Rafi Chowdhury — November 27, 2017 — November 27, 2017
Are you worried about your website traffic?
Ever wonder why companies get so much traffic on their website?
It’s true. We need website traffic to build our businesses. The more traffic means more leads. There are certain methods to open the traffic floodgate to your website which can take your business off the ground.
Let’s be honest. And straightforward.
You’ve invested capital in your business. You’ve hired people to work for you. You’ve got someone who designed your website, took the money, and walked away.
And now you’re alone in your office.
It’s dark. The staff is off the duty now.
You’re looking at your inbox. Waiting for an email inquiry to come.
No sign of email inquiry on your desktop or iPhone.
What if this happens for days, weeks, and months.
Scary?
Okay. Not so fast… (this might help you)
Do you know where the story begins?
(Enough with the scary stuff… let’s dig in into the solution part,
You must be like – Aaah… Thank God)
Any idea what are you missing?
THE OFFER.
What do you have to offer?
What is that offering which makes you different?
What have you told to the prospects that captivated them?
Anything?
No?
I understand the situation, which is why I decided to write this article.
Believe me.
You’ll get the traffic on your website, but you have to read the whole article because all the methods are essential to focus on, and you may not afford to miss a single one of them…
…who knows which method might change your small business into an emerging brand?
Always remember these three factors of getting website traffic:
1. Consistency
It’s a no-brainer. You have to be consistent and steady with your website management and content creation in order to expect people to visit your website. The mission gets closer to die when people expect high results with their work and never reach those targets.
2. Patience
Patience comes with acceptability and understanding. Once you start taking things aggressively, the output might look unsatisfactory. Back in the days, when you started your business, you struggled during the initial days, but later on, things started working out. Patience is the key because it helps you to keep going.
3. Observation
One of the biggest website success factors is observation. If you’re not observing the competitors, you’re missing a lot of opportunities to get better. Keep an eye on their moves, strategies, and steps. You don’t have to copy them, but you have to improve your plan.
The next part is the cream.
Trust me…
11 Proven Ways to Drive More Traffic to Your Website
Wait.
Before you get your hands on the tips and tricks to drive more traffic to your website, make sure you read the last part of this article because some conclusions are worth reading in this world.
Take a look at 11 proven ways to drive more traffic:
1. Sharing Others’ Content
Brands and experts who tend to share others’ content on social media get more attention for obvious reasons. Their followers get a diversified type of content, plus, the content creators notice that their content has been shared by someone else.
Few of them end up engaging with you.
Not every brand or influencer would notice and thank you for that, but some of them might do.
In order to get deeper into the social sharing, I went to research and found a study conducted by The New York Times Customer Insight Group on the Psychology of Social Sharing. The study divided the sharers into six categories:
- Altruists (They are connected, helpful, reliable, thoughtful, and use emails)
- Careerists (They use LinkedIn and like to network. They are intelligent)
- Hipsters (They don’t prefer emails. They are creative, edgy, and young)
- Boomerangs (They use Twitter and Facebook. They are empowered)
- Connectors (They are creative and relaxed. They prefer emails and facebook)
- Selectives (They are resourceful, careful, and informative. They use email)
Speaking of the sharing others’ content, one of the personal favorite tools of mine is Buffer. It makes things so easier to share on the social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.
It helps you to schedule your social media updates, which is incredibly helpful for anyone who wants to continue the social engagement on different channels. Not only does it help you to share, but also provides you stats on your sharing via reporting system.
Have you heard the term ‘Sharing is Caring’?
When you’d share others’ content, you’d definitely get noticed.
Snip.ly does something similar when it comes to social media sharing. It’s a unique URL shortening service which embeds the short URL into the social media sharing and leaves a clickable snippet of the sharer on the page he/she shares.
Although, some social media experts don’t feel comfortable using this tool, but this social sharing tool is controversially popular. I won’t mind using this tool, it just creates a hook on the shared site which connects back to your site via a popup snippet.
