So, you built a website – now what? When we increase our online presence, it quickly becomes clear that high-resolution images, informative blog posts, and a well-organized menu do not guarantee you enough visits to be considered a success. If you don’t want your website to be alone on an island, you’ll have to figure out a way to spur traffic. Here are four free tips you can begin acting on today.
Get on social media
If you have an audience somewhere else, you can bring them over to your website. Buying ad space is another story altogether, but you can preview or link to your content on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more.
Just be sure you’re actually interacting with people on social media and sharing other relevant content. If you’re always hawking your blog or products, people will get bored with you, or worse, think you’re some kind of bot.
Partner up
You chose the host with the most highly rated reviews, but the teamwork doesn’t end there. If the purpose of your website is to sell a product, reach out to influencers and see if they wouldn’t mind being part of your affiliate program. Often, you just need to give them what you’re selling at a good discount. Once they share your product or content – hopefully with a glowing recommendation – you’ll see a bump in traffic.
No matter what your goal is, consider guest posting. This works both ways. You can get someone with a wider audience to guest post with you, or pitch your idea to a blog with a larger readership than yours. Rather than trying to edge out the competition, ensure you have a place among them.
Use SEO
If you’re unfamiliar with search engine optimization, you might believe that you need to hire someone to take care of this for you. But if you take the time to read up on various tactics, you’ll realize you can do a lot of it yourself in very little time.
Using SEO across your website means that search engines will be able to find you more easily, and your chances of ranking higher in search results will improve. Do your keyword research, make sure your page is fast to load, and pay attention to URLs and meta description.
Update often
The worst thing you can do for a website that you want people to visit is to build it and forget it. This is second only to going in hard at first, but then dropping off once you’ve just started to attract an audience.
How often you update impacts your search ranking as well. Create a content schedule and stick to it – it’s an even better idea to have a backlog of content, or updates to older content, ready to go when you’re short on ideas.
You don’t have to pay for clicks. What you want is organic, steady traffic that you’ve earned. If you employ SEO, keep your page fresh, tap into social media audiences, and mingle with other authorities in your industry, you’re already on the path to growing your website.
