Over the last several decades, the real world has moved online, and so has the money. Whether it’s for a commercial website, personal blog, turning a profit through online advertising, or finding a way to improve the exposure for your business, today’s currency of success heavily relies on being able to cultivate more traffic to your website.
While the world may be getting smaller, the Internet is quickly getting much larger, and it seems that everybody wants a piece of the pie.
The good news is that a majority of visitors to the millions of websites, get funneled through the rather narrow search engines to the various sites. This leaves the market far from saturated regarding a division of resources. Therefore, there are still plenty of ways that you can successfully direct more people to your website.
Unfortunately, with everything good, there has to be something terrible. Most of the ways that you can drive traffic to your site as evident as they may be are only entirely understood by those people who have dedicated themselves to understanding Search Engine Optimization, (SEO) and digital marketing strategies, merely because they are more driven to do so.
Consequently, a job that is so simple anyone can perform it with the basic understanding of how to operate a computer ends up being done by specialized digital marketing firms that increase the operational costs for small businesses like yours.
Contents
Content, SEO, and Analytics
When it comes to driving traffic to your website, your first efforts have to come from your own backyard. The first and most important rule for building an excellent foundation for driving more traffic to your site is creating unique content.
As a small business owner, you need to learn to fully appreciate the vast array of tools that are at your disposal for you to use to make your site a fantastic experience for visitors.
The first rule in content creation is that you need to diversify your content among as many of the media formats as possible. This includes textual, audio-visual, exclusively aural, and so on. Every business will require a specific skill-set to survive and ultimately succeed.
However, most people just shrug these skills off as an everyday occurrence. This is why those people who are more willing to acknowledge their gifts will always receive more attention, more publicity, and ultimately more business through their higher web traffic numbers.
So, the first thing that you will need to do to start increasing your web traffic will be to isolate the specific skills that qualify you to succeed in your chosen profession. This could be your salesmanship, creative business modeling, financial acumen, investment skills, or strong research skills. Most small business websites that make it big, don’t do it because they are loaded with business jargon, but because they can extract the qualities of great businesses into various articles and anecdotes, that the general public can relate to and can learn from.
This means that in addition to having your usual web content and products listed on your website, you need to have a blog as well. Your blog will serve as an exciting and informative target for your audience. Having greater public visibility will naturally lead to an increase in web traffic.
Creating Content
When you begin to create the content for your site, you want to identify the styles of content that will benefit you the most. Determine whether the information you are trying to convey will be better discussed in a short video, or will it be better to create a podcast or textual article.
Having a more significant variation in the styles of your content will allow the visitors to your site to scratch different itches depending on their mood at the time. By using various media to convey your information you can satiate your visitor’s need to learn through video, audio, or literary outlets all at once.
When it comes to the frequency of posted content, you want to make sure that you do so on a regular basis. Nothing turns away an existing visitor base quicker than a stagnant website.
People are only willing to invest their time in a site that continues to develop and grow, rather than wasting their time on a site that seems to be dying out and heading towards the cyber graveyard.
Web Analytics
Beyond the kinds of content that you need to create, you also need to keep your eye on your website analytics. This is usually provided in-house through portals like WordPress, or through Google analytics for general internet sites. If you don’t already have it, head to Google analytics to complete an easy sign-up process.
Once you’ve signed up for the service, you should begin receiving analytical data on the dashboard within a week. The analytics that you receive will allow you to identify the favorite pieces among your hosted content quickly and to determine whether or not a new video or article received public approval, which is determined by the amount of time spent, on average, on that particular piece of content by your audience.
If they sat through an appropriate amount of time to view the content in its entirety, then you can rest easy because you’ve done your job. However, if they move on after just 30 seconds, you may need to revisit your judgment regarding the topic or style of the content.
Keeping an eye on the analytics of your website, and tweaking your content accordingly will allow you to understand the tastes of your regular audience members better. This will help you to cater to your visitors appropriately so that you can work to nurture your growing visitor base.
Happy visitors will always refer your site to those around them, which will result in an increase in web traffic to your website through word-of-mouth. One way to encourage this behavior is to continually maintain a high level of credibility among your existing visitor base.
