Driving traffic to your website is a very important part of building a successful business since it is one of the first steps in the overall sales process. If you have ever launched your own website or blog, you are probably trying to find all kinds of creative ways on how to get more traffic to your website. Pretty much everybody is trying to save money by finding out how to increase website traffic for free. Regardless of the niche of your business or your or the target audience, you can apply cost-effective methods for driving traffic to websites. In this article, we will talk about how to promote your website quickly and effectively, without spending too much time or money.
Getting traffic to your website with search
While everybody knows that you must advertise your website to boost website traffic, not many people come up with various strategies to achieve specific goals. For example, it is not enough to simply improve website traffic, and you must attract the right type of traffic. To attract your target audience means that you will need to place your ads on platforms where you are most likely to find them, and you will need to get proactive with search engines as well. For this you will have to make a bit of SEO optimization such as monitoring keywords in your industry with the help of popular tools such as Ahrefs, Google Keyword Planner and try focusing on low frequency keywords since they are much less competitive, and it will be easier for you to rank for those particular keywords and appear at the top of Google search results.
Some of the keywords that your audience likes to search for can be very competitive, and if your site is new, it can be even more difficult to appear at the top of the Google rankings because of the Google Sandbox effect. Google Sandbox was launched to protect users from spam. However, the filter can be easily avoidable a long as you provide users with valuable content.
How to drive people to your website with content
There is an old saying in marketing “Content is king”, and it is very much relevant today. In fact, 77% of internet users read blogs. A great blog article will require a top-notch content to sell the product or service. It will also help you get the most out of social media and search traffic. We talked about ranking for specific keywords before, therefore make sure that your blog headlines contain the keyword(s) that you are trying to rank for. Make sure that the headlines do not exceed the maximum length, this is usually 70 characters, and that they entice users on social media to click on them.
The people are visiting your site are coming there for a specific purpose: to get information or content that is unique and provides value. The best way to get traffic to your website is to provide users with exceptional value so that they keep coming back over and over again. Therefore, it is critical to optimize your content to fit the users’ tastes and fill a void that other sites cannot fill, plus you will also score a lot of points with Google since it shows that your site is not run by bots.
Create a content calendar that is focused on specificity and relevance. One of the best website traffic tips is to show your visitors that you understand their needs and problems and that you are offering a solution. Try to grab the readers early on. In today’s society, people have short attention spans, and they may only read the first few sentences of your article or blog post before going somewhere else. Try teasing them with some of the benefits they may reap by reading your content, telling a story, or trying to tackle a common problem.
Also, be sure to use images or photos that really grab the users’ attention. We all know the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words and a really good picture, may draw traffic to your website by the thousands. According to a study, 93% of the most engaging Facebook posts have at least one image, and content which has an image is 40 times more likely to be shared across social media. So if you are constantly asking yourself “How can I send traffic to my website”? The answer could be right there in front of you.
How to bring traffic to your website with backlinks
If you are like most people, you are trying to find ways how to get traffic to your website fast. However, the fact of the matter is that you cannot cut corners. Using backlinks from other websites is a great way to promote website traffic, but you must do so responsibly. If your website is new and there is not a whole lot of content on there, it looks very suspicious to Google and other search engines that people are offering links to your site. Therefore, opt for quality over quantity. It is always better to improve website traffic slowly and methodically instead of rushing into it quickly.
Therefore you should post external links that lead back to your website, but you need to make sure that the website that is hosting your backlink has high domain authority and it has good traffic as well. There is no point in placing your links on websites nobody visits. So try building your backlinks strategy slowly by posting the links on high-quality websites, and you will start seeing the traffic on your website going up as a result. In order to find out the domain rating and other parameters, you can use Seo Quake free Chrome extension.
Improving web traffic with website interlinking
We mentioned how backlinks can help you generate more site traffic, but internal links are important as well. Internal linking means including links from one page of your website to another either via one blog post to another or from certain connected pages. This could get more visitors to your site because they can be useful to visitors who are trying to navigate your website, boost the search engine results of the pages that you are trying to get highly ranked and define the overall architecture of your website.
When creating internal links, be sure to pay particularly close attention to the anchor text. When a visitor sees the anchor text, they should immediately know what the benefit of clicking on the link is. Also, since you are promising to give the user the information they are looking for when they click on the link, it is important to come through with this information as well. Do not link just for the sake of linking and do not overdo it. If you have a piece of content that is 1000 words long, this means that you can insert 5-10 internal links. The internal linking method could be the best way to drive traffic to your website if you learn to do it the right way.
