There are so many ways to drive traffic to your website, I came across these when I first launched our site back in May 2019. At first, the cost of running a website was only just affordable and I had no budget to be spending money on paid advertisements, I thought that later on I would pay for ads but after learning these ways to drive traffic I don’t think I ever will. It’s not that paid advertising is bad, it’s just that it’s paid and this will eat into your profits, for some businesses though it is essential.
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Paid advertising
You can pay for paid advertising and if you have a budget you will need to focus on ROI (Return on investment). Paid advertisement is a way that you can drive a lot of traffic to your website but it will come at a cost, the amount you pay will depend on the platform that you choose to show your ads and also the keywords that you are targeting.
For example, let’s say you are selling a hairbrush for £5, after the product cost, shipping costs, and other fees selling the product you make £1 profit.
If you targeted the word ‘Hairbrush’ on Google and you had to pay 0.05p for every customer that clicks to your website and you know that 1 out of 10 people that land on your website will buy your product. That means that your products profit margin is now 0.50p and covers the cost of the adverts (as long as you sell.)
Unfortunately keywords are typically auctioned, which means that if another company is willing to pay more for a specific keyword then they will be shown for that word and not you. This does increase the cost of advertising and makes it unsustainable for many businesses that have a saturated market or lots of competition. Some options for paid advertising include: Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok.
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Utilize social media
I like to think of social media as the free version of paid advertising because it works in a similar way, only it doesn’t cost money but does cost you a lot of your time. You must be strategic when using social media by choosing the right platforms for you and not letting it pull you in because it can get time expensive.
The traffic that you get from social media is likely to be fast in bursts, after your posts get old they will more than likely stop getting traction. To do well on social media you will need to produce thought provoking content.
You can make take pictures and put them on Instagram, upload short video reels for Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YT shorts. If your content provides enough value people will head to your website to find out more about your service or product. Later on as your business expands, unless you enjoy promoting on social media you could hire an expert to produce content for you. As your followers grow on these platforms you will have more leverage and will be able to drive more traffic, although remember that the audience you captivate is not your audience, they belong to the social media platform and so you should create your own community as soon as possible.
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Write a blog
You can achieve organic reach by writing a blog, this has the same power as paid advertisements but is focussed around producing high quality blog posts and a lot of them. The more blog posts that you write that are optimised for SEO (search engine optimisation) the more chances of being seen on Google.
This has been my main strategy since the beginning of our website and after writing for one year every day, we have managed to attract more than 1,000 daily visitors to our website. You should remember that the keywords you choose and the blog topics that you write should be relevant to your website otherwise you will attract the wrong types of people who may find your blog post interesting but will not stick around to see what else is going on because it is not relevant to them. An example of this, is that we sell music instruments, if I wrote a blog post about computer parts and a repair person came to the article, they likely won’t have any interest in the musical instruments that we are selling and they will leave.
Tips for a successful blog
- Write a new blog post daily.
- Do keyword research.
- Optimise your images to keep your website fast.
- Most blog posts should have 3,000 words+
- Make video versions of your blog and embed it to the page.
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Guest post
Writing a guest blog post on someone else’s website with a link back to yours is a great way to get more traffic. Just one backlink on a popular site can bring in thousands of visitors. We get about 200-300 visitors per day from other websites and so you should not forget about this method.
The easiest way to write guest posts for other peoples website is by offering to write an article based on a relevant topic. If you sell a product that you get from a wholesaler, you could offer to write for your wholesaler. If you are focused on a specific industry, you could reach out to the industry leaders or people who are doing a great job but are not so known. I get maybe 50 emails asking if we can publish a guest post on our website per month and I ignore most of them because they are clearly spam which is why I want to tell you that meaningful interactions are much more important. Quality of interaction is more important than contacting thousands of webmasters.
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Make YouTube videos
If you make YouTube videos about your product or service, this will show them what you are offering and how it will help them. This is a great way to capture an audience and is pretty much the same concept as writing a blog but in the medium of video instead.
If your viewers like the look of your product or want to find out more, you can leave a link to it in your videos description so that people can check that out. As YouTube is a search engine, any work that you do creating videos could last for years and will passively grow your business for the long term.
5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website (Video)
How can I get website traffic easily?
Iit can be easy to get traffic but to get a lot of visitors it will require hard work. The time, effort and energy learning how to whilst following great SEO practises will result in a better outcome. If it was easy to get a lot of traffic, every one would be doing it.
Looking for ways to get traffic easily means that you are looking for shortcuts which means that you do not want to work hard or maybe want the best result with the least effort, in that case I would say write blog posts or outsource them, make YouTube videos or outsource them. One method will be difficult and paying someone else would be easier but everyones situation is different.
How do I promote my website with a low budget?
There are many things you could do, you could create blog articles to bring in traffic organically. You could set up a paid-for advertising campaign through Facebook with a low budget although you won't get many visitors with a small amount of money. If you already have content like blog articles you could resize your featured images and upload them on other social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.
If you do it daily and use the correct keywords you could potentially reach quite a lot of people and you could keep your website URL in the bio area so that people can quickly go to your site. You will need to work hard though, especially with a small budget. One of the best ways to bring people to your website is to make YouTube videos and you could even earn money from the videos in ad revenue which later on you could invest back into your website marketing if you wanted to. I use YouTube to promote my website and it is very successful.
SEO: Best practises
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a process of optimizing web pages to gain higher ranking in search engine result pages. It helps to maximize the number of visitors to a particular website or page by ensuring that it appears high on the list of search results. SEO is a crucial part of any digital marketing strategy and it is important to understand the best practices for SEO in order to ensure success.
Word count
Content that is too short or too long can both be problematic for SEO. Content should be written with the target audience in mind and be of an appropriate length to cover the given topic. There should also be enough text to provide search engines with enough information to index.
Keyword research
This involves researching and analyzing the keywords used by people when they search for a particular topic. Knowing the right keywords to use in your content will help to ensure that your website or page appears higher in the search engine results. It is also important to use keywords in the right places to further increase the chances of ranking higher.
Page speed
Pages that take too long to load can negatively impact a website’s ranking and make it less likely to appear in the top search engine results. It is important to optimize all elements of the page, such as images and code, to ensure that pages load quickly.
These are just a few of the best practices for SEO. It is important to keep up with the latest trends and technologies to ensure that your website or page is optimized for search engine results. By following the best practices for SEO and staying up to date on the latest trends, you can ensure that your website or page is successful in generating more visitors.
Up next: Can you be successful on YouTube?