Search Engine Optimization
Once you’ve determined the style of content that you are going to create and as you focus on the quality and frequency of the content itself, you need to start thinking about search engine optimization, or SEO. Creating content that is SEO friendly is the easiest way for you to push more traffic to your site.
The first step to making sure your site is SEO optimized is by making sure that you submit your website links to the various search engine platforms. While not every URL that is provided to the search engines will make it onto their search indexes, a majority of them do so without a hitch. When you complete this step, it allows Google’s crawlers to index your site and display it within their search results. This can also be done for other search engines like Bing and Yahoo.
Once you’ve submitted your website to the search engines for indexing, you’ll need to begin performing SEO on all of your current site content, as well as keep its basics in mind for the content you create in the future.
In a nutshell, SEO is about allowing the search engine crawlers, which trawl through all of the websites on the Internet, to categorize and classify your site in order of its relevance to specific keywords. The higher the significance of a particular site in response to one particular keyword, the better the chances it has of appearing higher up on the search lists.
This is extremely important because your efforts to drive traffic to your site isn’t geared toward those people who already know about your site, but instead toward people who aren’t aware of your business or your site and are only looking for options based on the keywords they enter into the search query.
Search Engine Optimization is a highly competitive field. It is a combination of art and science, linguistics and anthropology. It’s the ability to understand the mind of your customers and determining a list of possible keywords that they might use to get to the topical content that you provide.
Take a look at the content that you have already created and make a list of all the possible keywords that you would use to find an article like this. Each of the key phrases that you consider should be between two and four words long. These are known as long-tail keyword phrases.
One way that you might want to consider compiling your list of keywords faster is to use one key phrase and enter it into the Google search bar. When the results appear, scroll down to the bottom of the page. Here you will find around eight to ten related searches and key phrases.
This list might help you find a few more key phrases that you believe are strongly related to your content. Repeat this exercise several times with different key phrases so that you can acquire a slightly wider range of keywords that are relevant to your content.
When you’ve identified your keywords, make sure that the keywords that you’ve determined are present in all of your content. For each article that you write, define a distinct key phrase that should be present in the title and subtitle of the piece.
It is essential though that none of the keywords that you use individually account for more than 1.5% of the total word count for the article. When you include excessive keywords into your content, it automatically leads to the search engines lowering your rank in the index.
When creating your content, you want to add at least three to four keywords in the title tag of your article and the important keyword phrase in the metadata and description of your content for as long as it’s published.
Again, you don’t want to get overzealous and stuff your tagline with errant tags, since this will lead to all the search engines lowering your rank. It is essential that you identify the best possible search engine key phrases and dedicate a few unique ones to each article or piece of content.
Properly optimizing your website content with SEO and keeping a close eye on the web analytics for your site is the first step to boosting your website traffic.
Social Media
Social media has become the best way to advertise your business or website. Sites like Facebook and Twitter allow you to interact with your audience. The first step to utilizing social media and drive more traffic to your site is to make yourself visible on the various platforms.
Utilizing Facebook
If you don’t already have a business page on Facebook, this will be your first step to increasing your visibility on the site. Along with enlisting your employees, you’ll also want to have willing customers like your page.
Once you’ve established your Facebook business page, make sure that you provide information on your website that will inform potential customers or visitors of your page.
Moving forward, use Facebook to announce any new developments in your business that would be relevant to your customers. You can also use it to publish posts about offers or discounts that are available on your site. You can even provide updates through your business page about new content that is now available to use.
You can also utilize your Facebook page as an open forum to pose subtle marketing research questions and gather customer feedback which would garner more interest in your business and website because most customers prefer professionals who are engaged with their client base and who are interested in hearing their opinions.
With the number of people who get on Facebook every day, it has quickly become one of the main avenues for new media advertising, which you can efficiently accomplish through its paid advertising programs that would feature your business across a broad range of people in your targeted demographics.
How to Establish Effective Posts on Facebook
Running your own Facebook post requires being able to create posts that are sensible and easy to read. The posts that you produce have to include extensive detailed information that relates directly to your business.
One part of creating useful posts on Facebook entails getting messages that not only grab the attention of your visitors but also that make them want to share your words. As your posts are forwarded to others, it becomes easier to market your business.