Generate more site traffic with podcasts
If you are wondering how popular podcasts are, 26% of Americans regularly listen to them. This does not mean that you should grab the nearest microphone and create your very own podcast. What you should do instead is go on other people’s podcasts as a guest 2-3 times a month. Try to identify 20-30 podcasts within your niche area and try to come up with a unique pitch to ask the host for an interview. Going on the podcast will bring many great benefits: it will give you backlinks, it will provide you with evergreen content that potential visitors can access and find out what you are all about. Last but not least, you are also building a relationship with the hosts that you can use for future endorsements and referrals.
After you appeared on the podcast, it is essential to maximize the popularity of the podcast by sharing it since you are looking for methods on how to get visitors to your website. Use whatever means you have at your disposal to share the podcast to really draw traffic to your site.
How to direct traffic to your website with social networks
Social media is a key tool for building website traffic. In order to get the most traffic from social media, the first thing that you need to do is to make sure that your content is optimized for every platform. Every social media post will appear differently on all of the platforms out there. Therefore you must optimize each post so that it is very eye-catching to the reader and they cannot resist but share it. We already know that a good Facebook post needs to have a photo, but it also needs to have a description of at least 80 words to double the engagement rate and an interesting link description to along with it. Therefore, be sure to do your due diligence and find out how to optimize all of your posts for each social media platform that you plan on using.
It is important to remember that if a post is just not engaging with the users, for whatever reason, do not be spammy and keep reposting it in the exact same for that it is. This is not how you draw traffic to your website and it will only repel your audience away. What you should do instead is to find the right balance of social media content, i.e. share blog posts, videos, content from influencers that provide some value to the users. Whenever you make a post, remember that the audience on each social platform is unique and therefore has its peak performance hours. Try to find out exactly when these peak hours are and adjusting your content calendar to post within this window as often as possible.
Also, if your content does not have sharing buttons, it is essential to get them as soon as possible. If you would like users to share your content, then give them an easy way to do that. It is just too many works for the average user to copy and paste the link to your content on their social media channel. If your site is built on WordPress, there are lots of free social media sharing buttons for you to choose from.
How to build traffic to your website with Reddit
One of the lesser known web traffic tips is to post and promote on Reddit. This is a very potent, yet underused tool to drive targeted traffic to your website. If you can identify the places where your target audience hangs out on Reddit, this can give you tens of thousands of hits overnight. Best of all, you do not have to be on the front page of Reddit to have an impact.
The first thing that you need to do is find the proper subreddits. Go through each one and subscribe to those that you believe is a good fit and keep searching using different keywords that are related to your business. Ones you found all of the necessary subreddits, you are ready to start posting, but just in case, be sure to read all of the rules and guidelines on the sidebar, so your posts do not get deleted. In your posts you should:
Answer questions and respond to comments on the most popular threads, which will help you build your reputation.
Post one link to an article each week. Your goal should be to get 100-200 upvotes.
Again focus on value. Be sure to mix in some useful advice, so you do not appear as spammy.
Submit links to content other than just Reddit. You can add in text versions of your blog post and provide a link to your website in the very end.
Identify the right time to post. Let’s say that there is a post in your particular subreddit that already has 300 upvotes and it was posted a few hours ago. If you post right now, you probably will not overtake the number one spot. But if you come back tomorrow and see that the new top answer only has ten upvotes, this could be a great opportunity for you.
Optimize advertising placement to get real traffic to your website
It takes more than merely driving a lot of people to your website, the quality is also essential. Therefore, it is vital that you take into account the type of users that you are currently attracting and the one that you wish to draw when developing a traffic generation strategy. Today, you can generate the quality and quantity of the traffic that you are looking for thanks to display ads via advertising networks, demand-side platforms (DSP), exchanges in combination with all of the strategies mentioned above.
In order to pinpoint the users that you are looking to attract, you will need a compelling display advertising campaign and the first step is to build buyer personas. These are made up personalities that represent your perfect customer and include factors such as industry, job title and even some personal characteristics that you believe exist in your ideal customer. Creating such a personality will be useful in all of your marketing initiatives, not just display advertising.
Read here about what Customer Data Platform is and why should you use it.
Thanks to these customer personalities, you can track where your ideal customers are online so that you can reach them with your ads. Since you have taken a lot of information about your customers and categorized this information into several lists, it can now be used to build segments of the people you are trying to reach.
