How the Experts Increase Traffic to Their Website

OK, to begin, I should qualify what I mean by Increasing your website traffic. By web traffic, I don’t simply mean more visitors to your website.  For $5.00 you can get software on Fiverr for a whole bunch of site visitors.

The kind of traffic I want, and you want, is qualified traffic. Web Traffic that leads to an increase in sales from people genuinely interested in the services and products you provide.

This is the kind of strategy that a professional SEO service can provide consultation on.

What would an Increase in Web Traffic mean to you?

• More Traffic from People who want your services
• More Sales from those people
• Better Ranking through users who share your products or services with others

That’s the kind of increase we are after. Most people working online want to boost sales, boost relevant traffic and increase their social and search engine reach as a result of highly qualified traffic.

How do I get this Traffic to My Website?

• By Targeting the Right Neighbourhoods
• By Targeting the Right Associates
• By Providing the Right Content for Your Audience

If you thought you needed tens of thousands of people to visit your site in order to be successful, you’re dead wrong.

I dispensed with the 150 ways to build traffic stuff and distilled it as best I could into three key components that anyone with an online business can duplicate.

I am going to try and keep this short, but I am going to leave you with plenty of material to work with if you are serious about increasing traffic to your site.

And here’s the kicker:

Boosting Traffic to Your Site can be fun.

1. Target Traffic from the Right Neighbourhoods

Here’s a little tip I picked up from  Rand Fishkin.

You don’t need to (and why would you want to), blast your content, your products or your services all over the web. Spamming is a dead end.

To generate more traffic you need to:

• Reach the audience most likely to want your product or service.

Find them, and you have found your traffic.

Grab a Pen and Paper. Here is What you need to Know:

• Where is your audience gathering online?
• What time of day do they gather?
• What do they do while they are there?
• Who are they talking and what are they talking about?

Of course, for this to work, you need a good profile of your ideal customer.

• How old are they and Where do they live?
• How much money do they have to spend?
• Are they male or female?
• What do they do for a living?

Here is what You need to Do:

• Join those Forums, groups, networks
• Use your Ad Spend in their Space
• Build relationships with them through Social Media
• Contact them with your offer

Let’s use an Example

Say you run a small business hairdressing website. It’s a local business (unless you are doing virtual hair styling).  Your audience may not be a certain age. Instead, it’s people in a certain location.

Your traffic strategy should include:

• Local information and interests shared through Social Media
• Apple maps Connect
• Google Local Business.
• Local directories with reviews you go out and ask for

Facebook is probably a very good source of traffic for you. This includes Facebook advertising where you can target traffic by location. But, before you dive into any campaign, you need to find a set of analytics tools that are going to give you some advanced marketing metrics on your audience, demographics and more.

Forget the Viral Hype. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I am all for viral. But I am more for long term gains.

One More Example

Say you run a Recipe Blog. Your small business niche is Pasta. You make Pasta, provide tips and tricks and you create amazing recipes using all kinds of pasta.

Your traffic strategy should include:

• Food Forums
• Health and Nutrition Communities
• Reality TV Shows
• Chefs

Pinterest is a good traffic option for you. Food images are hard to resist. Use calls to action that brings traffic through from Pinterest to your Recipe blog.

2. Target Traffic from Among the Right Associates

Once you have found your audience online and you have begun to interact with them, you need to widen the net. One way to do that is to make new friends.

Forget the competition. To generate quality traffic you need to:

Find related and complimentary niches to yours

Your traffic is not only your competition’s traffic. It’s also the traffic of many other cross-over services.

Take an hour and make a list. Here is What you need to Ask:

•  Who are your allies?
• What businesses move in your niche?
• Where do they hang out online?
• How can you begin to move in their circles?

Think about other complementary websites that might be able to expose you to your ideal traffic source.

It’s what I call Friends with Benefits.

People often think of traffic acquisition as either something you conjour from thin air or else something you gain by means of theft from your competitors.

I have always found magic and scaling the walls of my enemy to be hard work. Why not pinch from your friends instead?

Here is what You need to Do:

• Take your list of allies
• Offer to guest post on their sites
• Suggest a cross promotion
• Offer some kind of suitable link exchange

Let’s use an Example

Who are the allies of the Hair and Beauty Industry? Who might benefit from your trade? Perhaps it’s a limousine service. Think wedding day.

Maybe it’s a make up artist or a wedding day planner. Maybe it’s a Funeral Parlour.

Your traffic strategy might incorporate:

• Offering to promote their service on your site in exchange for the same
• Offer to give them exposure by running a free limo taxi service to your target audience
• Include Your business advertising on their industry directory sites
• Follow the, comment, share and exchange their content with yours through social media

This not only helps drive relevant traffic to your site, it also creates marketing opportunities beyond the web.

3. Target Traffic using the Right Content

Content Marketing is all about matching the right user with the right information. You need to find them first (as opposed to sitting around waiting for them to find you). It also means having the right site deisgn to compliment your content.

Once you have found them. You want to give them what they need in as few steps as possible. Content marketing provides the bridge between your product and service, and the users need.

Content that Drives and Increases Web Traffic is Content that:

• Satisfies your Audiences’ Need.

You don’t just want your audience to turn up to the game. You want them to buy your popcorn.

Here’s your Third Excuse for a coffee break. Here is What you need to Discover:

•  What Kind of Content do they already devour?
• Where are they getting it from?
• How can you improve on it?
• When is the best time to provide it?

Think about the kinds of content that drive traffic in your niche already and what you can do to improve it.

It’s what Brian Dean from Backlinko  calls the Sky Scraper Technique.

Here is what You need to Do:

• Find Content that is already doing well in your niche
• Look at the major elements (mood, design, length)
• Find out where it is being shared and by whom
• Look for ways to improve it

Let’s use an Example

So, you have found that in the salon industry, customers love to read and hare new hair care secrets. And there’s is plenty of content out there to view.

Maybe is a treatment plan for itchy scalp, or a herbal extract that helps prevent split ends.

Your traffic boost plan will involve:

• Finding the most popular content available already (just Google it)
• Examining its social media shares. Who shares and where
• Looking for the gaps like no rich media, infographics, video, etc
• Presenting it to your audience at the most effective place and time.

It’s your niche. You’re the expert, so spotting the opportunities for improvement should not be hard.

The other beauty of this technique is that you don’t have to sit around scratching your own itchy scalp trying to come up with content ideas to generate more traffic.

Just look around and see what is already working and how you can improve on it.

Traffic Optimisation Round Up

In case you missed it, here are the takeaways on the top three way you can increase Traffic to Your Website:

• Stop throwing your content into thin air. Spend some time actually profiling your ideal client and then find out where they are
• Find out who your likely friends and allies are and develop relationships with them.
• Find out what content is really winning over your target audience and then improve on it. Add to it. better it.

I hope you find this helpful. Let me know what traffic strategies you have used in your business and under which of these three categories you would place you strategy.