Tell Stories
Some of the best posts that you can add to your Facebook page are stories. You can talk about anything that you want as long as it is unique and relevant to your business. Tell unique stories that relate to your business and let people know what makes it unique. The best stories will always be shared with others.
With these types of posts, you have to be willing to talk about your business’s background. Figure out a way to share what you’re doing and why you are motivated to help them. Show that what you are doing is making a difference in the lives of others. If people see that you are doing something worthwhile and useful, they will support you.
Work with Trending Topics
The Facebook search algorithm rewards people who talk about trending issues. Favorite topics are highlighted more often because people are more likely to search for or have a stronger demand to discover.
Working with trending topics that are specific and important is always useful. However, it is important to note that you never want to post anything political to your Facebook page as it will be inevitably alienate members of your audience.
When you discuss trending topics, it becomes easier for your business to get noticed. You will show that your company understands the trends and interests of today.
This will provide you with the opportunity to share data with your audience in a distinctive way. However, you want to practice caution with how you incorporate these trends into your posts. You don’t want to talk about something that has nothing to do with your business just because it’s a favorite topic. Try to relate the trend to your business in some way.
Talk About Business Decisions
Today, people appreciate transparency, and it has become an essential aspect of running a business. Consumers prefer to do business with companies that are open and direct about what they want to do or promote. Customers appreciate companies that are willing to talk about what inspires them and the reasons they decided to start a business.
You can talk about any business decision that you’ve made and how you operate. Talking about results and ideas makes you more open to your audience. You can even ask for feedback about anything you want to follow up on. As you get a clearer idea of what your audience wants, getting information from your visitors can make a difference.
Use Unique Media
While anyone can post-historical images, pictures from the news or memes on their Facebook feeds, its better if you can find a way to be unique and personal. Part of this will involve using media files and images that are unlike anything else.
When you use unique media files, you show your audience that you have a great plan in mind for your company. They will realize that you are creative and inventive while remaining open-minded. Using the same kind of image that everyone else utilizes is not always the best option as it merely shows repetition.
Utilizing Twitter
The primary advantage of using Twitter to increase your web traffic is that it is widespread and the character limit caters to the atrophied attention span of today’s youth. Twitter allows your business to interact with others in short and witty bite-sized texts while keeping up with the more significant trends and concerns on social media in a concise way.
The first thing that you’ll need to do is get a Twitter handle and get involved with relevant discussions across the globe. When you find an open conversation where you could supply pertinent information, take the time to post your input along with links back to your website or any other content that you feel would be able to add value to the discussion.
Getting the Most Out of Your Tweets
The messages that you post on Twitter are vital to your success with the platform. It is essential that you create thoughtful, unique, and appealing messages. You can utilize a few helpful strategies to gain a better chance of your tweets getting read by more people.
More importantly, when people trust your work and your words, your tweets are more likely to lead to extra followers and more traffic to your website.
Be Creative
The most popular Twitter feeds are the most creative. They might involve funny anecdotes, how-to information, thoughtful quotes, or anything else that an audience might find interesting.
Think about what you want to say and stick with it as you develop your Twitter feed. Let your audience know that you have something unique to share with them and that you are someone they can trust.
Stick With One Style
Take the time to think about how you are going to post things on Twitter. Do you want to take a light-hearted approach? Would you rather be straightforward with the public? Whatever you decide, you need to determine the attitude and style you want to follow and stick with it for as long as possible. Be consistent with all of your posts on Twitter.
Be careful not to shift your style and attitude on a whim because it might end up confusing your audience. Some might even think that your Twitter profile was hacked.
Stay Transparent
Like with any other social media platform, it is important to remain fully transparent when talking to your audience. Let people know what you’re doing and what makes your business important. People will appreciate it when they hear from you and will see how direct you are with them. They will retweet your message and add to your exposure.
Utilizing YouTube
Another highly valuable option for boosting your web traffic is YouTube. In fact, the site has become extremely popular recently thanks to how it highlights videos of all descriptions. YouTube can be an incredibly valuable tool for your business. It will require producing videos that are exceptional and worth sharing. To start working with YouTube, you’ll need to create a profile so that you begin to post videos to the site.
