5 Ways to Increase Website Traffic

A lot of websites struggle to come up with new and innovative ways to increase website traffic. There’s a lot of misinformation online about how to attract more visitors, which can lead to using the same tired strategies over and over and not seeing positive results.

If you’re looking to increase website traffic with both organic and paid ways, here are 10 methods that are proven to yield results.

1. Perform Keyword Research

Always include relevant keywords in your content. Keywords should be used naturally, not stuffed into the content so much that they detract from the main idea or distract the reader. It’s important to use keywords throughout the content, like the meta description, the page title, the URL, headers and a few times throughout the piece.

2. Keep Active Social Media Pages

Social media is huge for attracting visitors. Here are some ways it should be used to increase website traffic:

• Post content (blogs, e-books, white papers, infographics, videos, etc.) across your social media platforms
• Interact with followers by replying to them, reposting their content and tagging them
• Use relevant hashtags
• Update the link in your bio to promote new content when it comes out
• Change a cover photo to promote new content
• Tag influencers who may be interested in the content
• Include enticing information from the content to encourage people to click the link to it
• Reply to other people looking for answers with links to your content

3. Use Advertising to Increase Website Traffic

This one is so obvious, we’re going to look at it first. Paid search, social media advertising, and display advertising are all excellent ways of attracting visitors, building your brand and getting your site in front of people. Adjust your paid strategies to suit your goals – do you just want more traffic, or are you looking to increase conversions, too? Each paid channel has its pros and cons, so think carefully about your objectives before you reach for your credit card.

If you’re hoping that more traffic to your site will also result in more sales, you’ll need to target high commercial intent keywords as part of your paid search strategies. Yes, competition for these search terms can be fierce (and expensive), but the payoffs can be worth it.

Advertising through paid search, social media and display ads can be an efficient way to increase website traffic. Each option comes with its upsides and downsides — for instance, users can block display ads and the average cost per click for Google Ads on the search network is between $1 and $2 per click — so it’s important to set budgets and goals before investing a ton of money into it.

For instance, when doing pay per click (PPC) ads, it’s critical to start with one campaign and a few different ad groups containing the keywords you want to target most. Once campaigns begin, see how audiences behave with various keywords. Maybe one keyword only resulted in impressions, which didn’t increase website traffic, while another resulted in clicks and conversions.

4. Influencer Outreach

Industry influencers are eager to share content that their followers will love. Businesses can connect with influencers in a few ways, including:

• Tag the influencer in a social media post if your piece references their content or research.
• Ask the influencer for an interview/Q&A, then tag or email the influencer when the content is posted. They’ll likely share your content with their audience.
• Do a round-up with multiple influencers (i.e. “10 Experts Predict Small Business Trends for 2020”) and tag each of the participants when promoting the post on social media.
• Pay influencers to run sponsored posts on their social media pages.

If you’re not sure where to start, try using tools like HypeAuditor and BuzzSumo to find the right influencers in your industry, or reach out to a digital marketing agency who can do influencer outreach for you.

5. Mix It Up

There is no magic formula for content marketing success, despite what some would have you believe. For this reason, vary the length and format of your content to make it as appealing as possible to different kinds of readers. Intersperse shorter, news-based blog posts with long-form content as well as video, infographics and data-driven pieces for maximum impact.