I have been working on ways to build and boost traffic to websites for some years. Every other week I read of the latest techniques and tips for Boosting Traffic. Some good. Some of them are rubbish tactics that take business nowhere. Other, more expert SEO strategies turn out to be long lasting Gems.
Increasing Traffic, provided it is the right kind, not only improves your search ranking, it literally keeps your small business afloat. In this article I have brought reliable methods of increasing traffic to your site.
For more niche-targeted information on increasing traffic, you should go here.
5 Ways to Get More Long-Term Traffic for Your Website
The key to a successful online business is to increase website traffic. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done.
Summary.
- Sign up and Use Content Aggregators like Alltop.
- Optimise your Site for Long Tail Keywords
- Use Link Building in Industry Niches where you can participate
- Re-think Your Email Marketing
- Find the Social Media Platform that suites your Audience
http://t.co/j0iR4WMm7R ~ Building Website #Traffic for the Long Term. Business #Marketing. pic.twitter.com/rQhnKuCvk0
— David Trounce (@MalleeBlue) March 17, 2015
In fact, companies pay experts thousands of dollars per month just to increase their website traffic because they don’t know how to do it themselves.
Many fall into the trap of a quick fix. And that’s all it is. After a month or two, they are back where they started. If you have invested in your business and it’s a long-term venture, then it pays to get more long-term traffic.
Some tactics just don’t last that long. Others, like the ones below, are tried and tested means of bringing more visitors to your website. I hope you find them useful.
Make Use of Content Aggregation
Content aggregation is used on sites where you can establish an account and have your content, posts and articles published by an RSS Feed or manually.
These sites will showcase your website content continuously.
Example from Alltop
Sign up to any one of these Aggregation Services and use them to increase traffic for all your published content.
- Growth Hackers. It’s a manual system but quick and easy.
- Alltop. Create an account and add your Blog feed.
- BizSugar. Allows you to publish summaries of your work. They also have a handy Bookmarklet
- Inbound. A Good place to share and get content marketing tips from others.
- Hacker News. Very Easy to use and includes a Bookmarklet
If you’re in Real Estate, try Bigger Pockets.
Some other Content Aggregation Platforms include American Express Open Forum, Flying Solo and Start Up Nation which are all good for Business.
They allow you to manually submit a summary of your content with a link back to the original.
Use the Power of Long Tail Keywords
Long tail Keywords are naturally occurring phrases that people put into search engines. Smart marketers know that using unique long-tail keywords in each post or article gathers momentum in both search position and traffic over time.
The real benefit of Long Tail is that it actually answers or addresses a searchers question. People don’t type in soap. Enter this, “Where to buy organic soap bars”.
Building content around a keyword that’s important to you (say, “Organic Soap”) with long tail keywords has the potential to drive traffic to your site from multiple sources.
In other words, instead of going straight after, “Organic” and “Soap”, you:
- Create one top notch page for that keyword (It’s your money page, your hero or landing page)
- Then, surround that hero page over time with equally good long tail articles (Like the example above)
- Ensure there is a relevant internal link from the surrounding long tail page to the hero page.
Rinse and repeat with four or five unique long tail articles and you will increase the potential for more organic traffic by 5 times.
Link Building for More Traffic
Most people think of Link Building as a means of improving your ranking. While that’s true, it’s also true that links build direct Traffic to your website.
Where are your target audience gathering online? All of the sites mentioned as good for content aggregation are also providing you with naturally occurring links in relevant content and site before a relevant crowd or users.
So, in addition to using links to build rank and search position (which will increase traffic), you should also be using links to present yourself to actual users who are moving in real communities on the web.
So, here is your mission. Start to think about where your audience is gathering online. How can you contribute to the conversation? How can you be useful in answering their questions.
Take the finance industry as an example. Try joining a Google Community or local forum where people are asking questions about finance.
Register with the site, add your profile and make a point of contributing once a week to the questions and conversations of other users.