Making the Most of YouTube
YouTube is great for social media campaigns and driving more traffic to websites. To get the most out of your efforts, you have to make your videos appealing while also standing out from the crowd. More importantly, you have to make your promotional channel more intriguing.
This will help to bring in more subscribers and an increase in visits to your site. There are a few special techniques for getting your YouTube videos to be easier to read and more dynamic.
Get Verified
To get the most out of your YouTube account, you need to get verified. A verified account will give you more access to more functions on the site. This includes the ability to add custom thumbnails to a video and make your videos longer.
Getting your channel authenticated, ensures that you will be able to do more because YouTube knows that your channel is legitimate. People will be more likely to trust your channel if they see that it has been verified.
Use Custom Thumbnails
When you begin to use YouTube, you will have the option to work with random thumbnails on each video. After some time, you can be approved to work with custom thumbnails. These will add a unique image that allows people to see what you want to share before they click on the video. It could include details about the video or some other display feature that is more intriguing to the reader.
Create a Channel Trailer
A channel trailer is a video that you upload that is played on your channel page when someone who has not subscribed to your page comes across it. The video is set up to playback automatically. You can create any kind of video for your trailer, but it’s best to use one that illustrates what your business is all about.
This is generally the first thing that you should show to someone who is not familiar with what you do. It creates a welcome approach to explain to the viewer what your business is all about and what makes your work unique. When a person subscribes to your page, the channel trailer will no longer appear.
Creating Playlists
You can create playlists that highlight everything on your channel that is similar in some way. With a playlist, you can share information in a series of organized spaces that let people know specific things about your business.
They might also include points on your business and how it operates, or it could include your knowledge about matters relating to your niche.
Using Captioning
There may be instances when someone wants to view your YouTube video, but they have to keep the sound down to keep from bothering those around them. Other users might be deaf or hard of hearing. So you don’t alienate any of your audience, use captions on your video.
If for whatever reason, someone needs to use captioning on your video, all they have to do is click the proper captioning icon on your video, and a series of captions will appear at the right moment.
Add Calls to Action
You need to include plenty of calls to action around your YouTube page and videos. These can consist of calls to encourage people to visit your website or even your place of business. More importantly, you need to add calls to action for things relating specifically to YouTube.
It is fundamental for you to interact with your viewers through your videos and other features if you want to boost traffic to your site.
Websites, Guest Blogs, and Forum Links
While these may be a bit more time-consuming as methods for boosting your web traffic, when compared to others discussed, they pay a steady long-term return long into the future.
Unlike with social media, the links you post in the comments sections of other websites, and forums, and the guest posts you curate, don’t continue to get overshadowed by newer material, allowing them to remain visible for anyone who lands on a particular discussion page, website, or specific post.
The idea here isn’t to go crazy and start spamming links to your site everywhere you can, but to find relevant discussions on competing websites and other similar amateur sites that people may often visit to read up on information that pertains to your business as well.
Commenting on Competing Websites
The most important thing to remember when utilizing competing websites to gain more traffic to your website, it that you only want to post a few links to your own business site, on each website. If you get too crazy with commenting on competing sites with a link back to your site, the site administrators may take action and remove the links back to your page, or remove your comments altogether.
To make the best use of competing websites, you want to make sure that the comments you make are meaningful and add value to the topic that is being discussed; otherwise, you’ll come off as nothing more than a spammer, effectively ruining your chances of increasing traffic to your site.
When you do make a meaningful comment, make sure to add a link to the content on your site that will add value to your point or broaden the scope of the topic at hand.
Commenting on Relevant Forums
Apart from utilizing competing websites to boost your web traffic, there are several forums where you can post your link and request feedback on your site’s style, content, or general layout.
Aside from the added advantage of gaining a fresh perspective regarding your site, you will also be opening up the door for potential visitors who enjoy what you have to offer, to refer your website to others, merely out of respect for your creation.
Since the forums differ greatly regarding topical interest, it may take a while to find a discussion that works for you, especially if your business in highly niched. One recommendation in this regard is to find a sub-Reddit that is relevant to your content or business, make a contribution to the discussion and post your links.
