How do you get website visitors?
So let’s assume you have a live website. However good it may be, you need people to find it – that’s always been blindingly obvious since the internet began.
How you find visitors though, is the difficult bit. There are more ways of getting website traffic nowadays than ever. That’s a great opportunity, but also a big problem. We humans are pre-programmed to get confused when we get overwhelmed by too much choice.
There are so many ways to get traffic to your site these days, that many people don’t know where to start – so….they don’t! They spend a lot of time wondering where to start but never really get started. Or, they start something, don’t get instant results and move on to the next thing, then the next thing and then another thing. None of them work of course because they don’t stick at them long enough.
This last approach is bad because most of the ways to get traffic are “slow burners” which will take a while to develop and a bit of patience and tenacity is required. It’s much better to pick one or two things, and stick at them.
Here, in no particular order are some of the main ways to get traffic to your site.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
To get your website on the first page of results you first need to consider what words your potential customers use when they search for your product or service. You then need to build your website in a way that makes it easy for the search engines to find it, and keep adding fresh content regularly. There are a million and one other things to consider too, as SEO is very complex. If you want to know more, keep following my blog, as I’ll be covering the basics of SEO in a post in the coming weeks.
Social Media
Social media on its own is becoming a huge, diverse discipline – far too big for me to explain fully in one paragraph! Social media are not just for teenagers – they can help your business too. To keep this post fairly short, I’ll just talk about two – blogging and Twitter. Setting up a blog is really cheap and easy – even if you want your own domain name and a decent looking site. It gives you a way to spread your opinion and become a bit of an authority in your marketplace. Combining your blog with a Twitter account, you can then let Twitter users know when you’re adding a new blog post. By making sure that your “tweet” uses keywords that people are likely to search on, you will show up when people search Twitter for information on the service you offer. I release a new tweet automatically each time I update this blog.
Article directories
Writing articles is a great way to show your expertise. In fact you may even already have articles that you’ve written for your target audience or trade press. Adding them to an article directory is a great way of getting your name out there, and also getting links to your site (which can be great for SEO as long as the site they are on is a respectable one). There are many article directories out there such as EZine Articles .
Forum comments
Whatever you sell, and whoever your customers are, there is probably some sort of an online forum or chatroom where they gather. Search for them online, and get yourself on there and join in their conversations. Don’t bowl in with a blatant sales pitch or you will put people off, but try and help them with no direct expectation of gain, and you will find that people warm to you more. Remember to include a link to your site in your signature so people know where to find you. Commenting on forums is great because it puts you in touch with a very targeted, specific audience and your comments will probably stay there for a very long time.
Blog comments
As with forums above, there may also be blogs that your target audience read, which you can easily find online and comment on. The same rules apply – be subtle and add something of value to the conversation.
Pay-per-click advertising
If you absolutely need quality traffic fast, this is just about the only way to go. Google AdWords is great because it can be set up in minutes and you can target ads to people searching for what you offer. You can even schedule your ads to run during certain times of day (such as your office hours) within certain geographic areas (eg within 10 miles of your office or within the UK only) and you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. However, running AdWords ads is easy to get wrong, so it pays to learn the basics first. I highly recommend Perry Marshall’s free 5-day email course as a starting point. I am now a qualified Google AdWords professional and I started off learning AdWords through Perry’s book and the information on his website. If you’d like me to manage your AdWords account, then contact me for more information.
So, just to recap – getting website traffic takes time, so be patient and stick with one or two things and get all the good advice you can, and be wary of any scams that claim to guarantee you page one rankings on Google within days. It’s probably too good to be true.
These are just a few simple ways of getting traffic to your site. If you want to know more about any of the things I’ve mentioned above, even if you want to know about some good free resources, just drop me a line or add a comment suggesting things you’d like me to blog about in future.