50 Easy Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Website
By Jayson Demers
Source: Entrepreneur
More website traffic is always a good thing. And most online marketing strategies do revolve around building traffic to your site. Yet it’s sometimes challenging to come up with new ideas to boost your site’s traffic. That’s why I’ve come up with this list of 50 easy strategies to try, to increase your website traffic so you’ll never run out of ideas.
1. Display ads.
Display ads are a simple form of advertising that rely on banners or other clickable assets on another site. Look for opportunities on high-traffic authority sites. OutBrain and Taboola are popular services that help with this.
2. Try paid search ads.
Google AdWords and Bing Ads are the best choices here. You’ll pay per click (PPC) to drive traffic to your site based on certain keyword searches.
3. Try social media ads.
Social media ads work much in the same way except you have more options to target your audience specifically. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube all provide good options for paid ads.
4. Link to your website from your social media profiles.
Make sure to fill out your social media profiles completely, so when people visit your profiles, they can easily click through to your website.
5. Promote your content on your social media channels.
Take your onsite content, and push it out to your social media channels so it can be found and clicked on more easily. If your website is on WordPress, I recommend the Social Warfare plugin to make content easily shareable.
6. Host contests on social media.
Use social media to host contests to draw more attention to your brand, and entice people to come to your site.
7. Use calls-to-action (CTAs) in your social media posts.
Give people a reason to click through to your site on social media, such as advertising a new product.
8. Post in social media groups.
Get involved in groups on Facebook or LinkedIn to increase your visibility and reputation. On Twitter, you can use hashtags to the same effect.
9. Work with influencers.
Engage with influencers in your industry to increase your reputation, by proxy.
10. Offer discounts via email or social media.
Give users a good reason to visit your site by promoting discounts, sales and special offers.
11. Optimize your headlines.
A recent study concluded that 59 percent of all links shared on social networks aren’t actually clicked on at all, implying that the majority of article shares aren’t based on actual reading. One insight we can draw from this is clear — headlines matter a lot. Refine your headlines to make them shorter, catchier and more compelling.
12. Optimize your site for search.
Deploy effective SEO strategies with proper coding, structuring and meta data.
13. Improve your site’s performance.
Make sure your content loads properly on all devices, and optimize your site speed as much as possible.
14. Target better keywords.
Target highly specific keywords for your content marketing strategy. This will reduce competition in the search rankings, and drive more qualified visitors.
15. Create a community.
Create an online forum for your customers to engage with one other and your brand. They’ll come back again and again, fostering brand loyalty and word-of-mouth sales. Just be aware that this is a time-consuming, difficult and long-term endeavor. Fellow Entrepreneurcontributor Neil Patel attempted this, and ultimately gave up on the idea after a year. You can read his story here, and put the lessons he learned to use.
16. Participate in relevant industry forums.
If you’d rather become a part of another industry forum than create your own, find and participate in a community forum. To find one, go to Google, and search for “[your industry] forum.”
17. Join a blogging community.
Use a site like Problogger or Copyblogger to get more attention for your work.
18. Join a Slack community.
Slack is basically a big chat room. Join a chat room comprised of professionals in your industry — or your target market — and participate. Here’s a list of some Slack communities you can consider.
19. Offer guest post opportunities on your blog.
Offer major influencers a guest spot on your blog. They’ll earn visibility with your audience as well as a link to their website, and in return, you’ll gain a share of their audience.
20. Build inbound links.
Build links pointing back to your site. Links help with SEO, referral traffic and branding. For help, see SEO Link Building: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Guide.
21. Remove questionable inbound links.
Use a service like Ahrefs, Majestic or Open Site Explorer to find and eliminate bad links, which could be holding your search rankings down.
22. Guest post on industry blogs.
Get yourself featured as a guest contributor on other industry blogs. For help, see The Ultimate, Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Business by Guest Blogging.
23. Seek ongoing contributor status.
If you can become a regular contributor on a publication, you’ll build your brand with that publication’s audience much more quickly than if you just did a one-off guest post.
24. Create viral content.
Try to create content that’s surprising, unique, entertaining and informative so it can circulate the web.
25. Add images to your content.
Content with visuals simply perform better.
26. Start a YouTube channel.
YouTube is a social platform on its own, but its videos are also commonly featured directly in Google search results.
27. Start a podcast.
Podcasts are hot these days. Strike a chord with listeners, and you could build a consistent and loyal audience.
28. Host a webinar.
Host a webinar to educate your audience.
29. Start an email newsletter.
Build an email list, and use it to promote your website’s content. Give readers a teaser of your content, and offer a link to the page on your site where they can read more. MailChimp is a popular email newsletter provider that I use and recommend.
30. Submit your content to StumbleUpon.
Content discovery engine StumbleUpon is a quick and easy place to submit your content. Sometimes, if it gets enough upvotes from users, it can prompt hundreds or thousands of visits to your site. StumbleUpon also offers a paid advertising option worth considering.
31. Get your content shared on Reddit.
Reddit doesn’t allow self-promotion, so you’ll have to get someone else to submit your content for you — perhaps a friend, colleague or even someone on Fiverr. Just be sure to submit ony high-quality content, and pick the most relevant subreddit to submit it to. Reddit also offers paid ads.