Without people visiting your website, you cannot expect anyone to make a purchase. This simple statement brings forth the more complicated concern of how to get website traffic visitors. Setting up your website does not end with choosing the right look and uploading relevant content. There are things that you have to do in order to get people to visit your site and eventually purchase something. Even the most compelling offers and visuals will not likely convert into sales without any passersby giving your website a visit. And so, it would be a big mistake not to exert effort in devising a plan to increase website traffic on your site.
There are several ways to increase website traffic visitors to your online site, but you can’t expect to see visitors rolling in immediately. Building website traffic takes some time depending on the kind of campaigns that you are running. But once you are able to drive people to your site, do your best to keep them coming. Making sure that this traffic keeps on moving and converting into sales will propel your online business’ profitability levels way beyond the break-even-point. To build your website traffic, consider the following:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – SEO is a popular way of increasing website traffic since the most common sources of website traffic are online searches. You want your target market to find you on the first few pages of the search engine results pages when they type in their keywords. Optimizing your website for online searches takes some time and effort in making sure that you are using the right keywords and tags in your content and images. Knowing who your target customers are and what keywords they are typing in the search boxes would give you an idea about what keywords to use in optimizing your website. If you do not have such expertise, you might want to explore the idea of hiring an SEO consultant or availing of the services of online SEO experts.
2. Link Building – Another way to get website traffic visitors to your online site is to build reciprocal links, resource links, and other links that lead visitors from one or several sources to your website. Link building is also one of the tasks often included in the service listings of SEO companies and consultants. This works by putting links in another website, a forum signature, or a blog post comment so that any visitor who clicks the link will be led to your website. One particular benefit that this can offer is the targeted way by which the visitors to your website are chosen. Links that are included in signatures of people actively conversing in forums for homemakers would prove to be particularly helpful to a business selling home care products or one that offers deep carpet cleaning and pest control services. Since these visitors are targeted, there is greater probability that these visitors will make a purchase from your website.
3. Online Advertising – You can also pay to have banner ads and pop-ups in websites that are relevant to yours to increase website traffic visitors. This basically works like traditional advertising, but instead of column inches, the advertising space is measured in lines and boxes. You also want to choose your advertising space depending on the readership and the exposure that you are likely to get out of it. You can make arrangements to rent a particular advertising space in online pages or you can opt to go for a compensation scheme that pays depending on the website traffic that is generated by a particular advertising material. Online advertising doesn’t automatically work all the time. There are instances when the cost of advertising is not easily recovered by online sales. So, think about what your advertising options are, what your prospects are, and the kind of profits that you can realistically expect from them.
4. Viral Videos and Posts – Going viral is something that you can do to reach as many people as possible. While this kind of a campaign can be done targeting specific demographic groups or people who have your desired online behavior, this campaign can spread beyond your control to other audiences as well. A viral online campaign, however, needs to be something that is interesting, exciting, and compelling to get the audiences to respond the way you want them to. At the end of your viral media, you want your audience to click on a link so they can get more information or make a purchase from your website.