Again, the populace here is pretty well-trained to deal with spam posters, so only add things on Reddit after you feel you’ve made an established addition to the ongoing discussion. You need to be careful because if you post content that is unrelated to the topic at hand, your credibility will dive.
Given a large number of people who visit these sites, the links and referrals that you post will bring visitors to your site for a long time to come.
Besides driving more visitors to your site directly through the links themselves, your efforts will have another influence as well. Search engine crawlers operate by creating inter-connecting networks between various sites on the Internet, all of which build up towards nodal connections that could drive visitors down hundreds of paths.
With the operational procedure behind these coded trawlers, the high the number of links that you have pointing back to your website, the higher you’ll rank within the search index.
When you build a substantial number of links between you and other prominent websites in your industry, the higher up you will be displayed during search functions. This will dramatically improve your visibility and drive more visitors to your site.
Submitting to Stumble Upon
After you’ve worked on your mass-link distribution campaign, you need to spend some time on StumbleUpon and other similar sites. Submit your site’s URL to these sites, and they will continue to direct people from their visitor base to your site randomly.
Although you may not think that is a method will work, you will be shocked to learn that the number of visitors to your site could increase by thousands once Stumblers begin to show up on your site.
Guest Blogging
Along with distributing links and utilizing social media platforms to drive traffic to your site, another easy way to increase your visitors is by collaborating with other, more established cyber personalities. The easiest way to do this is to offer to contribute guest blogs to other sites.
Since you have your own experience and skills, and many other sites are always looking to expand their own content range, you would be able to write for many sites, and maybe even distribute the same article to numerous sites at the same time if you can negotiate non-exclusive arrangements with them.
While many sites may offer financial compensation to guest writers, they also have other options that don’t involve monetary compensation. Some will allow you to publish more links alongside your brief author bio which can help to open a door between their entire visitor base and your content.
However, if you aren’t much of a writer, you can always employ someone else to write your copy, or you may want to consider inviting other professionals to provide guest blogs for your site in exchange for greater publicity for them through their article or even monetary compensation.
This is another excellent way to open your content and website to their established audience, which they could to your site through their own self-promotion.
Guest blogging works wonders for increasing website traffic because people store more faith in sources where multiple professional voices are providing their opinions on a host of related issues, rather than a single contributor.
Collaborations also serve as new changes in voices and style, and may even serve to help bolster dwindling interest in your site in the absence of content from a new writer.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a way to communicate with your customers by sending promotional messages directly to their inbox and gives them a call to action to respond to your campaign. This sort of marketing is divided into two main styles, bulk email marketing campaigns, and opt-in letters and updates.
While dependent on email to maximize your visibility, both of these kinds of campaigns work in entirely different ways.
Bulk Email Campaigns
Bulk email campaigns typically deal with purchasing email lists from organizations and sending mass emails containing excerpts, commercial advertising, newsletters, offers, and promotional material to the people on the list.
However, because you obtained your information from a third party, it is likely to result in several recipients sending your email blasts directly to the spam folder. This action will significantly lower your credibility as a sender within the parameters of the email service providers.
When this happens, it’s likely that any promotional material that you send in the future will be lost within the junk folders and your targeted audience would never even see the email.
Opt-In Email Campaigns
The second way to utilize email marketing is through an opt-in marketing campaign. While this approach requires more time and effort, it has been shown to be considerably better suited for businesses and performs better than bulk email. Opt-in marketing means that when visitors previously viewed your site, they filled out an opt-in to join your regular subscriber base.
This ensures that the primary list of people, who may have just received your update email, was already interested in hearing your thoughts and opinions, and can help you to further refine your content and delivery in order to tweak your content.
Advantages of Email Marketing
First off, email marketing is an inexpensive option because it costs significantly less per customer to generate than other marketing strategies. Since the medium is hugely scalable, you have the ability to commit as much or as little as you want to utilize email marketing.
Email marketing campaigns have been shown to provide a high return on investment, (ROI). This is partly due to the fact that the average cost per customer is so low. With email marketing, you aren’t spending as much, in the beginning, to put the campaign in place and you are targeting a pre-qualified set of customers.
