorporated social share buttons, the looming question is how to get people to share your content. Here are a few tips to get things rolling:
- Ask people to share on social media
- Develop strong content
- Feature quotable content
- Include multimedia such as images, videos, infographics, etc.
26.) CTR optimization
Once your content is live and you begin to rank on search engines, make sure that people are clicking through to read your posts. Your click-through rate (CTR) measures who clicked on your post and read it against the number of people who viewed your post (landing page, email, or advertisement) in total.
A great way to measure your organic CTR is Google Search Console. It’s important to write intriguing content with appropriate meta descriptions and titles in order to get more people to click through and drive traffic to your site. To write high-quality meta tags that are click-worthy, make sure your titles are short and catchy. Your descriptions should leave visitors wanting more. This ties directly into on-page SEO, which we already covered above.
27.) Academy/knowledge base posts
One stand out style of content that can drive traffic to your website is educational content. If you create courses, certifications, or knowledge-based posts that are helpful to your audience, you’ll more than likely see an increase in traffic.
Closing Thoughts
If you’re struggling to drive traffic to your website, fear not – you’re not alone. Incorporating the tips above can help you increase your traffic as soon as possible. Once your traffic has begun to improve, it is then time to start thinking about conversions.