2. Contribute to the Social discussions
Social Media plays a big role in taking any brand off the ground. The social discussion is a way of communication in which group or community members share their views on the certain topic, content, or question.
Google+ Communities and LinkedIn Groups are an extremely helpful community building options on social media. Twitter and Facebook loyal fans find their own ways to use these social media sites for discussions and engagement.
In order to drive traffic to your website, it’s extremely necessary to give the community more than you expect to receive.
For instance, never go to the social communities for the sake of sharing your articles. Always give your positive, healthy, and helpful input to the community.
The tricky part is wherever you start hanging out in the social communities, always be in the relevant communities. If you blog on Content Marketing, you shouldn’t be contributing to the Automobile Communities. Social popularity develops your authority, and more people like to get connected with you which is an outstanding thing to achieve.
Help. Solve. Build Relationships.
3. Add Valuable Comments to the Blogs
No one denies the value of the comments. The comments on the blog show the bloggers’ authority, input from the readers, and activity on the blog.
Influencers try to reply the comments they receive on their blogs to show the solidarity, care, and love for their readers.
There are three benefits of comments:
- Engagement
Comments show that how engaged your audience is. Not only do they show readers engagement, but they actually engage people to ask questions, give answers, and share a point of view, which is amazing as far as traffic is concerned.
- Trust
The more comments mean the more trust. When a first-timer arrives on your blog post, he sees a ton of comments, and he keeps checking the comments and finds out that people are praising the article, he gets motivated to learn something from your blog post. Most of them read, comment, and subscribe.
- Authority
When more people are engaged and show their trust on your content, it results in more social sharing of your content. All such factors that bring readers engagement actually increase your authority.
Disqus is a great commenting and engagement tool. It has emerged as one of the top commenting tools for websites and blogs. The reason it expanded and continuously getting acceptability is its platform nature as it is more like a social following network for commenters.
Because they’ve got profiles, following, topics etc.
Commentluv is another commenting plugin for WordPress. It has been quite popular among the bloggers. The idea behind the Commentluv is that it automatically links your last posted article from your blog under the comment you post on other blogs.
What’s the POINT?
The point is, how can you leave a dominant message on someone’s blog?
A valuable comment is a solution.
Maria Konnikova, an expert on Psychology and a contributor to newyorker.com sheds some light on the commenting and its psychology. She articulated some factual phenomena of interaction based on the views of Psychology experts.
But
Interestingly, she also believes that commenting gives people a chance to interact and react.
“Take away comments entirely, and you take away some of that shared reality, which is why we often want to share or comment in the first place. We want to believe that others will read and react to our ideas” said Maria Konnikov.
4. Set up Your YouTube Channel
YouTube has been one of the biggest sources of entertainment, buzz, success, and profits. Every successful marketing expert would recommend having an existence on the YouTube.
As far as driving traffic to your website is concerned, some people are really good at this.
They use YouTube to open up the traffic floodgate for their websites.
How?
They engage and develop their audience on YouTube. Once they start getting traction from a certain type of audience, it means they are getting popularity and they are getting attention from a certain kind of audience, then they have a chance to link their websites and social profiles to their YouTube channel.
Almost every successful YouTube does that.
James Wedmore is one of the popular YouTubers I have ever come across. He uses the same strategy. He has a growing channel and he is certainly using that opportunity to drive the traffic to his website.
It’s about making a string with your subscribers. Taking them one step closer to your brand.
Every traffic strategy doesn’t work instantly.
It takes the time to get flourished.
Whenever you start up a campaign like that, be sure that you know what it is going to take!
A lot of time. For sure!
This article of ReelSEO explains the secrets of success on YouTube. If you’re about to take your brand on the YouTube or want to be a YouTuber, you must read those 5 simple success tips published by ReelSEO.
The point is pretty much clear. We want more traffic on our websites. YouTube is just another outstanding platform that could trigger a huge traffic for our website – because, YouTube success is directly proportional to your website success.
