So you have your site and it is all pretty and awesome yet no one is visiting it. You have optimized the titles and you have optimized your content, yet you still are not seeing any new visitors. There are a number of reasons why this is happening and the big one is that the Search Engines just haven’t fully spidered you and/or you are just not ranked high enough yet to see some traffic. Don’t freak out though; there are ways to gain some other traffic while you wait for that always so nice organic traffic to come in. Here are 6 ways you can drive traffic to your site.
- Submit to Social Sites
- Start a Blog
- Work on your Back Linking
- Email/Newsletter
- Word of Mouth
- PPC
This is a pretty obvious method of generating some traffic. Social media is all the craze right now which means you should be utilizing it as much as possible. Depending on your vertical some social sites might be better than others. This will take some research on your part. The major social sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, should always be utilized.
Creating a Facebook page is free and a great way to gain some extra traffic. There are quite a few tools out there that will easily populate status updates for you when you launch a new product, make an update to your site, or run a special
Twitter is the hottest thing out right now, and whether you love it or hate it; it is here to stay. If you want to increase traffic and awareness of your site, you should be using it. This is a great way to get the word out about new stuff you add to your site, as well as a great way to promote sales or new products.
Starting a blog is always a great way to gain some traffic. Blogs tend to get spidered and picked up faster than normal pages on a website. Blogging also works well with the above suggestion. Every time you write a blog post you social submit it. Blogs are a great way to show you have authority in your vertical.
Because you are discussing things about your vertical, people will come in and find out that you know what you are talking about. Be sure to communicate back with people if they leave comments. Lisa Barone did a great write up on gaining some blog comments.
While this should be a given to anyone that is a regular in reading my posts, linking is an always important method for gaining traffic as well as for increasing your natural search rankings. What better way to increase your rank then focusing on link building three to four times a month.
Remember to keep track of your link building efforts including whenever you submit to social sites. Another great way to build back links is by writing great appealing content from your site or a blog (starting to see a trend here?).
Most “Power Internet Users” hate getting junk mail, but let’s face it – for the basic web user email marketing is still a very powerful tool. Also, not all emails have to be junk. If you can utilize email marketing to let subscribers know about promotions or when you have posted a new blog, you can see some good results from it. One good way to do this is to allow people to sign up for a newsletter. Having a simple “subscribe to our newsletter” option somewhere on your site/blog will help generate some interest in your site.
As long as you continue writing quality posts and not spamming someone’s inbox you may just get a reader/customer for life.
Word of mouth has always been the most powerful tool in marketing. Telling someone about your site and then having them tell someone else about your site will generate more traffic for you. Again, it helps to have quality content or a product/service that everyone wants. Tell your friends. Have them tell their friends. With everyone on IM or texting, there is no easier way to tell people about your site.
Pay Per Click Marketing is probably the most expensive option out of everything on the list, but it can also be the most effective. If you are not seeing results with any of the above ideas, this might be something you could test out. If you have no real idea about PPC I advise you to hire a PPC Manager or do a lot of research. Even the smallest mistake can wind up costing you lots of money if gone unchecked or unnoticed. Do your research on it and make sure you know what you are doing before diving in. PPC will bring you traffic and it could very well be targeted traffic as well, if you set up your campaign right.
There are many clients out there that only do PPC and believe that to be their best way of generating leads/sales. This is will be based on your conversions and how much a conversion costs you. If you spend $25 on one lead/sale through PPC and that lead/sale is only worth $15 to you then you didn’t make much off it.
Keep track of everything so you know what works and what does not work.
I hope some of these tips help you when you go out and try and gain traffic. There are other ways of doing it but I’d like to see what everyone else has to say about it. Do you have any tips and tricks you can share with us on gaining some extra traffic to your site when your rankings are low or just starting out?