5 Easy Ways to Increase Your Site’s Traffic

Here’s a scenario that’s not too difficult to imagine: you’re launching a startup company and have spent weeks building the perfect website. It’s got a beautiful design, displays your products in a compelling light, and the content is impactful and persuasive. You launch your site with pride and wait for the traffic to come barrelling in.

*crickets*

It happens all too often: small business invest countless hours into building the perfect website only to find that no one is visiting. If a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there to hear it, does it make a sound? Similarly, if a website is advertising products to no visitors, does it make a difference?

Bringing traffic to your website is the single most important aspect of your online presence. To help you attract and hold on to visitors, here’s a list of five tips that you can put into practice right away:

1. Invest in intelligent advertising

Sadly, it’s difficult to make money without spending money. If you want to bring in a lot of new visitors to your site, you may have to invest a bit of money in advertising. The good news: it is now easier and cheaper than ever to get your content in front of the people who are most likely to respond. Using tools like Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, and Instagram Ads, you can get your site in front of an audience that you’ve specifically chosen to see your message. This type of demographic targeting pays huge dividends and greatly increases the value of your advertising.

2. Be a social butterfly

Speaking of Facebook and Instagram, have you created matching social media profiles for your business? Two decades ago, many small businesses relied on word of mouth to increase their popularity and sales; today, word of mouth has been replaced by social media. And thankfully, social media offers much greater potential for marketing than normal word of mouth. Create social media accounts that will be easy to manage and start using them to amplify the impact of your content.

3. Destroy broken links and 404s

Once you’ve attracted someone to your website, the last thing that you want to happen is for them to land on a broken page. A dead link or 404 page is going to send your visitors away, never to return, and it’s critical that you ensure that your site is free of these pages. Capsulink is a tool that allows you to turn your links into capsules that ensure your visitors get where they’re supposed to be going. It also notifies you as soon as a 404 page appears on your site, giving you immediate notice so that you can fix the issue and get your site up and running again.

4. Stand out in search engines

If you’ve never heard of search engine optimization, stop reading this article, look it up on Google, and then come back in a couple hours when you’re done reading. SEO is undoubtedly the biggest key to increasing your site’s traffic, and it can be improved with just a few easy changes. If you don’t know where to start, focus on your long keywords; these specific terms will help your site be noticed by people who are searching within your niche. Not sure what to use for your long keywords? Google’s AdSense tools will help you identify what will be most effective.

5. Become a local leader

In the past, small businesses could stand out by becoming leaders in their local community. With the internet, your local community is now a global marketplace. So how can you stand out as a leader in such a massive community? Easy: identify a much smaller subcommunity where you can contribute valuable content and ideas. Submit guest posts to popular blogs in your niche, or become recognized as a regular commenter in forums and discussions. If people like what you have to say, they’ll want to hear more.

— Alex @Bickov is a product designer & co-founder of Mediaplans internet marketing agency.