Generate more traffic to your website with banners that convert
Now that your display advertising strategy is all set up, you turn your attention to the display advertising creatives. There are many online viewers out there who will see your brand for the first time in this display ad, and you only have one chance to make an excellent first impression. Keep in mind that not all banners are the same. Some will convert better than others since conversion rates depend on many different factors such the placement of the ad on the webpage, the type of webpage and the format of the ad itself can play a huge role in the overall success of the ad.
If your ad is placed correctly on the webpage, the click-through rate will improve and will allow you to drive targeted traffic to your website. If you are wondering where the perfect place for your ad is, it should be above the fold, i.e. at the top half of the web page since users do not have to scroll down further to see the ad. It also an important factor in defeating banner blindness since users’ reading patterns is similar to the letter “F.” The first thing they will read is the content at the very top and then make their way down reading horizontally followed by the left side of the page. If you can place your banners in areas where the user is bound to see it will cause the click-through rate to skyrocket.
How to drive business to your website: extended reach with creatives
Reaching the right audience will often require you to produce a large volume of display advertising creatives in order to satisfy the formats and size required by advertising and affiliate networks. You do not want the scope of your reach to be limited simply because you cannot have the necessary amount of creatives. Therefore, it is vital that you select an ad solution that allows you to create a large volume of creatives that can be edited simultaneously.
If the ad production process is not automated, you will start noticing that production will be very complex and eat up a lot of time and money. Try incorporating the following thing into the design to boost the click-through rate and, by doing so, generating more traffic:
Mobile friendly and responsive design - HTML5 is the format of choice for online display ads since it can be viewed on any device. It is a good idea to create responsive HTML5 ads since they will appear correctly on user devices regardless of the screen size. Since an increasing amount of users relies on mobile devices for internet access, it makes it even more important that the display ads can be viewed properly on all mobile devices.
Strong call-to-action - Within you display advertising creatives, there should be a definite purpose that the user can act on via call-to-action. If the content of the call-to-action is compelling and clear, the user will know exactly what to expect when they click on the banner ad. Try using colors that immediately jump out at users and that the call-to-action button will be seen.
Interactivity - When the first banner ad appeared, it was something new and exciting for users and therefore had a high click-through rate. Nowadays, there are lots of creative display ad formats that will excite users so try using interactive and rich-media banners and playable ad formats to draw traffic to your site. If the display ad is very interactive, there is a chance that it will go viral.
Choosing a Network
As advertising technology becomes more and more advanced, advertisers do not have to rely on direct sales to buy inventory for a certain period and cross their fingers that the campaigns work out the way they hoped. Advertisers nowadays can buy just the ad impressions that they deem useful via programmatic advertising such as real-time bidding technology.
When deciding on an advertising network exchange and DSPs to publish your display ads, you should be certain that the one you choose can reach your target audience. It is very important to select the proper display ad publishing method to increase the amount of traffic since you must verify that the display ads appear on the necessary mobile apps to drive click-through rate. Be sure to you understand how advertising networks function and select the one that best fits your needs to generate the type of traffic you are looking for.
Crafting display advertising campaigns that drive traffic on a constant basis is an ever-developing process. Even though there is always room for improvement, you will notice that your target audience and the technology needed to publish the display ads evolve over time. Therefore, you have to monitor and test each campaign and use the data that you collected to improve, and there are lots of different data collection methods, and ways to measure the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns.
When you drive traffic using targeted display advertising, you will have to find new advertising methods as well as different places via various display advertising creatives. One way to optimize is by using programmatic advertising to create and buy your display advertising inventory instead of buying it directly. When coming up with a large number of creatives, make sure that your production process can be scaled.
Display advertising continues to be an effective way to drive traffic to your website, however, recently there were some changes observed in this area that make it much more data-driven like never before. Always remember to use the data that you obtained to assess the quality if the traffic on your website and the effectiveness of the display ads themselves. Since not all display ads will work the way you would like them to, be sure to analyze how they convert continually.
Always opt for quality over quantity. If you have identified the characteristics of your ideal audience segment, you can use tools such as Google Analytics to find how many website visitors fit this overall criterion. If you are not all too happy with the results, it means that you will have to reassess where you place the ads. In case you use DSP, you can analyze the effectiveness of your ad campaigns considering any metric by generating the custom report for the particular period. This is where all of the big data comes into play. Such reports will help you to make decisions based on business intelligence instead of taking stabs in the dark.
SmartyAds DSP gives you the freedom to focus your ad campaign on a particular group of people and deliver to them advertising offers based on unique targeting criteria. Analyze and optimize your campaigns in real-time each time they need improvement and receive better traffic and higher incomes.
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