Many YouTubers like Derral Eves, Cliff Ravenscraft, James Stafford, Evan Carmichael, Video Creators, and many more have their websites and they use YouTube to get traffic which is amazing.
5. Arranging the Free Seminars and Trainings
Don’t underestimate the power of events.
Do you think working offline can’t give you success online?
Wrong!
It actually can.
Once you know how to create the leverage, you’d be able to use it.
Co-founders of a famous Keywords hunting and analysis software Long Tail Pro, Mark Thompson and Spencer Haws used webinars to sell their software.
Recently, the Rainmaker Platform hosted a free webinar for content marketers, bloggers, and podcasters to share the insights on the podcasting, content creation, and value inside the Rainmaker Platform. They, however, marketed their product with the discount of $ 100 for attendees.
Such webinars don’t just grow your following, but also give your brand a popularity through word of mouth.
Webinar Software such as GoToWebinar, AnyMeeting, WebinarsOnAir, and ClickMeeting are particularly popular in this space.
Your challenge is driving traffic.
Almost every webinar software offers email addresses collection service which helps you to build your email list. A successful webinar or a series of webinars over the course of time could help you to gather a list of prospects that want to listen to you and want to buy from you.
When you would have an audience that wants to listen to you is far better than hundreds of thousands of people who don’t know you and they are not interested in what you say.
6. Offer Goodies on Email List Signups
Different strategies work for different people. One might not be suitable for you, could be a great fit for another person.
It’s you who needs to figure out what to do.
Once you clearly know what to do exactly, then stay in that space.
Your passion is something that needs to be there for your marketing strategy.
Email Marketing is one of the important marketing techniques for business, entrepreneurs, and bloggers. You could lose your potential clients, your website ranking can wave off of the search engines, but your email list stays with you.
And, your email list should have people who are loyal to you and truly love what you say.
Use email software like MailChimp or Aweber to build your email list.
Once your email list starts growing, it can be a regular source of your website traffic.
Shout It Out Design shared the benefits of email marketing in this blog post. There are hundreds of articles available on the internet to read the benefits of email marketing.
Some people might think, what would be the benefit if same people from the list keep on visiting the website?
Good question though!
You might see that some of the visitors are your regular readers from your email list.
It’s fine. There are three reasons that tell it’s totally cool.
- A few of the readers could be the repeating visitors as they are your subscribers, but your content will be new every time they come to read on.
- If they like your content, some of them are likely to share on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which could land you some new readers.
- The engaged audience can buy your product or service because they trust you more than someone who just visits your website/blog for the first time.
Ebooks are one of the important tools to gather email addresses of the interested audience. The key to success in your ebooks is what do you offer to the audience + who is your audience.
Many of the popular guys use ebooks to collect email addresses of the interested visitors through opt-in bribes which means they offer something like ebooks which are valuable to their visitors to get their email addresses.
Most of them use services like LeadPages or Wishpond to create squeeze pages and whole downloading and email subscription funnel to get this whole thing done.
Unfunnel provides some outstanding growth analysis and strategic marketing templates and printable calendar templates for small businesses, brands, and startups.
7. Sponsor the Podcasts
Entering into the podcasting could be a whole new world for you if you didn’t get a chance to listen to the podcasts.
Podcasting is an audio content production and distribution channel to the subscribers through different tools. It’s one of the important tools in content marketing.
Speaking of website traffic, marketers also use podcasting to drive traffic to their websites.
It might sound a little strange!
You must be thinking, I got this all wrong.
How on earth someone who is listening to an audio program would visit a website?
Listen up.
Marketers use podcasting to sponsor certain episodes of different podcasts. They advertise their brand name, a tagline, or a brief intro in many cases.
The purpose of podcast sponsorship isn’t to drive quick website traffic.
It actually creates brand positioning.
