The buzz word for increasing sales and conversions for any website is traffic, traffic, traffic. As a small business owner, one of the most significant digital assets you have is your website.
When it comes to driving quality traffic to your small business website, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. There is also no single set-it-and-forget-it tool that is capable of driving quality traffic to your site on auto-pilot.
You’ll need to combine a mix of different channels and approaches with the aim of driving the right visitors to your website, increasing conversions, engagement, and sales for your small business.
In today’s online business world, competition is cut-throat. The internet today has over 1.5 billion websites, and over 200 million are active. How can you generate the much-needed quality traffic to ensure that your small business stands out like the North Star?
As a small business owner, you may not have the big marketing budget to undertake expensive marketing campaigns and paid ads aimed at driving quality traffic to your website.
Are you looking for simple, budget-friendly, and highly effective ways to get more traffic to your small business website? Here are some guidelines you should consider.
Create quality content.
When it comes to generating the right traffic for your website, good quality content is sacrosanct. Content is indeed King, and it ranks as one of the top 5 factors for generating quality traffic to your website as outlined by Google.
You can use a mixture of short and long-form content, infographics, or video formats depending on the kind of audience or readers you are targeting with your content.
Your readers should also be able to share your content on various social media platforms easily. Including a share button in your content would be a great way to achieve that.
You can create top-quality content in various forms like;
- Webinars
- Whitepapers
- Emails and Newsletters
- Podcasts
- Articles or Blog content
- Videos
- Infographics
- eBooks, and many more.
Although you may not need to use all these formats, having a plethora of content formats at your disposal will help you to reach a wider audience. Good quality content is a great way to keep your visitors engaged.
Imbibe SEO best practices.
Making your website content friendly to search engines is a great way to drive quality traffic to your small business website. Make sure you leverage both off-page and on-page SEO to get the maximum benefits for your website. When it comes to maximizing SEO for your website, here are some must-haves you’ll need to consider;
- Title tags: This is the unique title or clickable headline given to a particular web page on your website.
- Meta Descriptions: This is a summary of about 155 characters that describes a particular web page.
- Keywords: They are relevant words and phrases added to your online content to help improve rankings on search engines.
- Image ALT tags: They are used to describe images on your website.
Optimizing your website with proper SEO practices is a great way to drive high-quality organic traffic to your site.
Use Hashtags.
Using hashtags in your posts on social media is a great way to extend your reach to a broader audience. When users search for products and services with your hashtags, you’ll get more quality traffic to your website.
Ensure your website is mobile-friendly.
There are lots of visitors who want to access your website through the use of their mobile phones, tablets, and other devices; you need to make sure that your website caters to their needs by ensuring that your website has a responsive design.
Research undertaken by Statista revealed that over 52% of website traffic was generated through mobile phones in 2018. Today, more and more users are accessing websites through their mobile devices; you don’t want to miss out on a large amount of traffic all because you do not have a mobile-friendly website.
To check the mobile-friendliness of your website, you can use this Google tool.
Use email marketing.
If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to drive quality, organic traffic to your website, then email marketing will quickly be your best friend. A lot of marketers today say that email marketing is dead, yet, it is still one of the most powerful tools to create awareness for your offer and drive a ton of traffic to your small business website.
Do you know that a staggering 72% of customers prefer to receive information about products and services through their emails? As a small business owner with a limited marketing budget, email marketing is a pocket-friendly approach you can use. If you are yet to take advantage of email marketing, you need to start building your email list now.
List Your Business on GMB, Bing Places, etc.
Creating and optimizing a free Google My Business (GMB) listing is a great way to drive traffic to your website. In fact, you can get as much as 7 times more visitors if your Google My Business listing is well optimized.
A lot of potential customers are looking for businesses daily on Google My Business and other online business directories such as Bing Places and Yelp. Make sure to link your website to these online business directories so that you can drive more traffic to your website and grow your business.
Leverage social video sites
Videos are valuable assets and great tools that can be used to attract new customers and keep your existing customers engaged. Thankfully, social video sites like YouTube or Vimeo are great platforms you can use to host your video content online.
When you create captivating and engaging video content, you can add your website address in the video description column on the social video site. This way, you’ll get traffic back to your website when visitors click on your website link.
Always make sure you post interesting, captivating, and informative video content online. Do not forget to include a call to action (CTA) so your audience can take a particular action.
Use Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is another way to increase traffic to your website. Guest post on reputable blogs in your niche; invite other prominent business owners in your niche to guest blog on your site. You can use both ways to drive blog traffic to your small business website.
You can post content on relevant blogs in the local language of your target audience with the help of online translation services like The Word Point and other brands. Guest blogging also portrays you as an industry leader in your niche.
Be Active on Social Media
The enormous role played by social media in driving traffic to websites of business owners and entrepreneurs cannot be over-emphasized. Your social media audience can quickly become visitors to your website when you share engaging content on your social media page from time to time.
As a small business owner, you should endeavor to maximize the use of top-performing social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Linkedin, etc. Being active on social media is also a cost-effective way for you to interact with your target audience and build a community of loyal customers.
A survey carried out by Campaign Monitor revealed that 69.6% of small business owners use Facebook to drive traffic to their website, while 48.3% and 47% of small business owners use Instagram and Twitter, respectively.
Build Backlinks
Create links on other reputable websites of industry influencers in your niche that points back to your site. This way, your business is exposed to a larger audience, and your website will reap the benefits in terms of quality traffic.
Moreover, when reputable websites link to your small business website, Google trusts your site more. Here are some link building strategies that you can use to kick start your link building campaign;
- Ask your friends to refer to your website from theirs.
- Have a working business relationship with other brands.
- List your business on reputable and trustworthy online business directories such as Yelp, Thumbtack, Yellow Pages, Better Business Bureau, etc.
- Post content on aggregator websites like Reddit, Popurls, AllTop, Feedly, etc.
Wrapping things up
Generating quality traffic to grow your small business website can seem like a hard nut to crack if you do not know how to go about it.
If you do not want your website to become a glorified business card, then you need to start using the tips mentioned above to ensure that your website gets the right amount of traffic.
One thing is certain; you need to find ways to grow your small business irrespective of the marketing budget available to you. You need to start seeing good returns from your small business website, and generating quality traffic is one way to ensure that this happens.
Guest Post: About the Author
Thomas Lore is a 23-year old translator. He is also a creative and diligent freelance blogger, who is always seeking for new ways to improve himself. Thomas is very versatile and he wants to reach the tops with his writing skills.