It has to be one of the most frustrating things for business leaders, to have invested a significant amount of time and money creating an amazing website and then find no one is looking at it!
The problem in most cases, is that there is no lead generation activity. Their target audience is either unaware that the website exists, or in their busy schedule, there is no compelling reason for them to visit it.
The good news is that there are things that you can do, and even better, in this blog, we are highlighting options that, unlike pay per click advertising, don’t have to cost you much money!
1. Start with who you know
If you have a database of customers and prospects, that is the best place to begin. Your website should contain plenty of content that will appeal to them, whether that is product or service based. Think about the problems that they are contending with and create email campaigns for them, demonstrating your understanding, relevance and ability to help, incorporating links to the solutions. Think about campaigns rather than one-off posts, people want to know that you are around for the long-term and that you are consistent.
2. Extend your inbound audience
Once you can see what elements of your content are most impactful, you can further develop this and become recognised as an authority on the topic. Google will always favour sites that it considers to be expert in any particular area, and being favoured by Google is the key to appearing in organic search results. A great strategy for this is to create white papers or extensive blogs, which are then enhanced by multiple shorter blogs, each honing in on specific elements of the wider topic. Be sure to research keywords and long tail search terms to make your choice of language as appealing to Google as possible.
3. Improve local search
If your company is a bricks-and-mortar store, local SEO is an important factor to consider. To gather information for local search, search engines rely on signals such as local content, social profile pages, links, and reviews to provide the most relevant local results to the user. When users search generically, for example “Office Furniture Supplier” Google will list national providers first, but will then provide details of local companies, including a location map, opening hours, contact numbers and ratings. Tools such as Google My Business and Moz Local help you to manage your directory listings and reviews so you will show up in local searches.
4. Include social share buttons
Social share buttons are links that make it easy for your readers to share your content on social media. When your readers become promoters of your content, your traffic will increase. For this to be effective, you have to create content that is shareable, which means it needs to be strong, relevant and digestible. If you can, include content that is quotable and include interesting visual elements such as photos, videos and infographics. Finally, don’t forget to ask your readers to share your content – after all, if you don’t share, you don’t get!
5. Work on your technical SEO
Technical SEO focuses on the backend of your website to see how the pages are technically set up and organized. Factors include elements like page speed, crawling, indexing, and more will affect how highly your site appears in the search results. Matthew Howells-Barby, HubSpot’s director of acquisition, has written about technical SEO in this blog.
In it, he says, “Don’t underestimate the power of technical SEO changes. Technical SEO resulted in us growing our organic traffic by more than 50% in just one month.”
To get started with your technical SEO, use some of the tips from Howells-Barby’s article, including fixing broken links and redirects, creating an XML sitemap for your subdomains, setting up language meta tags and adding custom H1 and introductions to topic pages.
6. Work with influencers
We know that customers are more likely to buy from organizations on the basis of word of mouth, but how do you create great word of mouth? First, delight your customers, and second, work with influencers. This is not to suggest that you need to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds to get a Hollywood A-lister to promote your products. We are talking about encouraging respected people that you know, suppliers, colleagues, customers, to support you by extending your messages into their own networks.
You can do this overtly by tagging them in your social posts, hoping for likes and shares, or more subtly by speaking with them, explaining what you are trying to achieve and asking for their support. Influencer marketing isn’t a passing fad. In fact, it’s a budget-friendly option to drive traffic to your website. When influencers post discount codes, links, reviews, or giveaways, you are tapping into their audience to drive traffic to your website.
These are just a few of the tactics that can be used to drive traffic to your website. If you’d like support implementing any of them, or to consider others and talk about a strategy to create long-term sustainable traffic, get in touch with us at Focus7 and we’d be delighted to help.