Checklist: 25 Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Site

There are tons of ways to drive traffic to your site, but not all of them work equally well. Some strategies are complicated, time-consuming, and expensive while others are simple, free, and yield more impact than you’d expect. The Checklist to Drive Traffic To Your Site will show you how to use online marketing tools that will help drive the right kind of traffic to your site with minimal effort on your part and money in your pocket!

1. Content Creation

Creating an excellent piece of content is a surefire way to drive traffic. But creating that excellent piece is no easy task; it takes significant time and effort. It’s so much easier just to find existing content, share it on social media, get some links from your favorite blogs, and hope for traffic to come rolling in. However, if you’re serious about long-term growth, you need to stop thinking about one-off tactics and focus on creating a quality piece of valuable original content—and then driving people there. To help you get started, you must follow these steps:

• Research Your Buyer Persona

The first thing you need to do is dig into your buyer persona. You need to know exactly who your audience is, what’s most important for them, and why they would want to take action on what you’re offering.

• Conduct SEO Research

You also need to conduct a thorough search engine optimization (SEO) analysis. Understanding your audience’s wants and needs is only part of what it takes to make your content more than just another piece on a crowded web page. SEO is about understanding how search engines work, how they rank content, and how you can influence that ranking process.

• Write A Draft

After you have your research, it’s time to sit down and start writing. Your content needs a clear structure and an introduction that grabs your reader’s attention. Make sure that you get straight to the point and back up everything you write with data from your research. You also need a strong conclusion that tells readers exactly what you want them to do next—and why they should take action on what you offer.

• Publish

Once you’ve created a compelling piece of content, it’s time to publish it on your site and promote it on social media. However, social media isn’t enough; you need quality backlinks from high-ranking websites for search engines to notice your work. After all, if no one can find your content, there’s no way they can read it—and then there’s no way for them to get value from your business.

• Promote

Once you’ve published your content, you need to start promoting it. Promoting your content on social media is a great way to get people talking about it, but don’t stop there. There are dozens of other ways you can use to ensure that more people will find your piece of content and take action on what you offer.

2. Topic Expertise

Ranking better in search engine results pages (SERPs) requires knowing a few tricks. This is where topic expertise comes in handy. If you can get inside your reader’s head, you’ll have an easier time convincing them that you have valuable information that they need to know. Basically, search engines love websites that are perceived to be topic experts on certain subjects. By writing about relevant keywords, and naturally incorporating those keywords into your content, you demonstrate topic expertise to search engines—and more importantly—to readers.

3. Organic Social Media

This is not a new or unique strategy however, it can greatly help increase traffic to your website. First, you should focus on creating quality content that’s relevant and helpful to your audience. By producing interesting, sharable content, you can start to build a following of potential customers on social media. When users share it with their friends, you’ll see an increase in organic traffic and engagement.

4. Website Analysis

Before you drive traffic to your site, you’ll want to check it out. Run through a free website analysis with Crazy egg, Google’s Website Optimizer tool, or if you have a paid account with Google Analytics, run an audit of user behavior on your site. If there are pages that aren’t converting well (i.e., they are receiving a lot of traffic but not sending much back in terms of conversions), tweak them until you find something that works better. If most pages don’t work well, think about what new content might be more relevant and where people might look for it—then make sure they can find that information on your site via SEO and keyword optimization best practices.

5. Influencer

One of your goals should be to build relationships with influencers in your space. These are people who have a high number of followers or readers and tend to promote products, news, and other items of interest. One way to find influencers is by Googling key terms related to your business and seeing who’s being discussed online. Once you identify influencers you like working with, aim for consistency—for example, every time they publish something new on their website, tweet it out on yours. When done right, building genuine relationships will make both parties look good; they might even send traffic your way when they share one of your posts!

6. Email List Building

Is your website driving traffic from search engines like Google? If so, that’s great. But do you have an email list for people who already know about your brand? Building an email list can drive even more traffic because these people are already familiar with your product and brand, making them much more likely to click on a link you send out in an email than they would be if they’d never heard of you before. You can get started by employing the following strategies:

• Content Offers

Share content that demands visitors to share their mail addresses in exchange for information. The more useful and interesting your information is, the higher rate of sharing you’ll get.

• Effortless Newsletter Sign-Up

Use call-to-action buttons that point people toward a place where they can easily sign up for your newsletter. Make sure these CTA buttons stand out so people don’t miss them.

• Social Media

If you’re active on social media, remind people there that they can join your email list. You can post reminders every week or whenever you publish a new post. They should be subtle and not too frequent so they don’t irritate users.

7. Community Engagement

One of your best tools for driving traffic is encouraging reader engagement. We’ve all seen articles and posts with a Tweet This button at the bottom. But there are so many other ways you can use social media to encourage engagement: Share your thoughts, how would you answer this? or What do you think? posts, or even including a call-to-action for readers to contact you directly.

8. On-page SEO

Most people don’t give much thought to on-page SEO, but it can be important for driving traffic. The on-page SEO employs elements such as bpage title, meta description, URL, header, and image alt-text. These elements determine how your site will show up in search engines results pages (SERPs). Keep in mind that a page with good on-page SEO is more likely to be visited by users because it shows up higher in search engine results.

9. Quality Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites back to your website. The more high-quality, relevant backlinks you have pointing to your site, the better. To get these sorts of links, you’ll need quality content on your site and a willingness to engage with other blogs. You can do this by responding to comments, interacting in community forums, reaching out to influencers in your niche, and so on. If you participate in conversations where there is already an established link relationship between two sites.

10. Video Marketing

With video marketing, your potential customers can get a feel for who you are and what you offer, while also having fun. As most people spend more time online than ever before, using video marketing as a means of driving traffic is an effective strategy that should be considered by anyone looking to spread awareness about their brand.

