One of the first challenges anyone faces online is how to increase website traffic. This is one of the few things that ties everybody together on the Web: From the innovative B2B startup to the lone blogger, everybody knows traffic is vital.
Of course, for those aiming to build their site into a revenue generator for their business, traffic isn’t the most important metric. Rather, ROI comes from conversions, the traffic that takes the action you want. A sale is the ultimate conversion, though usually not the only one.
Sooner or later, attention turns to conversion optimization and the art of getting as much value as possible from your traffic. In the first six months to a year, however, the focus usually stays on identifying and developing initial traffic sources.
Then, you can continue to incrementally increase website traffic throughout the site’s lifetime.
Here’s the challenge: Traffic is rarely free.
Even traffic that doesn’t have an established “price tag” is usually time-consuming to deliver. All of your traffic generation strategies are going to come with a cost in either cash or time. So, it’s essential to have a tailored and streamlined approach.
The faster you make progress, the easier it’ll be to generate revenue to offset your costs.
So, what are the best ways to increase website traffic as quickly as possible?
1. Start with Facebook Groups
Sure, Facebook has its ups and downs when it comes to finding targeted traffic – especially in the B2B realm. But there is a flip side to this: People are willing to share content freely and to engage with total strangers. Rather than jumping right in with your company’s Facebook Page, you can join relevant FB Groups and start sharing valuable content.
Organic reach, the ability to command attention on the Facebook platform without spending money, is notoriously low. Not surprisingly, the willingness of Facebook’s algorithm to show Page and Group content for free took a nose dive once the company went public.
Still, you can increase website traffic this way if you’re willing to start a lot of conversations.
2. Graduate to a Facebook Page
Let’s say you have a social media representative who’s out there sharing your content and talking to people about your brand. The rep has a major advantage over your brand Page, because he or she can “friend” people and message them right off the bat. On the other hand, Facebook has made contacting your Page or Group followers an increasingly intricate dance.
Still, sooner or later you need a Facebook page – and there’s some excellent reasons why.
For one thing, not everybody is going to go straight from chatting with you to looking at your website. It’s usually not a good idea to send people directly to your site unless they have a clear idea “what’s in for them” and don’t have to spend much time looking around. On the other hand, going to your brand’s Facebook Page is a small win you can build on.
A Facebook Page is the place to start scaling your efforts and sharing content with a more targeted, dedicated audience. B2B enterprises can start spreading that useful, helpful content that will ultimately drive Web hits. So, in the long run, you are building more than just a source of traffic: You’re getting a long-term social media asset that’s very flexible.
3. Get Positive Press from Social Media Influencers
Influencer marketing is a way of building rapport with your desired audience on social media by partnering with someone who already speaks to that audience. Social media influencers work hard to build their audience and they generally need to keep it by sharing useful, informative, and timely content – exactly the kind of content they can get from you.
Although it can take a while to build up a good working relationship with an influencer, it is not uncommon to receive immediate hits from 10%-15% of their audience when they share content from your site. A long-term agreement where they share a few times a month will ultimately carve out some mindshare for you among their followers.
4. Create a Custom Monthly Newsletter
Creating a monthly newsletter is a great traffic generating source. In your newsletter you can include, different blog articles that were published in the last month, your companies take on news pieces that are relevant to your industry, and you can even offer up different premium content offers you’ve created such as eBooks, Tipsheets etc.
5. Use Different SEO Tools
If you are looking to drive more traffic to your site, you should start utilizing different SEO tools and keyword research tactics. You need to analyze the different terms that your personas are using to search for solutions to their pain points. These tools are great resources to get a better understanding of what is being searched, and how difficult it is to rank for those terms. Once you analyze that information, you can start utilizing these terms in your blogging strategy to start driving the right qualified traffic to your site.
6. Create Valuable Content
Creating valuable content… aka Blog Blog Blog! You want to build a blogging strategy that hones in on your prospects pain points, so you can start addressing their problems with valuable content. If you utilize some high value keywords you found in #5 above, you will start popping up in search results when your prospects are searching for those problems.
7. Launch Paid Traffic on Facebook
One reason it’s so crucial to have a Page for your business is that, in general, Facebook will send more traffic to advertisements that target an FB Page than an external website. if you truly want to see traffic over night, then paid traffic is the only true solution.
Is Facebook an optimal paid traffic tool for you? Consider these factors:
Is your buyer profile specific enough to use Facebook ad targeting to find your audience?
Does your audience already have some Groups dedicated to it on the Facebook platform?
Do you have the budget to make full use of Facebook’s robust retargeting capabilities?
Arguably the best part here is the ability to use Facebook’s retargeting pixel. You have the chance to apply some incredibly granular strategies to anyone who visits your site: For example, ads targeting people who read certain content or abandoned their shopping cart.
8. Go for the Big One: AdWords
AdWords is known far and wide as the double-edged sword of paid traffic … for good reason.
Google issues truckloads of AdWords vouchers to new enterprises every year. These have a tendency to ensnare the unwary with the implication that they can achieve targeted, profitable traffic in a matter of minutes by typing in a few keywords and a nifty headline.
Of course, the reality is a little bit different.
AdWords is the #1 solution if you want to traffic right this instant. With a budget as small as $50 a day, an optimized AdWords account may be able to get you hundreds of hits. Even so, though, that’s hardly the whole story. Everything else has to be in place first.
For example:
Design, navigation, and content must be fully functional and aligned with your prospects;
Lead capture strategies, like a lead magnet and a mailing list, must be configured and up;
Every AdWords ad should lead to a laser-focused, SEO’d landing page – no exceptions!
If these cornerstones aren’t laid out, your AdWords Quality Score will spike into the drink in a matter of hours, likely doubling your costs. Plus, your conversions will be rare or nonexistent.
So, there you have it. Near-immediate traffic is possible and it can add fuel to your marketing fire. Still, the key is to balance risks and rewards in how you increase website traffic. In the long run, you’ll need a consistent, customer-focused inbound marketing strategy to keep people coming.