The flexibility of email marketing also has a significant impact on increasing traffic to your site because targeted email marketing allows you to personalize campaigns for your customers. When you know part of their needs will be met by your brand, product, or services, you can customize the email to fit that specific need, allowing you to gain more customers per marketing dollar.
Opt-in email marketing is also an excellent way for your business to maintain the relationship it has with existing customers and ensure they are aware of new offers, products, and services. When done correctly, email marketing can provide a high return on investment.
However, if you don’t get this right, you can lose your current customers. If you don’t have any experience with email marketing campaigns or don’t have in-house talent to help you with this, you may want to consider hiring an expert to help you set up your campaign.
Finally, an email campaign allows you to easily measure its effectiveness more than any other kind of direct marketing. With an email marketing campaign, you are able to track every opened email, every click, every email that is shared right through to the sale.
Best Practices for Success
Around 90 percent of the visitors to your website will leave without buying something from you on their first visit. However, by creating an attractive and compelling opt-in offer, you can at least get their contact details. Then you can use your email marketing campaign to follow up on their interests, build relationships, and convert them into paying customers.
Offer Free Valuable Information
One of the best ways to develop a relationship with your potential customers and establish credibility is to offer free valuable information when they provide you with their email address.
Sending your subscribers valuable, free information, like an authoritative eBook, will help them get to know you better and build their trust in your business. Once you’ve established your credibility, you can dramatically increase your chances of converting subscribers into lifelong customers.
Announce Regular Specials
If you want to encourage repeat customers, announce specials on a regular basis. As you start to collect emails, you can begin to send your customers and subscribers regular updates letting them know about your online-only specials.
If you set it up to where customers can get these specials in another way, then there is no reason for them to continue to pay attention to your emails. If you can continue to send exclusive discount offers through email, then they will continue to see value in the communication.
Host Exclusive Customer Only Events
Everyone wants to feel special and like they are in an exclusive club. Providing enticing, customer-only rewards is one of the best ways to capitalize on the lifetime value of your customers, as well as reinforcing the importance of opening up your emails.
If you own an online business, you can create a particular page on your site that is accessible only to customers, and then send them an email telling them how to take advantage of the specials you advertise and post on that page.
Paid Advertising
So far, we’ve discussed the numerous free ways that you can drive traffic to your site. While they will all do a great job of boosting your traffic numbers, there is no question, that paid traffic will get you faster results.
Paid traffic is a results-driven strategy that, when used correctly, can blow the lid off your ROI quickly while having the potential to explode your business more rapidly than you ever thought possible.
Pay Per Click – PPC
PPC is one of the most popular forms of paid advertising, and it is not likely to be going anywhere anytime soon. Its appeal reaches everyone from giant corporations to smaller online marketers. Its effectiveness has everyone wanting a piece of the money pie that springs form PPC platforms that populate the online advertising space.
While the PPC environment adapts to changes with new platform providers and regular updates to advertising rules, those who can master the method of pay per click advertising will continue to rake in massive traffic from what is a very targeted and highly converting customer base.
Pay per click advertising is an online auction-style process where a company bids money against other advertisers to have their particular keyword-targeted ad listed on certain websites. The company then gets charged when someone clicks on their ad, regardless of how many times the ad was seen. There are two main types of PPC advertising.
PPC search allows a text ad to show at the top or side of the search engine page. It is usually positioned against other ads depending on its bid and its quality score as determined by the search engine.
PPC display shows ads that are influenced by the advertiser’s targeting selections. They usually will appear on the content pages that are relevant to what the searcher is reading as well as their previous browsing history.
Typically, PPC display ads catch the potential buyers that are looking for information, whereas PPC search ads are more likely to convert the prospect as they are searching by specific keywords and phrases.
Google and Bing are currently the dominant search engines for PPC advertising, and they both employ the quality score method. This assists the search engines in determining how your ad will rank. Scoring is from one to ten with the lowest score a one.
You can help your bid cost and ad placements by promoting your quality score through the landing page and ad keyword relevancy, and landing page loading time and quality. You will need to look into this deeper with the relevant networks before you begin your campaigns to ensure that you get the maximum value for the money you’re going to spend.