11. Content Repurposing

Why reinventing is bad and how to use repurposing right. We’ve all heard it: Content is king. But what does that really mean? It means that creating your own content, instead of simply recycling or repurposing someone else’s, helps you stand out from your competitors. In other words, when you create your own content, you look like an expert in your field. This can attract customers and help boost sales.

12. SEO Tools

Perform an SEO audit on your site. There are tons of SEO tools out there, and it’s important to use them. But that doesn’t mean you need every tool under the sun. Focus on one or two and know how they work. Use their internal link reports and search volume data to guide your content creation strategy. Look for keywords with a lower Search Volume (that aren’t overly competitive) so you can be sure you will get some traffic without too much effort when writing around those keywords. The less competitive a keyword is, usually means there is a higher possibility of ranking in Google’s top ten results pages if all things align properly!

13. Historical Optimization

Google’s Quality Guidelines state that it is okay to optimize content to meet historical definitions of a term. For example, you can optimize for long-tail terms like long-tail keywords, search engine optimization, and so on. The point is: don’t include SEO keywords in your title tags or headers if they are not actually important and appropriate for that specific page.

14. Voice Search Optimization

SEO for sites that support voice search is totally different than SEO for text searches. Make sure your site is optimized for voice search before you do any other SEO optimization. The good thing about optimizing for voice search is that it’s not very hard; just make sure all of your links are easy to say out loud, remove all filler content, and include plenty of keywords where they sound natural in sentences. When writing out these keywords, be mindful of how they sound when spoken rather than how they look on paper.

15. Local SEO

If you’re going to do local SEO, then your website needs a physical address and at least one phone number. Remember that people will want to be able to contact you with questions or if they want to make an appointment. If they can’t find a way to reach you, then how can they expect a positive customer experience? After all, it doesn’t matter what’s on your website if no one is going there!

16. QR Codes

Although QR codes aren’t super popular with most people, they can still get you some extra traffic. Just post your QR code where people are likely to see it and have a simple message or call-to-action. Here’s an example: If you scan my QR code, you will go straight to our Facebook page. Make sure your code is high quality and easy for people to scan.

17. A/B Testing

A/B testing is a strategy for improving your website and attracting more customers. Once you determine where there are opportunities for improvement, create two versions of your page – version A and version B. 50% of your visitors will see version A and 50% will see version B. Then measure how much traffic each version attracts, compare what content was most effective, and make changes accordingly. If you’re not familiar with A/B testing, don’t fret—you can hire professionals!

18. Internal Linking

Make sure your site has internal links to other pages on your site. This will help Google view your site as more of an authority. Use linking within your content that goes from one post to another or from one section of a post to another within that same post. These can include links for images within posts, quotes in posts, and so forth. Just make sure these are not link farms but natural and relevant linking where each link serves its own purpose in terms of helping visitors navigate around your site naturally, and not just for SEO purposes only.

19. Technical SEO

Technical SEO, or technical on-page optimization, is all about making sure your web page is structured in a way that search engines can read and understand. Search engine optimization cannot succeed without a solid understanding of technical optimization. Make sure your HTML code doesn’t have any errors. Using tools like Google Chrome’s built-in developer toolbar or W3C Markup Validation Service, you can verify that your code validates against current best practices. Use schema markup properly so Google understands what types of information are on a given page.

20. Community Building

Create a forum on your site where people can post their questions. Respond promptly, and encourage discussion by sharing your own input and experiences. Don’t censor people, but do remove spam and any inappropriate posts that appear on your site. If you consistently respond to queries with valuable information and/or advice, you’ll start developing a reputation as an expert in your field—which will draw more traffic from search engines over time.

21. Content Offers

Content is a powerful tool for driving more traffic to your site. But content should be created with more than just traffic in mind. Creating evergreen content will generate traffic throughout a long period, and deliver value for years down the road. Evergreen content can be used as valuable offers for conversions later on (for example selling eBooks or high-end products).

22. Social Share Buttons

Sharing content on social media is a great way to drive traffic back to your site. Make it easy for readers by adding share buttons directly underneath each post and encourage them with reminders like help us spread the word or please share. Use share buttons that can be easily found online. You can employ the following tips to help you get started.

• Request people to share content on social media
• Include quotation content
• Create strong content
• Add video, images, and infographics

23. CTR Optimization

No one likes an ad, but everyone loves a useful resource. Whether you’re writing a sponsored post or aiming for organic traffic on your own website, it pays to consider optimizing your title tags with click-through rate (CTR) in mind. After all, if you can get more people who visit your site to actually click on another page and become a customer, it’s going to help boost that bottom line — which is exactly what advertisers are looking for too.

24. Social News Sites

Have you come across Quora and Reddit? These are popular news sites that allow people to post questions and links, which other users can then vote on. Get involved in answering people’s questions, or posting your own content if it relates to what’s being discussed. Reddit has millions of regular users, many of whom are daily. With millions of visitors each day just from social media sharing alone, it is highly visible for targeting potential clients and customers; however, be prepared for lots of competition trying to rank well in their search results as well.

25. Paid Advertising

Although expensive, paid advertising is still one of the most effective ways of driving traffic. If you choose to go down this route, it’s a good idea to create multiple ads and stick with only one or two channels until you see results. Once you have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t, expand your efforts.

Conclusion

In a nutshell, traffic is what determines how popular your site will be. It doesn’t matter if you have an interesting niche or great posts if people aren’t going to visit. While there are many ways you can drive traffic from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter (and we’ll get into that in future posts), search engine optimization (SEO) should be one of your top priorities because it brings targeted traffic directly to your site.