Brand Positioning is a way of creating a brand’s image in the customer’s mind. When a sponsored ad runs on the podcast, it clearly tells the name of the brand, what does it do, and the URL of the brand…
It actually leaves the mark on the listener’s mind. Some of them quickly want to take a look at the website on their mobile devices while listening to the podcast, and many of them just visit later on.
iTunes and Stitcher are the biggest podcasting platforms for listeners.
Even The New York Times admitted in this article that Podcast is a rapidly growing medium, and brands are trying out this format of communication.
Midroll connects podcasters and advertisers for podcast sponsorships, which authenticates my point on podcasting.
You can easily start planning out your podcasting schedule with printable calendars for 2018.
8. Advertising on the Relevant Blogs
The direct advertising shouldn’t be left behind.
It can be a vital part of the plan if this card is played well.
The drill is to bring more traffic, not just the traffic that arrives and walks away quickly.
You should be looking for the relevant audience who comes to your blog/website, and wants to stay there or get connected with you.
9. Write Enticing Content on Your Official Blog
Every smart online marketer knows how important the publishing of great content is. You’ll find more and more companies hiring copywriters and content marketers now to write engaging and helpful content for their audience.
What does content do?
Content actually communicates. It helps companies to solve their prospects and clients’ problems, which is why you’d find so many companies pretty much serious about their blog writing.
Squirrly is one of the popular WordPress plugins for SEO. They are good with their blog. They’ve got a bunch of copywriters for their writing service as they’re in articles selling line too. So, they take care of their official blog.
Commission Junction is a well-known affiliate network with a huge advertiser and publisher base. They also publish relevant and helpful content for their audience.
The fresh content keeps the website alive in the search engines as well as it engages the audience to read, interact, and buy from them. And, ultimately more people reach to your website.
10. Appealing Social Profiles
Social media is a huge change maker in today’s social, economic, and professional life. It matters a lot that how do you appear, how do you hold things together, how do you communicate, react, and interact with people connected to you.
Besides that, there are certain things that showcase your standpoint and approach. For instance, your display picture. I would rather put my headshot than my whole family’s picture because I want people to clearly recognize me.
I love when people put awesome covers on their social media profiles.
You might have never thought about using the Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+ cover images to market yourself.
Smart marketers do this all the time. You should do this as well.
Use tools like Canva or Fotor to create social media profile covers. Such tools help many marketers, bloggers, and entrepreneurs to bring so much value to their social media pages and profiles.
I’ve come across a few examples to show you which totally make sense of what I’m talking about.
Take a look at these Facebook page covers:
Yep.
Bear Grylls. Who doesn’t know him?
Can you see the channel name, date, and day?
The message has been delivered to the fans.
This facebook cover could have been fine without these tiny details, but they used the opportunity to share the information, and it could have made a lot of difference.
Another example is a popular YouTuber ‘Savvy Sexy Social‘ … She is an emerging YouTuber and a lifestyle vlogger…
She does the same thing.
She smartly added her web address on the facebook cover page.
11. Use Content Discovery Platforms
You know what they say!
In order to make money, you have to spend some.
That’s true like hell.
Have you heard about ‘Content Discovery Platforms‘?
Raise your hands, please!
No one?
Okay…
I did.
They are basically advertising platforms to provide advertising services. They work like any other online advertising platform with publishers and advertisers. The major difference is they don’t base on text or image ads, instead, they promote the content within the content.
You could have seen some related articles on your favorite blogs or news websites.
Some of the blogs/websites use content discovery platforms to monetize their content.
Taboola and Outbrain are the major players of this advertising category.
These content discovery channels could be a vital part of your online marketing strategy.
It’s your turn
Now you have to tell me about your plan to drive traffic to your website.
Getting a ton of website traffic isn’t a trick. It’s an approach.
Try understanding that approach for your brand.
And you have to decide that do you want that traffic or not…
I’ve helped brands with their digital marketing, which is why I thought I should share some tested and proven ways of getting website traffic.
Have you ever implemented any of the mentioned ways to drive website traffic?
Share your experience, please!
This post was originally published on Unfunnel.com
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