Pay Per View – PPV
While pay per view might not fit into one of your current sources of traffic yet, if you want to maintain a balanced marketing portfolio, it is one that you might want to seriously consider moving forward with.
With many marketers looking for more freedom away from the claws of the ruling search engines, there is a collective movement toward PPV advertising. It appeals because it has wound back the clock to cheaper ad costs and more natural linking strategies that are enjoyed by smart marketers for significantly more traffic.
When you invest in PPV advertising your offers are shown to viewers who are receptive to them because they are expecting them and they signed on to receive them. This is the command that you gain when you invest in PPV advertising.
Also known as cost-per-view, your offer only appears on the screen of your pre-qualified audience when they visit a particular website that you are targeting. This allows you to get your website in front of large crowds without even trying to sell them to click on your ad.
The strength of the PPV systems allows you to bid on every URL of sites that people visit and direct them immediately to your offer. You can also collect their email addresses and utilize the email marketing methods discussed in Chapter 4.
If you target your audience correctly, you can obtain extremely qualified leads for a relatively moderate price point.
Facebook Advertising
We’ve already talked about how you can utilize Facebook to increase web traffic by establishing a solid business page and sharing your content with your audience. Now, we need to discuss how to take advantage of Facebook’s paid advertising campaigns to increase your traffic further.
With over one billion active users globally, advertising on Facebook works. It is because Facebook consistently delivers results that Internet marketers reveal techniques every week to boost website traffic. Since Facebook ads are extremely targeted toward the desired prospect, you are in complete control of your own spending, which can be minimal, and your audience is already engaged and receptive.
There are two primary categories of Facebook ads, sponsored stores, and ads. Ads appear on the right sidebar of the page and in the newsfeed. Sponsored stories are shown to friends of a fan who interacted in some way with your Facebook page.
This could be either through commenting, reviewing or liking it. Depending on the type of ad, payment options include cost per click (CPC), and cost per thousand impressions (CPM).
Given the nature of Facebook to make regular changes to its operating policies, it is recommended that you periodically check with their instructions page for any updates, especially if you notice your ad submissions are being denied on a regular basis.
YouTube Ads
The TrueView ad system on YouTube, allows you to reach people who want to watch your videos, thanks to how YouTube works with Google AdWords. Google AdWords is a method that will enable businesses to get their advertisements to rank higher when searched. When a link is connected to a specific keyword, that link will appear at the top of a search page for that particular word.
For YouTube, AdWords works a bit differently. You spend the money every time someone clicks on your video or watches the video. The videos and ads you produce will be displayed based on the keywords that someone uses to search or the viewers you are targeting.
The amount you spend will wholly depend on how many people click on your ad. You can also set up a budget with your ad so that your ad will be removed after you’ve spent a specified amount.
Paid Advertising on Twitter
With the right strategies and by taking advantage of trends, you can make yourself more visible on Twitter without spending a dime. However, sometimes you may need a little bit of help to get recognized. After all, there are millions of tweets getting posted every minute of the day. This is where paid advertising can help.
Paid advertising is a valuable tool because it can help you make your tweets more visible. With Twitter advertising, you will get your tweets posted on individual pages and pages of others.
In many cases, those posts will be on search pages relating to the subject people are looking for. You can always use paid advertising to get your business more visible on Twitter.
Conclusion
Without putting too fine of a point on it, there is a dizzying array of methods that will allow you to boost traffic to your website. If done right, you should even need email marketing campaigns.
However, most established sites develop opt-in programs in order to keep their audience updated on the latest happenings in their business and their website. The most successful companies continue to expand without trouble after achieving proficiency in SEO and campaign drafting alone.
While there may be many reasons why you want more visitors to your website, the bottom line is that the Internet is a vast playground and there are more than enough visitors to go around, so long as they know that your company exists.
Therefore, you always want to strive to perfect visibility and exposure and make sure that it is in sync with the quality of content that you are producing.
When you first begin working toward boosting traffic to your site, the results may gain momentum far too slowly for you to appreciate the effort that you’ve put in, however, with patience, you’ll soon be hit by a rising tide of an increased viewership base.