Want to increase traffic? If you’re a small business owner who has just gotten your hands on your very first website, the first words out of your mouth were probably something like “Great! Now what?” You’ve got your shiny new site up, it looks great, it works great, but how do you get people to visit it? And you don’t just want visitors, you need targeted traffic- visitors that are most likely to become customers! Before you go paying for advertising, check out our list of five free things you can do to increase traffic.
1. Directories & Review Sites
There are a ton of sites out there, like Google Places for Business and Yelp, where businesses can get listed and receive feedback from their customers. These kinds of sites let you list your company’s name, address, phone number, hours of operation and yes, your website. Start with the two we mentioned above and make sure your listing is completely filled out with accurate and up to date details. We have customers that get all the business they can handle from listing their business on these two site alone, but the information you list here also shows up in search results which can help increase search engine traffic. Whether they find you in the directory or in Google’s search results, these are people in your area who are actively looking for a business like yours- that’s the definition of targeted traffic!
2. Social Media
A lot of small businesses start off using a Facebook page as their website. Now that you’ve graduated to having your own website, you can leverage the audience you’ve built on your Facebook page to increase traffic to your site. You can use Facebook to announce new blog posts on your site, direct your Facebook fans to new product pages, or just let them know that your new site launched. Keep building your Facebook following and each time you share a link back to your site, the more targeted traffic you’ll receive. You can see how other small business owners are growing their business through Facebook in our free ebook, How to Make Facebook Work for Your Business.
3. Email Your List
Do your current customers know you just launched an awesome new site? Tell them! Send an email announcement to your email list once your site launches. Invite them to go check it out, offer them a special discount as email list members, and encourage them to spread the word. Your customers’ email addresses are a valuable asset, and one of the easiest ways to increase traffic.
4. Blogging
One of the best ways to bring targeted traffic to your site is through blogging. Creating quality blog posts on a topic directly related to your business gives you something to share on social media, a reason for your customers and potential customers to keep coming back. Blogging is also a great way to get more search engine traffic. If there is a particular search term you want your site to show up for in Google, try using it in the title of a blog post. You can get some help blogging by downloading our free ebook, 45 Free Marketing Tools to Promote Your Business.
5. Your Professional Network
Once your website launches, reach out to any businesses that you have a relationship with, and ask to exchange links. Links signal authority to search engines. The more links you have, the more of an authority your website appears to search engines, the more likely your site will show up higher in the search results and receive more search engine traffic. Link building can be a long and arduous process, but the businesses you already work with are an easy place to start.
Consider all of this a foundation. There are many more ways to increase traffic, some free, some paid, but the five listed above are the easiest of the bunch to take action on. Take them one at a time to get started, and keep up with them to build your results over the long term. The more targeted traffic you can generate through these free methods, the bigger you can build your business without the need for advertising.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