If you’re an accountant, don’t just hang out in accountant forums.
Go to the high-quality small business forums like Open Forum If you’re a cake decorator, don’t just hang out with all your other cake buddies.
Go and hang out with wedding planners and the like.
Get to know these sites and even offer to contribute a useful guest article. These sites are always on the lookout for good content. It’s usually a permanent link. They need the content as much as you want the link and you will both benefit from the improvement in your sites’ traffic.
AS you develop relationships with other sites, the opportunity to write a guest article for [ublishing may become available. Guest Posting is especially good when done as the natural result of a relationship and al interests.
Email Marketing Still Rocks
It has been said that over than 247 million emails go out to account holders on a daily basis. Email studies have also shown that you can get a $40.00 return for every $1.00 you spend on email marketing.
The key to a good email list is keeping it tight. No point having 10,000 disinterested viewers. It’s money down the drain. But, a well nurtured email list can be a weekly or monthly source of highly qualified traffic.
When collecting email accounts you only want targeted leads. This strategy will likely:
- Increase your open rates and minimize your overheads.
- Improve your click through rates
- Increase referrals
A list with only 1,000 subscribers can be worth a great deal of money and get your more traffic if you nurture every one of them. Speak to everyone with genuine interest and create an email content marketing campaign that truly addresses their needs.
No Fields Found.In order to make it work and actually get the traffic results you will need to know:
- What your goal is
- That your landing page is in excellent condition with no technical or formatting issues
- How you plan to follow-up those who click and take the desired action
- Those who click through but don’t take action
This is Coffee, pencil and paper stuff.
Sit down and map it out before you jump in. Then test the entire system before you mail out.
An email once a month can provide a steady stream of qualified traffic that other, more elaborate systems today still can’t match as far as your return on investment goes.
Boost Traffic with Targeted Social Media
A big part of your website’s traffic will come from your Social Media efforts, provided you are targeting:
- The write Social Media Platform and
- The right audience in that Social Media
In other words, if you are an organic soap decorator, Linkedin may not be where you put all your efforts but Pinterest might be.
Social media sites such as Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram Google+, Pinterest, etc all appeal to people and audiences in different ways.
Pinterest is well liked by brands and brand users. They have one of the highest click through rates of any sector. Twitter is great for sports related topics and celebrity guff.
Facebook, on the other hand, doesn’t really want you to go anywhere without them. They go to great lengths to keep users on the site.
So, your posting efforts on Face Ache may not get you far. However, Facebook advertising can really work well for driving more traffic to your business.
Scoop it. Not sure who benefits from Scoop it, but it’s pretty and it might send you a little bit of traffic. Share there, and share everywhere. But reserve your best stuff for your best (and best known) audience.
Twitter is heading in a similar way to Facebook, but tends to be a little more user friendly. However, they don’t give you a lot of room to write and so you need to publish your best headlines there and remember to use your hashtags.
Use Your Hashtags
Hashtags across all Social Media are important because they send your content in to relevant communities, boards and lists.
You should regularly be sharing content from your website on as many social media sites as possible. If you really want to see good traffic growth you should be focused on creating content that is “Shareable” that might go viral. Original videos, infographics, white papers, quirky research statistics, case studies, Kindle and e-books all have a solid history of being shared through social media.
Bringing targeted traffic to your website should be a basic goal for all small business websites. When creating a long-term strategy to consistently increase website traffic you should focus on anything that promotes your brand as a whole. That said, you can’t everywhere at once and you don’t want to be.
Got Some Tips for long term traffic building or how to get more traffic to a site? Join the conversation below and add your two cents.
See a subject we haven’t covered? Contact Us and let us know what you would like us to write about.
Hey, maybe you could write it for us!
Please promote my website.
Hi Mike, Thanks for your comment. Now now, don’t be lazy. Iif you put these traffic building techniques into practice you could be building your own business website. Of course, I’m also happy to promote your website but I charge $120 dollars an hour. Stay cool.