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So here’s the issue: how do you get more website visitors?
We all want our websites to eat and get ludicrously fat with traffic. After all, each and every new visitor to our site gives us one more chance to convert a sale.
The most common answers for getting website visitors are something like this:
At NiceJob, we do NOT believe that SEO is the best strategy for generating traffic.
Like with food, balancing our website traffic from a variety of sources or channels is healthy. Here’s a list of major channels:
Effective website traffic generation balances your traffic among these channels. Let’s see what we should do (and shouldn’t do) within each channel to drive traffic.
This can be a confusing metric as it’s often misrepresented in website analytics software, we won’t get into the why’s here, but if you’re curious here’s a great article.
Direct traffic is extremely valuable and your success in getting direct traffic is directly related to your brands memorability. If your website address is idoreallygoodworkinchattanoogainc.com you will likely have serious issues driving direct traffic.
If you’re at the stage of purchasing a domain name, don’t hesitate to pay extra for an unforgettable name.
And then plaster if everywhere. Don't get into the rut of thinking online advertising can only be done online.
Plastering your website address on every vehicle you have on the road is one of the highest return on investment forms of advertising you can ever do. This will definitely drive more traffic to your website.
Add your website to your company shirts, hats, jackets, etc. This is a great “pay once, advertise for years” investment.
Each time you arrive at a job site, put up a sign that prominently includes your website address.
Work with other local businesses that share a similar customer base but happen to be in a different industry. Think of creative ways to promoting each other, for example: offering co-branded coupons.
If you’ve got a few more bucks to spend on advertising, lease a billboard, or other offline advertising space.
Referral traffic is a monster of a channel, so we’re going to just touch on a few ways to create it. The goal is to create multiple entry points to your website on other websites that your potential customers are likely to visit. (The italicized part is important. The goal is NOT to build hundreds of links on websites selling ballet shoes in Taiwan.)
Start with the national business listing services, like Yelp, Angie’s List, Google Places and Bing Places. Try this handy free listing tool.
Spend time making your listings look great; it’s worth it. On a sidenote, this is a primarily a traffic generation strategy, not an SEO strategy. Links from directory services provide very little SEO value.
Chances are, there are dozens of local business directories right at home in your local city, like the Chamber of Commerce, your local BBB, local business owner associations, local online phone directories, industry specific directories, etc.
Try doing a Google search for “Directory + your city name”. Make a list of all results and reach out to them to include your business.
Many local news outlets have free or cheap opportunities to list your business.
Conduct a Google search for “News + your city name”. Again, make a list of all results and reach out to them to include your business.
Many local classifieds also have free or cheap opportunities to list your business.
Search for “Classified + your city name”. And once again, make a list of all results and reach out to them to include your business.
No matter what industry your business is in, there are dozens of industry specific organizations, forums, directories & associations. Search Google for your industry name + [organization, forum, etc.]
And make a list of results and get involved with as many of them as possible.
Do something for a local charity, donate your work, volunteer for a local non-profit organization, try to break a world record - anything to get people talking. And try to gently make sure your company get credit from an online news outlet.
With a bit of creativity this opportunity list could go on and on. The bottom line is, each opportunity you take advantage of may give you a few extra visitors per month (or more, if you get lucky). It starts to add up fast.
Email is still one of the cheapest ways to drive website traffic. And with awesome companies like MailChimp, it’s ridiculously easy to do.
Building your list is the toughest part, and takes time and patience. Here’s a few suggestions for building your email marketing list:
Spend the time to write great content for your emails. Then add sharing buttons to improve the chances that your subscribers will encourage others to subscribe.
Add a sign-up form to your website, and tie it to a promotion to encourage sign ups.
Collect email addresses at offline events like trade shows, and import them into your database. Be sure to send these contacts a welcome email that confirms their opt-in to your list.
Use your Facebook business page to promote an offer that requires an email address submission. Create a tab on that page dedicated to email sign up. Promote the offers in your timeline. And encourage your leads to share your offers on Facebook by adding a social sharing button on your landing pages and thank-you pages.
Social is becoming a bit trickier due to the sheer amount of content posted, less and less of it actually ends up in the feeds of potential customers. That said, you can still use social media to impress your customers and drive website traffic.
Key social networks:
Instead of highlighting opportunities for this channel, let’s look at suggestions to help your posts get seen.
Awesome photos of your work or short videos are great. Posts without media are 3x less likely to get attention.
If you want your potential customers to see your posts, you need to have them on your network. Here’s a good article from HubSpot about how to do exactly that.
It’s easy to get excited about social media, post heavily for a month, and then feel you got no results and give up. Keep going, time will pay dividends.
We’re now at the part we’ve all been waiting for. The candy.
You don’t need to hire an SEO company for hundreds or thousands of dollars per month just so they can build blog networks filled with links to your site too artificially inflate your rankings.
The reality is, if you’ve implemented strategies to drive traffic from direct, referral, email, and social media too, you’ve already done 90% of the off-site work needed to start climbing the ranks on search engines.
Often the single most effective strategy to improve search engine rankings is to focus on developing a solid stream of traffic from the other channels, and good rankings will follow.
Using this strategy has a couple of huge benefits:
You’re not pandering to current SEO trends, putting yourself at risk for future algorithm changes, or even worse, penalties.
Even if you take a traffic hit on one channel for some reason, you’ll still get traffic from the other channels.
If you go all-in on SEO, your total potential website traffic will be limited to the quantity of local searches. Diversifying your channels enables you to scale traffic too much higher levels.
Driving website traffic the right way takes work, there’s no doubt about it. But if you make a multi-channel plan and stick to it, it will pay off.
And, if you want to make sure those precious website visitors convert into customers, check out Convert. That’s what we do.
