Become a content publisher

Whether online or offline, content is crucial because it fuels all types of effective marketing. Your website needs high-quality content to increase incoming traffic from all web sources/referrals such as search engines, social media, etc. Generally, content comes in 3 primary forms. These are visuals (image and video), text, and audio. Leverage these according to what suits your business situation best.
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High performing content on the web includes but is not limited to the following:

• Articles or blog content
• Video (information, entertainment, etc.)
• Infographics
• Podcast
• ebooks

Pick a few channels and get social

There are many ways to use social media for business growth. However, we’ll be focusing on how to increase website traffic. You can attract relevant traffic from social platforms by sharing engaging content from your site (e.g. articles). Just make sure you don’t lose sight of the goal, which is traffic growth in this case.
Some small businesses fall into the trap of over-relying on social networks to build their company, to the point that many aren’t actively managing and growing their website, a platform they 100% control. Some don’t even own a website.This is not to suggest that you can’t be very active on social networks because small businesses should. But, never forget the end goal is to use social media as a way of attracting people to your website. Furthermore, take advantage of both paid and organic promotion on social networks if possible.

Add your business to GMB, Bing Places, etc.

People are looking for companies on Google My Business(GMB) , Bing Places, and other business directories daily. Creating and optimizing your business listing on these websites will increase incoming traffic. GMB and Bing Places are the most important ones so start with those. You can appear on search results whenever consumers use location-specific queries like “bakery near me” once listed. The process doesn’t take long and any business can do it. Simply visit each site, register your company, and decide how you wish to confirm the business. Make sure your website address is added to the business listing. Also, keep in mind that both directories only accept companies with a physical address.

Start a link building campaign

Link building is the process of earning links that point to your site from other websites. These are referred to as backlinks. The best way to earn backlinks is to tie real business activities to link building. For example, guest contributing articles to high-traffic websites that also serve some of your target audience is smart marketing. The backlink becomes an important secondary benefit.
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Other link building strategies include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Ask people you know to mention your website on theirs
• Promote content to audiences that are most likely to link to it
• Build relationships with other brands
• Do you know a product that you’ve used and loved? Offer the business a testimonial that they can put on their website
• List your company in authoritative and trustworthy business directories
• Build useful things for consumers and promote them to the audience that’s most likely to spread it

Promote your website offline

Not many consider offline promotion for their website but the opportunity is great.
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Here are a couple of approaches to illustrate:

• You can hand out business cards specifically designed to promote your small business website. One way of doing this is to center the website address in bold letters, then share other details in small font below or above the business card. This should make prospects curious and lure them to your website. Using business cards for promotion is so affordable that any small business can do it.
• Another good approach is to add your website address to practically anything that consumers see, such as work uniforms. Make sure you’re emphasizing the website address in a subtle but tasteful way that captures consumer attention.

Mobile usability

The likelihood of prominently appearing on mobile search engine results increases when your site is mobile-friendly. Consumers access websites via a variety of devices. Today, mobile (excluding Tablets) accounts for around 50% of worldwide Internet traffic according to Statista.

Worth noting is that you don’t need 2 versions of your site to satisfy mobile users. Instead, use a responsive approach. Responsive web design is an approach to website design in which pages are automatically adjusted to fit the screen size of devices. So whether on mobile or desktop, consumers will experience your website in the way it was intended.
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And all of those people expect a great user experience every time they surf the web. So, it’s extremely crucial that your site looks great on every possible gadget. Also, mobile usability is a Google search engine ranking factor. The search giant prioritizes websites that are mobile-friendly when serving mobile users. Plus it’s possible that Bing is doing the same. You can run a mobile-friendly test on your website using Google's tool.

Leverage social video sites

Hosting resource-consuming things like videos on your website can be costly. These files are better hosted elsewhere and social video sites are a great source for website traffic. Leverage the power of established social video networks like YouTube or Vimeo to host marketing content that can bring traffic.

The concept is similar to using social media platforms. You have to see these websites as a means of increasing your website traffic.

Here are some tips for driving traffic to your website:

• Post useful or interesting content that can attract the target audience and drop your website address in the description
• Discuss content that’s published on your website (e.g. a blog post) and link to the full post in the description box. The trick is covering enough of the content on your site to make consumers want to learn even more from the original
• Mention your website address at the beginning and/or end of every video with a clear CTA (call-to-action).
• Use video overlays to place CTAs that link to your site if the social video website allows it

Email marketing

Your website visitors are classified into 2 primary groups. These are return and first-time visits. Do the following to increase return and first-time website traffic using email marketing:

• Re-touch consumers. More people will revisit a website that’s regularly reaching out to existing customers or prospects via email, thereby increasing the volume of return visitors a site receives. You can reach prospects that would have otherwise forgotten about your company after 1 website visit through email.
• Share emails online. Every email typically comes with a stand-alone link that can be shared manually or automatically on the web, providing that you’re using a software like Keap, which makes it easy for you to share your email newsletters on social media and other platforms. This will expose your content to more consumers, which leads to additional website traffic.
• Give consumers a way of spreading email content. Add social share buttons to your emails. This allows any small business to tap into their existing audience for promotion, which increases first-time visitors.

Make a plan and get to it

Many small businesses give up on driving qualified traffic to their websites pretty quickly. The usual notion or complaint is that already established competitors make it extremely tough to gain traffic share. While there may be some truth to that, the Internet is massive and consumers are attracted to what interests them. So don’t let the competition deter you from doing things that’ll increase your website traffic. Lastly, the strategies laid out in this article can be employed by practically any small business. Have fun.
High performing content on the web includes but is not limited to the following: