If you are running a website, you have probably faced the common problem we are going to discuss. It’s the lack of traffic. You invest in professional design and then find out that people just don’t come to see it by themselves.
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Digital marketers are frequently asked how to drive traffic to this or that website. This probably happens because users can’t find the answer on Google.
I noticed that most of the search results have one common problem. They don’t take into account the type of website you are trying to bring traffic to.
The goal of my article is to give you some guides that will help you drive new traffic to your website no matter what type of resource you own.
Being a site owner you surely want not only grow your audience but keep your visitors. This blog post is focused on driving new users to your website for the sake of scope. This will let you grow your traffic for some time, not for a lifetime.
There are always “it depends” situations when it comes to driving traffic. So, what will you get reading this blog post? A bunch of tips that will help you obtain new visitors.
If that’s what you expect let’s move on.
Paid traffic to your site
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By paid traffic, I mean Google Adwords, Google Shopping ads, banner ads, Facebook ads, and so on. This is an actionable way of driving traffic and obtaining sales, especially when you only start your online business.
Paid search works great for products having a short buying cycle.
With paid search platforms like Google AdWords, you are actually paying to be at the top of the search engine. The best thing about paid search is that the ads are placed above the organic results.
I recommend you to make up a list of keywords with high commercial intent to bid on. You can find the right keywords taking a look at what your competitors are bidding on. Use your favorite marketing tool for the purpose.
When you’ll have your list pull out the keywords that have a high commercial intent and bid on them. You can also use the tools like Keyword Generator, as we at Ahrefs do or Google Keyword Planner to find the keywords that are worth to bid on.
Does paid search work for all kinds of products? No, it doesn’t. I don’t advice you to use paid ads for too specific products that have unique characteristics because people just don’t search for them.
If you promote some specialty products, use paid social like Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Pinterest ads, YouTube ads, etc. They are really helpful in such cases.
Organic Search
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Ranking organically in search for your product or service is a dreamboat. Seriously, product keywords should be your end goal as they bring a stable passive flow of targeted traffic to your website. Unfortunately, these terms are very competitive, do not surprise that it can take you quite a while to rank for them.
If you want to rank your site, make sure to do all the little things on it first. You need to have cool product descriptions, images, videos, reviews, etc. Google, as well as other search engines, love web pages with tons of useful content. Just think how your customers will love it.
Once your on-page SEO is brought into order, you will need to start building backlinks to your pages to rank them. This is not an easy task because a rare site will die from the desire to link to your product pages. And these are the pages you want to rank.
How can you cope with the challenge? The best way is to create the content ranking for terms that are topically relevant to your product but are less competitive.
Your blog posts will rank well enough and drive a considerable amount of traffic to your website. Creating content increases your website’s traffic potential and helps to answer the product related questions. Answering these questions you prepare potential customers for the purchase. When you have this traffic, you can do a number of things with it.
- Retarget these visitors with ads
- Convert these visitors into email subscribers
- Convert these visitors to actual sales
Referral traffic
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At this section, we are going to talk about another great way to drive traffic to your website. Try to make other websites review or talk about your product/service. To do this, you usually need to stimulate them with some beneficial offer like affiliate program or pay them with your product or money. People are rarely willing to talk about you unless they get a reward.
Social media traffic
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Social media is another traffic acquisition source you can pursue. Promote to your social media following but be aware that this type of traffic may not be new.
You need to understand the goal of your social media marketing campaigns. You need to encourage your followers to share your posts or products with their followers and not just promote to people who already know pretty much about you. Note that people rarely share products which are not incredibly cool.
That’s why you need content. What people do eagerly share is awesome content. This sharing creates a kind of ripple effect which drives new traffic to your website notably increasing your reach and growing your brand.
Mail traffic
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Building an email list is rather helpful for most businesses. You can reach your customers directly, immediately, and for free if you have their email. I don’t want to say that email will necessarily drive new traffic to your website. However, it allows to engage past visitors with information and offers that will make them come back to your site. They wouldn’t do it otherwise.
Conclusion
I have already told you at the beginning of this article that there is always an “it depends” thing when it comes to driving new visitors to your website. Not every method covered above will work for any kind of business. This guide was aimed at providing you with an outline of the strategies to apply depending on the type of your website.
Indeed, the only way to know if a traffic acquisition strategy will work for you is to try it, decide on what will be considered a “success”, and then analyze the campaign results. If somebody is assuring they have a strategy for traffic acquisition that works for every business, they are fooling you.
This post was a kind of introduction to driving traffic to websites. I couldn’t dive too deep into the topic.
Have any specific questions about driving traffic to your website? Feel free to throw them my way.
Cheers!
Helga Moreno is a passionate content creator and marketer at Ahrefs bold enough to believe that if there’s a book that she wants to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then she must write it herself.